Tsai Ing Wen spoke of U.S.-Taiwan relations and the democratic model Taiwan sets for the world.
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Former president of Taiwan Tsai Ing Wen stressed the importance of democratic resilience and maintaining U.S.-Taiwan relations while speaking at the Hoover Institution on Thursday.
She highlighted Taiwan’s importance because of its persistent protection of democracy and keeping institutions open. “We do not offer a perfect model but the challenges we have overcome now face other democracies,” Tsai said.
Her address to Hauck Auditorium was co-hosted by the Hoover Institution Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific and Stanford in Government (SIG). Tsai, who served as Taiwan’s first female head of state from 2016 to 2024, emphasized the important role Taiwan plays in geopolitics. Taiwan accounts for over 60% of the world’s foundry revenue and over 90% of leading-edge chip manufacturing. This infrastructure serves as the base of modern defense systems, critical infrastructure and advanced technologies like AI, radar and missiles.
Tsai also gave the opening keynote at Stanford’s fourth annual DEFCON conference on technology and national security on Oct. 7. She met with a small group of around 30 students from SIG, the Taiwanese Students Association and students who have taken courses about Taiwan for lunch as well.
Condoleezza Rice, direcotr of the Hoover Institution, emphasized Tsai’s important role during a crucial time for the Indo-Pacific during her introduction of Tsai at the Oct. 8 event. Tsai’s presidency coincided with rising Chinese military pressure on Taiwan and growing concern about a standoff with China in the Taiwan Strait, which would have impacts on regional security and global technology supply chains.
“She stands at the center of these questions,” said Rice.
Taiwan understands how to be resilient, something Tsai said develops gradually as societies overcome individual challenges and adapt to change. “Democracies are sometimes noisy or chaotic,” Tsai said, but emphasized Taiwan’s ability to approach challenges.
This is especially true given the persistent pressure Taiwan faces from China. Understanding how to handle an authoritarian regime makes Taiwan a valuable asset to the rest of the democratic world, Tsai noted.
She framed collaboration with Taiwan as a means to spread democracy through collaboration and “shared” interests, stressing Taiwan’s eagerness to work with other democracies. Tsai said that the U.S. can be assured that the country will remain its loyal friend in the politically important region of the Indo-Pacific.
“Without democracy, it’s not Taiwan,” she added.
U.S.-Taiwan relations are important beyond economic and technology security and industrial resilience, Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institution Larry Diamond, a moderator of the event, told The Daily. If the U.S. values democracy and freedom, partnership with other democracies is extremely important, he said.
“Every authentic and quality democracy…[is] something we should value, partner with, and seek to preserve,” he said. “Taiwan is arguably the highest quality, most vibrant democracy in Asia. I think it’s pretty important that it survive, independent of what it’s providing for the world in semiconductors.”
The former president warned the audience of imminent issues in politics and global affairs: the polarization of politics, authoritarian influence and internal populism, which she explained makes it more difficult for countries to respond to external threats. Democratic institutions must prove their resilience by maintaining a sense of community and proving that they can actually improve lives, she told the crowd.
In a time of polarized politics, being “boring” is useful, Tsai said, jokingly referring to how people tend to label her.
Beyond democracy, Tsai touched on her role as Taiwan’s first female president. It was “the people in Taiwan who elected me” who broke the glass ceiling, she said. Tsai not only became the first female president in a landslide victory, but also became Asia’s first female leader not born into a political family legacy.
In the subsequent discussion with Diamond, she explained that Taiwan is drawing lessons from the war in Ukraine, such as the need to innovate quickly during war.
Tsai represents the democratic ideals she champions and embodies a pragmatic and patient leader, not one who is “boring,” Diamond told The Daily. “She reflects and personifies the aspiration and resilience of a very democratic society, and Taiwan really has become that,” he said. “A country that emerged from a period of pretty serious authoritarianism, and through a lot of courageous struggles, civil society mobilization, principled action.”
Gordon Kim MBA ’27, who organized Tsai’s appearance at DEFCON, emphasized the important model of diplomacy that Tsai embodies.
“War is the last resort. Deterrence and peacekeeping should always be the priority—this is done not only by having a strong military, but even more so by having strong diplomacy,” he wrote to The Daily.
One reason why Hoover asked SIG to co-sponsor the event was because of Tsai’s relatable career path, Diamond said, as students could likely imagine themselves as career officers or political advisors. He hoped this would encourage students to not be afraid of entering the world of politics.
Tsai ended with a word for students, encouraging them to study abroad in Taiwan if presented with the opportunity and to see the country’s democracy in action. Diamond, who is leading a Bing Overseas Study Program (BOSP) Global Seminar there this upcoming summer, hopes that Stanford will expand opportunities for students to study in Taiwan.
Student attendee and co-president of Stanford Democrats Robert Liu ’28 said the U.S. has much to learn from Taiwan, given its advancements in championing female leadership. “Even we’re not there. We have a lot to learn from her as a leading former president of a democracy, a very vibrant democracy, in many cases, more vibrant than America,” he said to The Daily.
Tsai imparted more advice to students, telling them that they should consider curiosity, adventure and their ability to work with others when making important decisions about their lives. She added that, should you fail, you should just “do more to get it,” pointing to her failed presidential run in 2012 as an example.
“Perhaps it makes me a bit boring, but this is exactly what leadership requires,” she said.
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Saudi Arabia, Singapore among foreign governments funding StanfordUsing recently released ED data, The Daily reviewed 445 payments to Stanford, from 24 unique foreign governments.
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Using data released by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) on Sept. 30, The Daily reviewed more than 6,300 reported payments from foreign sources to Stanford stretching back to 1987. Among the reported awards, 445 of them, totaling $113.57 million, were marked as originating from 24 unique foreign governments. The U.S. Department of Education (ED) released a portal with a broad overview of contributions from foreign donors to U.S. colleges and universities in February.
The records show more than $113 million in government-linked funding to Stanford, including research contracts with Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company and Singaporean defense institutions, among others.
To date, Stanford has received over $2.7 billion from foreign donors, $500 million of which was reported in the last six months. The Daily previously reported that the University received more than $2.2 billion in foreign gifts and contracts since 1986, with awards linked to China accounting for the largest share at $467 million.
The Daily analyzed the ED’s publicly available Section 117 data by treating each reported transaction as a separate entry and analyzing those labeled as either a foreign government or connected to a foreign government. The records vary in the level of detail they provide: some identify a specific government, entity, purpose and contract period, while others leave one or more of those fields blank.
The data solely reflects what Stanford reported to the federal government and thus may not represent a complete accounting of all foreign funding received by the University. The Daily is continuing to review the records and investigate apparent gaps or inconsistencies in the data.
The largest cumulative award from a single government, which amounted to $43.3 million, was tied to Saudi Arabia. All 113 awards were reported to the federal government starting in July 2020, with the most recent submission date being July 31, 2026.
Saudi Aramco, the largest oil and gas company in the world and owned by the Saudi government, has 90 reported contributions to the University, totaling $23.68 million. Of those contributions, Stanford reported only 16 as being tied to a foreign government. The other 16 awards that Stanford labeled as government-affiliated amount to $10.85 million to date.
Awards from the Singaporean government were the highest tally, adding up to 119 awards totaling $13.2 million. The first award was reported to the federal government in Jan. 2021, with the most recent submission being July 31, 2026.
Singapore’s 119 awards include: the Ministry of Defense, with 22 separate awards; the Singapore Police Force, with two awards; and the Defense Science Organization (DSO) National Laboratories, with three awards, reported on July 31, 2026. DSO National Laboratories is Singapore’s national defense research and development entity. The DSO awards total $1.25 million.
There are no reported foreign awards for the entirety of calendar years 1989, 1990, 1991, 1996, 1997 and 2000.
In April 2025, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order 14282 titled “Transparency Regarding Foreign Influence at American Universities.” According to the order, it is the administration’s policy to “end the secrecy surrounding foreign funds in American educational institutions and safeguard America’s students and research from foreign exploitation.” The order directed the ED to strengthen enforcement of existing foreign-funding disclosure requirements, require more specific information about the sources and purposes of foreign funds and increase public access to those disclosures.
The foreign-funding disclosure requirement predates Trump’s executive order by decades. Congress first enacted the requirement in 1986 as part of amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965; it is now contained in Section 117 of the law. This section requires federally funded colleges and universities to disclose certain gifts from and contracts with a foreign source when their value, alone or combined with other gifts or contracts from the same source, reaches $250,000 in a calendar year. Following the executive order, more detailed information and data were made publicly available through a new dashboard.
Stanford, like other universities subject to Section 117, collects information on its foreign gifts and contracts, and reports qualifying transactions to the federal government. Stanford says its centralized process for administering Section 117 disclosures has been in place since the 2020 reporting cycle.
The April 2025 executive order therefore did not establish universities’ obligation to disclose foreign funding. Rather, it directed the ED to more aggressively enforce the existing law, collect more specific information about foreign funding and make those disclosures more accessible to the public. The administration attempted to release the names of individual foreign donors but has delayed their release multiple times thus far.
Last Thursday, a federal judge blocked the ED from publicly releasing the names of foreign donors to colleges and universities, with the federal judge saying that these donors provided gifts and contracts on the understanding that they’d remain private.
“Stanford supports the accuracy and completeness of its Section 117 disclosures through a university-wide data collection process facilitated by standardized reporting templates, a robust centralized review process, and attestations by senior financial leaders related to reporting of the data,” University spokesperson Angie Davis wrote in an email to The Daily.
“Stanford’s control environment and support for campus units includes a dedicated Section 117 homepage that serves as a resource for federal guidance, reporting instructions, timelines, templates, FAQs, and decision tools,” Davis wrote.
Many foreign governments have also directed money to Stanford to support their citizens’ education while in the U.S.
“Stanford’s mission of research and education benefits from the financial support of individuals and organizations across the United States and some from abroad, including alumni, parents, and friends with long-standing relationships with the university,” Davis wrote.
Davis said that the University acknowledges the potential security risks of research from “improper foreign interference” and pointed to the “numerous” policies set to ensure security.
“Stanford conducts rigorous due diligence for all philanthropic gifts and sponsored research, with enhanced scrutiny applied to international sources including restricted party screening and evaluation of research security implications, among other measures, to ensure that all support advances our mission of discovery and knowledge creation,” Davis wrote.
This is an ongoing investigation.
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Stanford sees continuing decline in humanities majorsNationwide humanities majors have decreased since 1991, according to a new report.
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Humanities departments across American colleges graduated their lowest number of majors in 2025 since 1991, according to a report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
At Stanford, the popularity crisis is nothing new.
The number of bachelor’s degrees awarded by the University in the humanities and arts has fallen 56% since 2003. This decline, from 324 in 2003-2004 to 143 in 2025-2026, has continued even as the overall number of undergraduate degrees granted has increased.
The reasons for this decline vary. According to nationwide research conducted by the Academy, students are driven by “concerns about employability, the effects of high-stakes standardized testing in humanities subjects and decreasing interest among young people in teaching as a career.”
Assistant Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences Jeff Schwegman has worked on “demystifying” the humanities at Stanford since 2014.
Stanford students in particular, he said, are wary of the absence of a clear career “escalator” in the humanities — a predictable, linear pathway to employment. In the process of reaching the top of the college escalator, high-achieving students have their comfort zone and identity shaped by an experience where their goal is clear: get in.
Students naturally look for another path to drive their college and post-college trajectory, Schwegman said. For students who are undecided on their degree, a clearer career path with a well-trodden recruiting or internship trajectory, like computer science or engineering, provides a more secure default.
“These liberal arts fields and what you would do with them [are] not like that. It’s definitely uncomfortable and can feel risky,” Schwegman said.
Schwegman has developed on-ramp courses with the hope of simplifying access to the humanities for curious students. “HUMSCI 1: Navigating the Humanities and Social Sciences at Stanford” helps students explore each department through guest lectures.
To help students envision possible humanities-driven career options, he introduced survey courses like URBANST 190A: “Public Service and Social Impact Pathways to Purposeful Careers” and ENGLISH 119: “Pitching and Publishing in Popular Media.”
Departmental structures pose another problem. In an op-ed in “The Chronicle of Higher Education,” Director of Introductory Studies and French professor Dan Edelstein wrote that students exploring the humanities for the first time don’t know where to start.
“We have carved up humanistic learning according to research specializations of which our students are wholly ignorant,” Edelstein wrote.
To solve this, Edelstein proposed making humanities courses more accessible to nonmajors. Instead of creating humanities courses with the goal of leading students into niche fields, he proposed having courses teach more generalized topics and integrate skills everyone needs, like composition and rhetoric.
Similar strategies have worked before: he cited an example of when Purdue University saw enrollment in humanities classes skyrocket when they began offering courses on “transformative texts” that focus on classic works.
Schwegman noted that another driver of disinterest in the humanities is a communication issue. Other areas of study have clearer paths towards public-facing products, like new technologies or policy proposals.
“The humanities sometimes can do that, but often what they do is not really solve challenges,” Schwegman said. “They instead pose new questions or pose new perspectives or put things in conversation with each other that make you recontextualize something.”
According to Rowan Dorin, history professor and director of the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, humanists need to change the language they use when communicating their work to the public.
“We historians discover lots of things, but we very rarely frame our discipline in the language of discovery,” he said. “I think we could do a better job of capturing the excitement of what we do in the language that we use to describe it.”
Stanford’s Public Humanities Initiative was founded in 2020 with the attempt to address this issue by ensuring “academic research and knowledge production can meet a public audience,” according to its website. The initiative supports scholars’ publications and funds public humanities projects for students and faculty.
Not everyone agrees that the humanities are becoming less popular at Stanford. Some professors cautioned not to use declining interest as a definitive measure of engagement with Stanford humanities.
In fact, many see the Stanford humanities as flourishing. According to Dorin, award-winning student publications, active undergraduate organizations and popular minors programs – like the surging creative writing program – demonstrate Stanford undergraduates’ deep engagement with the humanities beyond majors.
Decreased enrollment in humanities classes may actually result in higher quality teaching, Edelstein wrote in his op-ed, observing that humanities teaching excels most in small discussion seminars. Increasing engagement in the humanities “need not mean coaxing hundreds of apathetic students into attending your lectures on Dante or the U.S. Constitution,” he wrote.
“It does mean that, if done well, there will in fact be a need to hire more faculty to lead small-group seminar discussions,” Edelstein continued.
Changes in humanities education pose challenges and opportunities. To Dorin and Edelstein, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), for instance, is cause for optimism.
“This is a great moment for the humanities, but more broadly, liberal education to really make its case for its relevance, not just for students’ souls, but for their futures and their careers,” Edelstein said.
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Stanford needs to do moreKapoor argues Stanford needs to reexamine how it protects its student body from sexual violence in light of the Cornell rape case.
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Zidaan Kapoor is a sophomore studying International Relations. His interests include social justice, food allergy advocacy and singing.
Stanford needs to do more.
Over the past few days, more disturbing details have emerged about the unconscionable gang rape case at Cornell University. On the night of Oct. 19th, 2024, a former Cornell student alleges that seven Chi Phi fraternity members drugged and raped her while she was incapacitated. Her rape was announced to a group chat of 57 men who were part of the fraternity.
Some cheered it on, and no one spoke out against it.
Over the next few days, some of these individuals lied to Jane Doe (kept anonymous for her safety), pretending to be unsure of what happened or denying anything ever did. On Oct. 6th, Jane Doe’s lawyer alleged that a man called Jane Doe and threatened to shoot up her house, her mother, her father and her. He claims she deals with these threats regularly.
Cornell’s rape case made the news, but it raises questions about the true frequency of these incidents. The statistics are alarming. One in five women have experienced either completed or attempted rape in their lifetime. But only about 20% of rapes are reported to national or local law enforcement. Most relevantly, one in every three rape victims are college-aged women.
Stanford University is not unaware of events like these. In 2015, Chanel Miller was sexually assaulted by a Stanford freshman. Today, California law would designate what happened to Miller as rape. It’s been 11 years, and these horrific crimes are still happening to women.
The college campus environment is one that tests the boundaries of newfound freedom. No longer living with the limits their parents set, students are sometimes faced with temptations to drink, have sex and take drugs. As a result, a college campus can sometimes be an unfortunate breeding ground where lapses in judgment, uninformed decision-making, and even violent crime can take place. But on the other hand, a college experience is all about learning and growing to confidently succeed as an adult. In both of these circumstances, it is paramount that a university place student safety first.
What more can universities do to protect their students from sexual assault?
Stanford should institute mandatory one-unit classes on sexual violence for all freshmen, discussing how to identify signs of harassment, what to do if you witness sexual assault and how to promote a culture of sexual safety. This class should explore the dismantling of harmful gender norms, identifying signs of sexual harassment and gender discrimination, and how men and women on campus can stand up for their peers who may be experiencing harassment. Stanford should expand its “duty to act” policy beyond overdoses or alcohol poisoning and require all students to report or assist someone they believe to be exposed to sexual violence.
Stanford should make SHARE’s (Stanford’s Sexual Harassment/Assault Response & Education organization) “Upstander” training a requirement for all RAs and RFs, providing hundreds more students and community members with the resources and ability to step in to stop sexual violence, harassment, and discrimination.
The University was founded on the premise of “promoting the public welfare by exercising an influence,” and it should be a central cultural leader fighting against the norms that lead to horrific moments like the ones at Cornell. The fact that universities are still facing these crimes is evidence that no matter how many beneficial peer counseling resources have been offered or powerful statements of condemnation have been written, we have not yet done enough.
Stanford, don’t wait for the status quo to change. Set an example.
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“Fine, we’ll do it ourselves!” New flat-earth sect pledges to level the EarthFollowing several instances of “difficult-to-debunk” proofs for the globe-Earth model, a group of flat-earthers will accept, but not concede, the status quo.
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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.
The recent Artemis II mission took humans farther than any previous spacefaring trip in history, and caused flat-earthers from around the globe to renounce their belief in the conspiracy theory — but not their faith in it.
Although the non-Euclidean shape of the Earth has been known as early as the fifth century B.C. by Greek astronomers and scholars, and though this understanding only flourished as humanity became increasingly educated and scientifically advanced, a small minority has held onto the worldview popularized by our ancient ancestors: the belief in a flat earth.
However, humanity’s most recent spaceflight has provided a range of photos, videos, and physical observations which, according to some flat-earth scholars, are “too damn hard” to fake. These include stunning images of the moon’s dark side, the layer of clouds blanketing the Earth’s surface and the first high-definition video of a UFO — all of which display the curvature of the Earth on film. In response, they have turned to a new form of belief.
In a statement to The Daily, Berkeley Ph.D. candidate Richard DuMois said, “I speak as an absolute authority when I say that flat-earth is a real possibility. I spent nine years on my Bachelor’s in Physics, and in every class I ever took — and retook — we applied a number of understandable and convenient assumptions about the world.”
He cited such assumptions as assuming a flat plane for all objects to move on, the absence of friction or air resistance; the absence of electric gravity; and approximating pi as 3.
“If we can make all of these assumptions on the chalkboard … yes, I do still use a chalkboard. I never really liked how whiteboards were permanent; I much prefer chalk sticks to Sharpies … then we can make these assumptions in the real world,” said DuMois. “And if we can make these assumptions in the real world, then why let a round earth complicate our easy physics?”
Local resident and Stanford dropout Igor Dughm also reached out via email to comment on the movement. “You knows I think that the liberal media doesn’t want us to know this is a posibility because If They knew I was bulldozing mountains my Wife bless her heart would increase the radius of are Restraining order,” he said. The Daily sincerely apologizes for the errors in his writing.
The theory has been further popularized by trillionaire and wannabe politician Elon Musk on Twitter, after he replied to a post by Dughm.
Dughm and DuMois hope that the flat earth community will join them for next upcoming meetings, and are confident in their ability to bring the flat earth movement into a new era.
“I mean, the evidence here is pretty conclusive,” said DuMois. “As much as I wished it wasn’t true, the Earth is, provably and definitively, a globe. I have great confidence in the flat Earth community to recognize this painful truth, so we can work towards a better future.” Dughm agreed on this, writing, “There is no reason we cant make the world the place we think that it otta be,, especially when we know for sure it aint the way it should be.”
Writer’s Note: When questioned on his occupation, Dughm elaborated over email that he lives with his parents full-time to save on expenses while he works towards retirement.
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Snippets and sketches: Being sickA bout of illness reminds Zou of the comfort of retreating inwards.
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In her column “Snippets and sketches,” Lily reflects on what it means to live a beautiful life.
Being sick is strange. When I am full of energy, I can walk the world; I relish new places, new faces, new habits. But when I am sick or tired I want to retreat. I become withdrawn and silent. I don’t enjoy the sickness, of course, but it is strangely nice to be nestled within myself, not really talking to anyone, just watching.
Even when I am not sick, I have a powerful tendency to retreat from the world. I have an inner sanctum, made of my books and music and philosophy, a place filled with beauty – how can I not wish to be there? How rude and uncouth the outside is in comparison!
This tendency became dangerously strong toward the end of high school. I yearned for a peaceful country retirement and a past way of life. But inwardness, and nostalgia, which usually accompanies it, is dangerous. It is not good to turn from the world and live in shadows and dreams; it is a rarefied form of cowardice.
I pulled myself out of it. Like any Stanford student, I am involved, interested in current events and driven to make an impact in the future. This is good. But today I was sick, and retreated, as I described, a little way within myself, and I am reminded of how nice it is. It is nice to be hidden.
I had an art history lecture today with Professor Alexander Nemerov. We were shown a photograph of a woman’s face carved in granite, part of an old fountain, crumbling and fading into the granite wall. The seclusion, the hiddenness, of that face was palpable. As I gazed at it I could see the woman’s figure, dressed in white, turning away from the viewer and vanishing into a long corridor.
It is nice to be hidden because one’s sacred things are hidden – down that long vanishing corridor. Retreating means one returns to them, the shrine within oneself. That is the only way to be grounded, or tethered, to oneself. If one is always at the surface of things and events, one is easily lost.
A consequence of being in that hollow space is the most vague and incomprehensible language – the language of shadows and impressions, where things are felt to the core, but not in the brightly lit precision we are used to. Such language is necessary to speak of deeper truths.
But it is good to be precise, to talk about real things, to have a healthy irony and skepticism and Mark Twain-like scorn for fluffy fools, just as it is good to be active and engaged in the world.
How to reconcile these two modes? I am undoubtedly in an active time of my life – busy doing things, building my career, thinking of exciting plans for the future. But it would be nice to retreat inwards with some regularity, before a bout of sickness brings me back. Maybe it should be a cycle – expansion and retreat, facing outwards and facing inwards. Or maybe it is possible to walk the world while being tethered to oneself, to go about one’s business with a deep consciousness and rootedness. Possibly that is the best way to face the world. I suspect, at any rate, it is the way to live a happy life.
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‘I feel like I’m in New York right now’: sombr transforms the Bay into the Lower East SideAlt-pop sensation sombr’s “YOU ARE THE REASON” tour brought San Jose to tears.
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Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
The Daily’s article on sombr’s San Francisco show last year advised readers to “take risks despite judgment,” which is exactly what I did when I bought my tickets just 2 hours before his San Jose show.
I was joined by some friends (Leo Sajkov, Patrick Walsh and Daniel Campos, all second-year Ph.D. students), who bought tickets months ago. I’d been on the fence but eventually caved after a recent breakup with my summer situationship. Horrible, I know. But who better to help heal my heart than the king of heartbreak himself?
Shane Boose started releasing music in 2021 under the pseudonym ‘sombr’ and rose to fame shortly after. At just age 21, he has nearly 54 million listeners and made Time’s Top 100 list earlier this month.
His openers, the hellp and Tom Odell, were as far apart on the musical spectrum as possible. the hellp brought a techno DJ set while Odell slowed the pace with his indie-folk-pop vibe. Only one of these openers will be making my Spotify rotation, and I fear it’s the latter. The chorus of “We love you, Tom!” reverberating through the stadium confirmed it.
At last, it was time for sombr.
After broadcasting a recording of him waking up shirtless (eliciting many screams), shedding a cocoon of bedsheets and putting on a shirt, he emerged in flashy gold flared pants, a mesh top and black sunglasses. Combined with the costume and set, his opening number, “we never dated,” transported us to a sweaty New York City nightclub. sombr altered the yearn-forward, indie-rock anthem into a punchier club banger, setting the tone for what would be a high-energy night. What I wouldn’t do to be in a nightclub in NYC right now!
Buying this ticket, I anticipated “we never dated,” one of my personal favorites, would absolutely wreck me. Hearing “How come we never even dated / But I still find myself thinking of you daily” and “No, I can’t make you love me” over and over… I must report my prediction was right. Truly, “Why do you always leave me aching”?
sombr’s set paid homage to his native New York City with awnings, metal fire escapes and large orange pipes spewing smoke. “I really love the set design. There are little people in the windows,” said Sajkov during one of the song transitions, while Walsh said, “I feel like I’m in New York right now.” Between songs, the screens turned into an NYC high-rise showing shadows milling about their homes. Take me back (I went to undergrad in NYC)!
Despite his surge in popularity, sombr remains as quirky and awkward as ever. His crowdwork was very Gen Z, especially given the abundant profanity — such as when telling the crowd to jump to fan favorites including “do i ever cross your mind” and “potential” — dropped throughout the show. “He’s got quite the potty mouth for someone who was born in 2005,” as Sajkov put it. Along with his antics of showing the camera his rear, it was clear that he wanted his audience to relax and not be afraid of being a little silly.
To no one’s surprise, I’ve recently been playing “back to friends,” “Homewrecker” and “12 to 12” on repeat. In the packed stadium, I felt every beat of “how can you look at me and pretend I’m someone you’ve never met” to my very core.
As the recognizable intro for “12 to 12” began, sombr hyped up the crowd by ad-libbing the cha-cha slide by telling us to “slide to the left,” which got us all boogieing in the stands.
“12 to 12” also made me miss navigating undergrad life in NYC with my best friend. “In a room full of people I look for [her],” and I still do.
With a brand built on finding beauty in everything, especially through his song “My Body Isn’t Ready”, sombr embraces the imperfect. He repeatedly reminded the audience that we were “exactly where we’re meant to be.” Near the end of the night, he spray-painted the words “San Jose Rocks” on a flag and ran around the stadium waving it. When sombr tells his fans “YOU ARE THE REASON” he’s here making music, he means it.
So when, halfway into our Uber home, “back to friends” came on the radio, I could imagine hearing sombr’s boyish laugh as he shouted, “You are beautiful, San Jose. Thank you for being beautiful.” And thank you, readers, for being beautiful too.
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Police Blotter: Stalking, burglary and blackmailThe SUDPS police blotter report from Sept. 28 to Oct. 5.
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This report covers incidents from Sept. 28 to Oct. 5 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.
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Stanford announces new civics minor as extension of COLLEGE curriculumThe minor will offer five tracks in civic history, civic thought, constitution and law, political economy and classical traditions.
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Stanford’s Civics Initiative (SCI) announced Wednesday the launch of a new minor in civic thought and practice. The minor will offer five tracks in civic history, civic thought, constitution and law, political economy and classical traditions.
The program is an extension of the mandatory first-year Civic, Liberal and Global Education (COLLEGE) curriculum. To fulfill the minor, all civics minors will have to complete COLLEGE 102: “Citizenship in the 21st Century,” a political science course titled “Designing Democracy,” as well as three courses to fulfill depth requirements and one course to fulfill breadth requirements. In total, students will be required to take six courses for a minimum of 20 units.
Javier Mejia, director of undergraduate studies for the minor, said that the Civics Initiative was initially kickstarted by Josiah Ober, a classics professor at Stanford, alongside a postdoctoral assistant, Brian Coyne.
Felipe Jafet ’26 was excited by the possibility of an expanded curriculum, which might engage with thinkers who believe in the U.S. system of self-government, a “free market” and beyond an academic orthodoxy. He said that a civics minor would be worth it as long as it “creates space for students to grapple with the minds that have personified the intellectual foundation of Western society.”
According to Mejia, the program was developed amidst a wider concern around the functioning of American institutions, and alongside a growing discussion about the purpose of education. He said the University was not intended to craft “better workers” but was rather a means for “human flourishing.”
The vocational turn that universities took – and students’ own increasing preference for technical degrees – is now in question, Mejia said. “Technology is probably part of this questioning,” he said, as some students reconsider technical degrees in an era of technological disruption.
Mejia also noted how COVID had already “changed the type of students that were on campus.” He said that students are “already more reflexive about social challenges,” especially as artificial intelligence began to transform students’ academic experience.
The Civics Initiative has offered courses since 2018. Enrollment in civics courses has trended up from an average of roughly 100 students per quarter in 2020 to around 300 by 2025, according to Civics Initiative data reviewed by The Daily.
Navaneet Baniya ’28, a recent transfer student, said that students taking PHIL171: “Justice,” a Civics Initiative course, had a wide range of opinions and disagreements but that the instructor, Coyne, was always balanced when presenting his views.
Mejia expressed hope that the minor’s different tracks will appeal to a wide range of students, from those interested in ideas and discourse to students who might have more practical orientations. The minor, he said, was also designed to appeal to a wide variety of ideological orientations and opinions. For him, part of the spirit of the minor’s design was not to present ideas to students but rather to promote habits that “lead to good citizenship.”
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Center for Human and Planetary Health celebrates second anniversaryOver 150 people attended the event focused on combatting climate change and protecting human health.
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Stanford’s Center for Human and Planetary Health (HPH) celebrated its second anniversary at an event centered around research and action to combat climate change and protect human health on Tuesday afternoon.
The gathering, titled “Celebrating Human and Planetary Health at Stanford,” was standing room only, with more than 150 students, faculty, researchers, staff and external partners in attendance. HPH aims to transform research on climate change into measurable impact.
The event featured remarks from HPH Faculty Director Steve Luby, the School of Medicine Dean Lloyd Minor and Doerr School of Sustainability Dean Arun Majumdar. Luby also gave a presentation highlighting HPH’s core objectives to drive solutions-oriented research, prepare future leaders in the field and accelerate impact while building community at Stanford.
“I was excited to see so many dedicated professionals who care about human and planetary health across the entire world, not just locally,” wrote Allie Colman ’29, a student in the Human and Planetary Health course, in an email to The Daily. “The center’s global perspective gives me hope that we can begin implementing effective, solutions-oriented policy that is based on real facts.”
The event also included updates from HPH programs, with focuses such as the health implications of childhood exposure to gas kitchen appliances, the negative impacts of lead contamination and disease ecology in a changing world. Attendees heard from the HPH Plastics & Health Working Group and Food Systems, Health and the Environment Working Group about their work from the past year, as well as HPH Education and the HPH Action Labs.
“[HPH Director of Electrification for Health] Brady Seals delivered an excellent presentation that uncovered the dangers of gas stoves. I was surprised to learn that gas stoves are a major source of indoor pollution that can cause serious health risks,” Colman wrote. “I had never heard people talking about this danger, nor have I seen our government take action. I am now motivated to consider which appliances in my own home might be putting my health at risk.”
Partners from both inside and outside Stanford had the opportunity to present as well, with topics ranging from the impact of climate change on West Nile virus transmission to the work of the Stanford Toxins & Health Lab.
“We want our community to represent how big the issue is,” said Sara Damore, HPH program manager and course instructor for the Human and Planetary Health class. “The breadth of the issue goes from the decisions that people make in their daily life, to people who have a big influence on policy, to people who are working in the private sector. And so the more touch points we can have, the more we can help people realize how much of an influence they have in the system.”
Attendees mingled and connected at the reception following the event’s conclusion, taking advantage of the wealth of passion and expertise that had convened in support of HPH. “Universities have superpowers,” Luby said in his opening remarks. “We have the personnel, an approach and institutions that can generate a sound understanding of the world.”
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Karlan, Campbell expect changes to voting rights in a post-Callais worldStanford professors discuss the historical and legal implications of the Louisiana v. Callais ruling for Civics Week on campus.
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The Supreme Court’s April 2026 decision in Louisiana v. Callais has and will continue to shake up the future of congressional redistricting, racial gerrymandering and voting access, said law professor Pamela Karlan and history professor James Campbell M.A. ’83 Ph.D. ’89 at a Tuesday fireside chat.
Karlan and Campbell joined StanfordVotes as part of Civics Week. Campbell, whose work focuses on African American history, began the discussion in the context of post-Civil War America, acknowledging historic gains in voting equality through Reconstruction followed by reactionary policies like the poll tax.
Campbell noted that after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, litigation became a primary “device to reform.” Congressional maps became contentious topics as racist intention and effect were evaluated by the Court as reasons to strike down proposed districts.
In the landmark decision, the Court established new conditions to challenge racially gerrymandered maps, emphasizing that gerrymandering could be justified as political rather than racially motivated. It deemed two majority-minority districts — electoral districts where racial minority groups make up over half the population — in Louisiana unconstitutional instances of racial gerrymandering.
Originally created by the Louisiana state legislature in 2024 to increase representation for Black communities, these districts have since been redrawn, and only one remains as majority-minority. The legal challenge in this case stemmed from Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Karlan maintained that “the Constitution is committed to not having people’s race exclude them from civic life.”
Reflecting on her work in the field, Karlan noted that before Callais, legal advocacy originated from claims of either racist intention or effect in gerrymandering. Karlan criticized the difficulty in differentiating between political and racial gerrymandering that the Court now demands for cases post-Callais, especially in areas where race correlates strongly with party affiliation.
Karlan lamented that under Callais, political gerrymandering has now become such a “legitimate interest that it is a defense to the argument that you are being racially unfair.”
Both Campbell and Karlan agreed that the case might make majority-minority districts harder to create, with Karlan also noting that many Republican majority states had already redrawn their districts to remove Democratic-leaning seats after the Callais ruling.
Beyond the direct effects of Callais, voter suppression and intimidation remain relevant — the Supreme Court is currently scheduled to hear Arizona’s attempt to “knock [registered voters] off the list,” stemming from a suspicion of undocumented voters. When asked by an audience member about how citizens can push for voting rights, both Campbell and Karlan asserted that a primary focus should be to continue voting.
“I don’t see any alternative in this long haul except to vote,” Campbell said. “Vote, register to vote and [consort] with people who might not share any of your fundamental values, but believe in the value of democracy.”
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Stanford among universities named in federal J-1 visa investigationThe University said it complies with all applicable visa laws and will cooperate with the Department of Labor investigation.
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Stanford is one of nine universities under federal investigation for potential fraud involving the J-1 visa program, Vice President JD Vance announced at a White House press conference on Thursday.
Anthony D’Esposito, the Department of Labor’s inspector general, said the universities have been served subpoenas. The investigation will look at “whether foreign influence, improper financial relationships or visa abuse are compromising federally funded research.
The J-1 program allows noncitizens to temporarily study, teach or conduct research in the United States. According to University spokesperson Angie Davis, Bechtel International Center emailed current J-1 and H-1B holders on Thursday, informing them that the University is reviewing the matter and that Stanford staff are available to support them.
Vance said the nine schools employ J-1 holders on federally funded research at a rate of about 61%, compared with a national average of 38%. In his view, the practice lowers wages for American graduate students and researchers.
The other universities named are Harvard University, Yale University, Brown University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), California Institute of Technology (CalTech), University of California Davis (UCD), Arizona State University (ASU) and the University of Pittsburgh. MIT told Politico it has received and is reviewing the subpoena; Yale said it would review the documents once it receives them.
“Stanford complies with all applicable visa laws, including those relating to J-1 visas,” Davis wrote in a statement to The Daily. She said the University will cooperate with the investigation.
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Stanford football aims to upset No. 3 Notre Dame in upcoming rivalry gameThe Cardinal look to get the offense ahead of the rivalry matchup in South Bend this weekend.
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Stanford football (2-3, 1-3 ACC) heads to South Bend, Ind. this weekend for their annual rivalry matchup against No. 3 Notre Dame (5-0). This year marks the 40th meeting between these two teams, and the 25th time the Legends Trophy will be up for grabs. Stanford is looking to gain some momentum coming off a tough 57-3 loss at Wake Forest (4-1, 2-1 ACC) last weekend.
Notre Dame comes in undefeated and ranked third in the latest AP poll. Quarterback C.J. Carr is touted as one of the nation’s top college quarterbacks with 13 touchdowns, a 71% completion percentage, and a quarterback rating (QBR) of 90.4 so far this season. Their relatively balanced offensive attack is complemented by what some consider to be the top defense in the nation, holding their opponents to a measly 216.4 yards per game on average, the lowest in the FBS.
On the flip side, Stanford is looking to turn their season around. After senior quarterback Davis Warren had a career game against Georgia Tech, he threw his first interception against Wake Forest and finished the game with a below-average QBR of 40.9. Getting the offense going again after scoring just three points last week will be key if the Cardinal are to pull off the upset.
Wide receiver Zion Robinson says the Cardinal are optimistic going into this weekend. “We’ve gotten more connected, figured out what we need to do better from last weekend, and we’re ready to roll,” he said. Robinson has consistently come up in big moments, including a key 61-yard reception against Georgia Tech (1-3, 0-1 ACC) and a 48-yard reception against Hawaii (1-4, 0-3 MW) to open the season.
As a true freshman, Robinson said his connection with Warren extends off the field as well. “That’s my big bro,” he said on Wednesday after practice, praising what Warren “preaches off and on the field … He’s been a great person to learn from in both ways.” Robinson is optimistic that he and Warren can capitalize on Notre Dame’s man-to-man coverage scheme this Saturday, saying that “when opportunity comes, you got to make the most of it.”
Stanford’s two primary running backs, senior Sedrick Irvin and junior Micah Ford, have struggled throughout the season to get past the line of scrimmage, resulting in only 444 rushing yards this season to 1239 yards in the air. When asked how they were looking to get the run game going this weekend, offensive coordinator Terry Heffernan said they’ve left “no stone unturned.” He elaborated that they’ve been “challenging [the] ball carriers to create more with the ball, our blockers to sustain.”
Third down performance has also been a point of emphasis during practice this week. A key to improving the Cardinal’s 34.3 percent third down conversion rate is avoiding them in the first place. “We’ve got to be better on first down,” Heffernan noted, saying that “that was really our focus on our Tuesday practice.”
Stanford is no stranger to upsetting Notre Dame. The last time was in 2022, when an 11-game FBS losing streak was snapped with a gritty 16-14 win in South Bend. Heffernan was Stanford’s offensive line coach at the time, and holds an overall 2-1 career record against the Fighting Irish. “It really is a fun place to play,” he said.
With Stanford entering as 38-point underdogs, maybe head coach Tavita Pritchard can channel some 2007 upset magic for the Cardinal.
Kick-off is set for 12:30 p.m. on Saturday.
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Stanfordle #161Enjoy The Daily's Stanfordle. The Daily produces Stanfordles on weekdays.
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Daily Diminutive #193Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords daily and a full-size crossword weekly.
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Newest dorm themes brighten student residencesEach year, dorm themes bring campus to life by highlighting community, puns and pop culture.
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What do the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Caltrain, “The Odyssey,” and sunny-side up eggs have in common? Take a stroll down Escondido Road or dorm-hop between on-calls on a Friday night, and the punny dorm themes painted on many residences might give you a hint.
Ahead of New Student Orientation (NSO), Resident Assistants (RAs) for Stanford’s undergraduate residence halls came to campus early to outfit the dorms in thematic decor, ranging from skillfully painted windows to hallway walls covered floor-to-ceiling in colorful paper designs.
“Our dorm’s theme is NintenCro, and [is] focused on all the different games from our childhoods,” wrote Ayla Gharavi ’28, Crothers Hall RA and an editor for The Daily. “We came up with it after going through tens of different themes and not agreeing until this one. I really love how different each hallway is in Crothers because it highlights our different personalities!” Gharavi is one of six RAs in the all-freshmen dorm, which features a different Nintendo game sub-theme in each hallway.
On the Row, Xanadu’s RAs are continuing a tradition of featuring female celebrities in their residence’s theme. This year’s is “Xance Moms,” a reference to Abby Lee Miller’s television series, “Dance Moms.” According to Xanadu RA Will Yu ’27, the house’s past themes have included “Xana Del Rey” (inspired by Lana Del Rey) and “Xandaya” (paying tribute to Zendaya).
Bradley Bush ’27, an editor for The Daily, is an RA in Mars, where the theme is “Mars 2,” a play on the Pixar movie “Cars 2” (2011). One key feature of Mars’ decor — and Bush’s favorite — is a wall in the lounge covered in Route 66-themed neon signs.
Bush commented on how his residence’s theme has helped build community: “It’s neat to see how [the theme] takes shape as we all start to feel more comfortable with the house and with each other,” he wrote to The Daily. “The theme really gets everyone laughing from the moment they step inside and see the decor and the atmosphere of Mars this year.”
Dorms can serve as a space to unwind, especially for frosh still exploring campus. “Themes are a unifying aspect of being in a dorm … It just makes you feel a little more at home,” Saron Amsalu ’30 said. “It was really nice because you were being inducted into your own little community — your own little new family.” Amsalu is living in “Soto Things” (Soto), themed after the popular Netflix series “Stranger Things.”
To kick off the warm welcome, dorm themes featured prominently at this year’s NSO — particularly on frosh move-in day, when many RAs dressed up to match their residence hall’s theme.
“Dorm themes were amazing during NSO — [they] made your dorm culture a lot more vibrant,” Rojan Mikael Habon ’30 said, who’s living in “J-Rodeo” (Junipero). “My RAs came up to me in blow-up suits and rodeo [costumes]. I felt the energy, specifically from my RAs, and I felt a bigger sense of community.”
RAs also carried hand-painted flags bearing the name of their respective dorms to lead frosh around campus on move-in day. Although not present at NSO, many upperclassman dorms also celebrate their themes with custom flags. Eddy Durant ’27, an RA in Xanadu, jokingly said, “Every day when I enter this building, and I look up to see the big pink flag with Abby Lee Miller [on it], I feel quite welcomed into this place that we call home.”
Some of this year’s other dorm themes include Lantana Hall’s “Wonderlantana,” based on “Alice in Wonderland”; Robinson Hall’s “Robinsonhood,” based on the character adapted into modern media from English folklore; Larkin’s “Monsters, Lark-Inc.,” a play on the Disney-Pixar film franchise “Monsters, Inc.”; Burbank’s “Burbcraft” (Minecraft) and Arroyo’s “Arroad Trip.”
Each year, dorm themes bring campus to life by highlighting puns and pop culture, and also by helping build connections between RAs, residents and visitors alike.
“When I go inside each [dorm] hallway, it’s a lot more energetic rather than dead,” Habon said. “It wouldn’t happen without [the] theme.”
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Pro-Palestinian groups mark Oct. 7 with vigil ‘for the living, the martyrs and the land’The all-day vigil at White Plaza mourned Palestinian deaths three years after the Oct. 7 attacks.
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Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) held a vigil on Oct. 7 “for the living, the martyrs and the land,” according to promotional flyers. The event, which drew around 40 attendees, primarily commemorated Palestinians killed since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.
“Our intention for having this all-day vigil is to call attention to our vision of a liberated future that encompasses justice and belonging for all people,” said lauryn chew ’30, an SJP organizer and the event’s MC, who spells her name in lowercase.
The vigil featured an installation of sticks, each representing “ten of the 20,000 plus children killed in the Gaza genocide since Oct. 7,” according to the display, alongside names and written artwork with messages including “We are on the right side of history!” and “Every martyr is a universe.”
Heather Schechter ’27, who spoke at the vigil for JVP, said that “mourning the Gaza genocide” did not omit mourning those murdered on Oct. 7. “The Torah and the Talmud tell us that every life is a Universe,” Schechter said. “To kill a life is to kill a universe.”
Members from Stanford JVP spoke before two songs were performed by the activist group “Raging Grannies,” an organization composed of older women from across the Bay Area. More speakers from SJP followed.
Hillel at Stanford, the Jewish Student Association (JSA), the Stanford Israel Association (SIA) and Chabad at Stanford held a separate memorial the same day honoring both the hostages who returned home and those who were killed.
Stanford’s Hillel director Rabbi Jessica Kirschner said many Jewish and Israeli members of the Stanford community were using Oct. 7 to remember people killed at the Nova music festival, in their homes and workplaces and while attempting to protect others. “Even three years later, the wounds are still too fresh to ask the memorials to hold more than that,” she wrote.
The pro-Palestinian vigil marked the three-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in which Hamas militants killed approximately 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage. SJP organizers said their event intended to focus on Palestinian deaths in the ensuing war while maintaining that Israeli civilian deaths were also tragic.
“It’s really just to draw a connection between October 7 and the lives that were lost after it,” SJP member Rain Zeng ’30 said. “We’re critiquing the Israeli government’s response to that event and we’re not saying the event itself doesn’t matter, or that the Israelis who died deserved it, or anything like that.”
Daanish Noor ’27, an SJP organizer, said the organization’s broader goal was “Stanford’s divestment from the genocide.” In chew’s view, the University “has institutional ties and reasons for partnering with corporations that contribute to genocide.”
Noor said he hoped the installation and all-day format would encourage students to come and “just look at the sheer atrocity.”
Comparative literature professor David Palumbo-Liu — who wrote to The Daily on behalf of Stanford Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine — supported the vigil with other faculty members.
“Memorials often center on helping people commemorate painful events together, to think carefully about their significance and memorialize the dead,” Palumbo-Liu wrote. “Faculty, like everyone else, can be part of that process.”
Kirschner said the Oct. 7 date should be reserved to focus on the Israeli victims of the attack.
“October 7 remains a day of mourning specifically for the victims of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023,” Kirschner wrote to The Daily. “Attempts to make it something different, and especially to excuse or glorify terrorists and murderers as ‘martyrs’ on this day of all days is gross and cruel.”
“We respect all loss of life as tragic,” Zeng said. They added that SJP’s goal was to create a space to mourn Palestinian deaths, which they said were not otherwise adequately recognized on campus.
One Palestinian student, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said the conflict has shaped their entire life.
“It’s been three years for a lot of people, in their mind, but for me, the struggle against the occupation of Palestine, the colonization of Palestine, has been my whole life,” the student said.
The student added that Palestinians on campus have felt their voice suppressed, and that their safety has not received the same institutional priority as that of others.
“It feels like we’re less human,” they said. “It feels like our lives are not as important to them, and not as important to the world in general.”
On Oct. 11, 2023, the University released a statement in response to the Hamas attacks that “Stanford stands unequivocally against hatred on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, national origin, and other categories.”
A previous version of this article misattributed a quote from chew. The Daily regrets this error.
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Jewish community mourns Oct. 7 with memorial, first since every hostage returned homePortraits, a live stream from Israel and candles filled Meyer Green as student groups marked three years since the attack.
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Dozens of students, staff and community members held candles on Meyer Green Wednesday night to mourn the roughly 1,200 people killed on Oct. 7, 2023, marking the first anniversary of the attacks since every hostage came home.
Hillel at Stanford, the Jewish Student Association (JSA), the Stanford Israel Association (SIA) and Chabad at Stanford hosted the day of remembrance. Hamas freed the last 20 living hostages on Oct. 13, 2025, and Israel recovered the remains of the final hostage, police officer Ran Gvili, on Jan. 26. Hamas militants took 251 hostages during the Oct. 7 attacks.
“Today is a difficult day for many members of the Stanford community. The Jewish tradition is to honor the memories of those who have passed on the anniversary of their death,” said Sam Solomon and Yoni Aharon, JSA co-presidents, to The Daily. “The JSA cosponsored a memorial today to remember those who were murdered by Hamas on October 7th. May their memories be a blessing.”
According to Tal Shasha, Hillel’s Israeli fellow, the gathering sought to “remember those who were taken hostage and came back home, and to remember those who were taken hostage and did not come home alive.”
The memorial on Meyer Green stood from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. At 11:15 a.m., Hillel screened the Israeli national memorial ceremony live from Israel. In White Plaza, students staffed tables that read “We remember 10.7.2023” beneath banners titled “10/7 Human Stories.”
The evening ceremony began beside a display of red flowers, which Shasha said was inspired by a project that placed red clay flowers across Israel. “They also speak of resilience, standing bright against devastation,” Shasha said.
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) held a separate vigil in White Plaza the same day “for the living, the martyrs and the land.” Organizers of that vigil defended their decision to hold it on Oct. 7, telling The Daily that “mourning the Gaza genocide” did not omit mourning those murdered on Oct. 7.
Rabbi Dov Greenberg, executive director of Chabad at Stanford, addressed the crowd at White Plaza “We have come here to mourn, to remember, 100%,” he said. “But the deeper question is, how are we going to remember?…The destroyers and the haters do not get to decide the next chapter of Jewish history.”
Greenberg said that Jews answered Oct. 7 through resolve on Oct. 8. “Because haters want me to cower in fear, I will stand with courage and dignity for my people, for Israel, for human beings, for freedom around the world,” he said.
Esther Luvishis ’29 read a poem she wrote built around the names of the dead. In it, she said she was “tired of counting and miscounting on bitten fingers the names of his brother, her husband, their grandma, our people.”
Attendees were invited to set their candles in the center of Meyer Green, and the ceremony closed with “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem.
For one Stanford student, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation, the anniversary held personal ties.
“Three friends of mine, two of whom I knew for a long time, were kidnapped,” the student said. “One was held in Gaza for a few months, the other for a few years. They returned eventually, thankfully.”
SJP and JVP promoted their own vigil as being focused on “the living, the martyrs, and the land.”
The Stanford Community Forum on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, a self-organized group of faculty, students, staff and alumni, objected to this language.
“We join wholeheartedly in any effort to support the living, itself a key Jewish value,” they wrote. “And we are heartbroken that there remains such horrific suffering in Gaza to this day. But we condemn the flyer’s repeated reference to ‘martyrs’—a term widely deployed (and understood) to glorify the terrorists who lost their lives while committing the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.”
To Rabbi Jessica Kirschner, Hillel’s executive director and senior rabbi, the date should focus on the people who were killed and taken hostage.
“October 7 remains a day of mourning specifically for the victims of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023,” Kirschner wrote in a statement to The Daily. “Attempts to make it something different, and especially to excuse or glorify terrorists and murderers as ‘martyrs’ on this day of all days is gross and cruel.”
“We deserve a day to mourn our losses without caveats or competing narratives. Palestinians deserve a day like that too, to hold the immense sadness they carry,” she added. “Their pain is also so real. But pick another date. There are plenty to choose from.”
The Graduate School of Business’s Jewish Business Student Association said the return of the hostages brings “a profound sense of relief,” while Oct. 7 “remains a day of immense loss and pain.” SIA said its ceremony and memorial were “not a political statement” and, that they “stand as a visual and interactive space for students to process the events that unfolded.”
“In Judaism, memory asks something of us: to comfort those who suffer, strengthen one another, and build a future worthy of the lives we remember,” Greenberg wrote in a statement to The Daily.
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Stanford largely exempt from statewide sexual assault lawUniversity assesses compliance with the decision, launches new sexual assault resources after cutting others.
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Content warning: This article discusses sexual violence and human trafficking.
Following nationwide discourse surrounding sexual assault on university campuses, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills last Wednesday strengthening legal and institutional policies surrounding sexual assault and human trafficking.
One of the bills enacted, Assembly Bill (AB) 1845, directs postsecondary schools receiving state funding to enhance employee training and strengthen policy to better combat cases of sexual violence.
Last year, however, the University paused usage of state funding towards financial assistance programs to ensure compliance with other legislation. As a result, a sizable portion of California’s Education Code no longer applies to the University, including almost all of AB 1845.
Stanford began substituting state financial aid after AB 1780 went into effect, which prevents schools receiving state-funded aid from preferring applicants with connections to alumni or donors. The University said the decision would ensure compliance and has continued to factor legacy and donor relations into admissions.
Stanford’s decision to forfeit state funding has given University leadership freedom to shape policies differently than other California schools. While the University has largely maintained its policies, Stanford has recently ended two key sexual wellness education programs.
While Stanford adheres to applicable baseline standards set forth by the California Education Code, the school is not legally required to comply with large portions of bills like AB 1845. As Stanford’s decision to substitute state funding is relatively recent, it is unclear how the University will respond to consequential legislation addressing issues such as human trafficking and sexual assault.
In an email to The Daily, University representative Angie Davis wrote that “Stanford’s compliance training is currently being assessed against AB 1845.” In the meantime, however, Stanford’s current infrastructure differs from the requirements of the new law.
While many laws targeting postsecondary institutions are conditional on state-funded financial aid, California legislature may also regulate postsecondary institutions as a whole. AB 1845 does require a broader range of independent postsecondary institutions, including Stanford, to refine their agreements with local law enforcement to “clarify operational responsibilities for investigations of human trafficking occurring on campus.”
Stanford is exempt, however, from all other parts of the bill, like Section 2 of AB 1845 that requires applicable postsecondary institutions to adopt a policy on human trafficking. To comply with the law, the policy would have to include support numbers, a protocol for reporting human trafficking, mental and physical signs of human trafficking and “ways to identify individuals who are most at risk for human trafficking,” according to the Bill.
Currently, University policy includes neither a section for human trafficking nor the features the law demands of other schools, with no mention of “trafficking” in Stanford’s Administrative Guide.
A recent study found that 18% of students on Southern California campuses report experiencing human trafficking at some point during their postsecondary education. Human trafficking often involves sexual abuse and involuntary prostitution.
Stanford “will continue to evaluate its policies, trainings, and response practices in light of evolving legal requirements and best practices,” Davis wrote.
Resources provided beyond the scope of the University’s obligations are subject to removal at Stanford’s discretion. Such resources include programs like Flip The Script and Beyond Sex Ed, a popular piece of New Student Orientation programming that was cut last year without student input.
This year, Stanford introduced a new course designed around recognizing and responding to sexual assault or harassment, planned a series of events designed to teach best practices in intimate relationships and encouraged student groups interested in requesting training related to sexual assault to complete a training request form.
No similar programs for combating human trafficking currently exist on campus.
Students may speak to a counselor at the 24/7 Confidential Support Team at (650) 725-9955 to speak about their options if they feel unsafe or have experienced sexual assault. Students may also fill out a Title IX Reporting Form and may choose from there what steps they want to pursue. Students have access to supportive resources even if they do not wish to pursue an investigation. Visit https://share.stanford.edu/get-help for information on resources for sexual harassment, sexual violence and relationship violence.
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What are the nine scariest words in the English language? The Humor Section has answersThe single scariest word is “commitment,” but the Humor Section has thoughts on the nine scariest words.
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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.
Ronald Reagan, McDonald’s mascot and later Nancy’s husband, once claimed that the nine scariest words in the English language were “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Personally, that didn’t send shivers trickling down our spines. With Halloween fast approaching, we deemed it time to one-up his dismal disposition for dreariness, a time to step from humor to horror, a time for choosing the nine scariest words in the English language.
“Hey, that sounds like an electric scooter behind us.” – Micah Chung ’30, favored prey of scooter-wielding upperclassmen
“You’ve been hit, the ambulance is on its way.” – Jayson Toweh, PhD ’27, former injured cyclist and affordable healthcare proponent
“I’m from Flock and I’m here to install cameras.” – Sebastian Strawser ’29, your friendly neighborhood, moral and effective security expert. Brought to you by Peter Thiel and friends.
“Excuse me — are you the RA for this dorm?” – Sophia Mitsuoka ’28, sometimes the RA for this dorm
“It’s due tonight; it will take me five minutes.” Garrett Khatchaturian ’28, Procrastinator
“I’m the AP style guide; no Oxford commas allowed.” – Joel Grayson ’28: punctuation activist, former em dash proponent—before AI ruined it — and Stanford comma schemer
“Your current Axess hold: unpaid three cent printing fee.” – Lydia Schwartz ’29, certain that three cents would never restrict someone’s ability to enroll in classes or to receive scholarship money
“Electrical Engineering 101A Canvas Notification: Final Exam Grade: UPDATED.” — Ella Prichard ’29, Desk Editor, using her fingers as a voltmeter to study local electrical outlet
“Philadelphia has a championship game. Fans have legal immunity.” — Mason Barrett ’28, pondering how this will affect the upcoming season of Abbott Elementary
“For sale, baby shoes, never worn. I own thousands.” – Jenny Ballutay ’28, Managing Editor, subjecting Hemingway to supply and demand.
“My name is Jenny, and I’m your Managing Editor!” – Sia Liu ’29, Desk Editor, condemned to work
“Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious.” – The Stanford Daily Executive Team, worried about our impact on editorial standards
…there we go again!
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Research Roundup: Nobel Prize for neuroscience, smarter bladder cancer testBioengineer Karl Deisseroth won the Nobel Prize and researchers developed a more accurate test to diagnose bladder cancer.
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Stanford’s Karl Deisseroth wins Nobel Prize for pioneering optogenetics
On Oct. 5th, Karl Deisseroth, a professor of bioengineering and psychiatry at Stanford, was named one of three winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine for developing optogenetics — a technique that uses light to switch specific neurons on or off.
The method relies on opsins, light-activated proteins borrowed from microbes. Over two decades, Deisseroth’s team learned to install these proteins on the surfaces of neurons in living animals, control them with pulses of laser light delivered through implanted fiber-optic cables and use them to watch behavior change.
This process was extremely difficult, as moving a microbial protein into a mammalian neuron risked triggering immune attacks, and there was no guarantee the protein would behave the same way or even end up in the right place on the cell.
“I was turned down for funding by a lot of people who thought this couldn’t possibly work,” Deisseroth told Stanford Medicine, recalling the skepticism that early funders had about the project’s premise.
His team ultimately solved each obstacle by delivering the genes virally, restricting expression to targeted neuron types and re-engineering the proteins to reliably reach the cell surface.
Optogenetics is now a standard tool in thousands of neuroscience labs worldwide, letting researchers probe the neural circuits underlying sensation, decision-making and behavior with a level of precision that was previously impossible.
New urine test could tell bladder cancer patients which treatment will actually work
Researchers at Stanford Medicine and the VA Palo Alto Health Care System developed a urine test, called uRARE-seq, that diagnoses bladder cancer more accurately than current methods and can also predict whether a patient will respond better to immunotherapy or chemotherapy.
Unlike most liquid biopsies, which scan for cancer-linked DNA mutations, the test measures RNA fragments shed by tumor cells — an approach the researchers say captures what a tumor is actively doing, not just whether it’s present.
In a study of 683 urine samples, published Oct. 2 in “Nature Medicine”, the test correctly flagged 95% of localized bladder cancer cases and cleared 90% of cancer-free patients, outperforming both standard urine cytology and existing DNA-based urine tests.
“Analyzing RNA can tell us not only whether a cancer is present — but also what it’s doing,” co-senior author Maximilian Diehn, radiation oncology professor, told Stanford Medicine.
The test could be especially useful for guiding use of Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), the typical post-surgery immunotherapy, which doesn’t work for every patient and is chronically in short supply.
“If we can guide those choices, we have the potential to help both patients and clinicians,” said co-senior author Joseph Liao, professor of urology, noting that doctors currently have few tools to inform that decision.
Study finds gas stoves in commercial kitchens pose significant health risk
A new study published in “Environmental Research Letters” is the first U.S. analysis to directly compare air quality and heat in gas versus electric commercial kitchens in real working conditions.
Researchers at the Doerr School of Sustainability monitored 21 gas kitchens, three propane kitchens and three all-electric kitchens across California, Pennsylvania and New York, tracking nitrogen dioxide, benzene, carbon monoxide and temperature. About 70% of the gas and propane kitchens exceeded the EPA’s one-hour outdoor air standard for nitrogen dioxide during working hours, and nearly 70% topped 90°F, with some kitchens spiking above 122°F. No electric kitchen exceeded either threshold.
“Our study shows that burning gas in a restaurant kitchen is as suspect as burning it in our homes,” co-author Rob Jackson, a professor of Earth System Science, told Physicians, Scientists and Engineers (PSE) Healthy Energy.
“The all-electric kitchens ran cooler and cleaner,” said lead author Yannai Kashtan, a former member of Jackson’s lab and now an air-quality scientist at PSE Energy, also adding that research on what kitchen workers breathe has been scarce.
The study also found that pilot lights left burning overnight kept pollution elevated even after ventilation shut off, which poses a risk for cleaning staff and employees who arrive early in the morning. This is another problem that the authors said had not been studied before.
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Stanford Wellness Fair cultivates health-forward community for facultyStaff and faculty across departments came together with community services and programs.
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Stanford’s BeWell and Stanford Benefits held their second Wellness Fair at Koret Plaza on Tuesday. The event brought staff and faculty together to learn about the resources supporting their physical, mental and personal well-being.
The fair offered free flu shots, wellness information and resource booths from organizations including Kaiser, Midi Health and Stanford Continuing Studies. Local vendors also sold baked goods, fresh fruit and wellness products.
For Cheryl Mejia, a Healthy Living staff member with BeWell, the fair was an opportunity to connect the Stanford community with resources that can be easily overlooked during a busy workday.
“We want to share what we have to offer with the Stanford community,” Mejia said.
Through BeWell, eligible Stanford employees can participate in wellness programs and receive financial incentives for completing certain activities. The effort is part of the University’s broader push to encourage employees to prioritize their health and well-being.
With the demands of work and daily responsibilities, events like the Wellness Fair give employees a chance to connect with others across the University, Mejia said.
Stanford Continuing Studies was another organization using the fair to introduce employees to opportunities beyond traditional workplace wellness. Amy Tollafield, a senior manager of student services from Continuing Studies, said the organization wanted Stanford staff to know that they can use their education funds to pursue subjects and interests outside of their regular work.
“I hope they know that we exist if they have never heard of us before and that they try taking a class,” Tollafield said.
Continuing Studies offers classes that are open to the public, allowing Stanford employees the opportunity to learn and explore personal interests.
For some attendees, however, the significance of the fair extended beyond the individual resources available at each booth.
Alex Olay, who works at Stanford School of Medicine, said the event stood out because it brought the community together.
“The whole thing in itself, with the whole community, shows that Stanford cares,” Olay said.
Olay said his team has BeWell Champions, Stanford employees who volunteer through activities and programming to emphasize both mental and physical well-being, which is part of what brought him to the fair.
Across the fair, the message was consistent: wellness can take many forms, from accessing health care and participating in physical wellness activities to pursuing education and making time to connect with the broader Stanford community.
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Daily Diminutive #192Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords daily and a full-size crossword weekly.
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Stanfordle #160Enjoy The Daily's Stanfordle. The Daily produces Stanfordles on weekdays.
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Player-led retreat energizes women’s basketball for seasonWomen’s basketball kicks off their season in a few weeks, and a historic off-season has them prepared for a tough schedule.
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Women’s basketball tips off its season on Oct. 24 in an exhibition game against the University of the Pacific at Maples Pavilion. The game will be the start of a tough schedule for a team entering its third season in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). A connection forged this off-season with another elite Stanford program, however, has the team coming in with renewed momentum after organizing its first-ever player-led retreat to Muir Beach.
“It started back in the spring when we had a meeting with the men’s gymnastics team,” said sophomore forward Alexandra Eschmeyer during an ACC press conference. “We met with their team and the thing that stuck out to us specifically was that they do a team retreat every year, just players, and it’s an opportunity for them to really build out their goals for the year, discuss their standards.”
While they discussed their tone and vision for the season, the retreat also served as a bonding experience for a team that has brought in seven new faces, including four freshmen and three transfers.
“It was a great opportunity for us to bond with each other,” Eschmeyer said. “Having a lot of new girls, I think that honestly the most important thing was to get to know each other because when you have more chemistry off the court, it definitely translates.”
Sophomore guard Hailee Swain revealed the team set a motto to guide the players throughout the season.
“We came up with a saying for our team this year, which is ‘It’s just us,’” said Swain. “So that means focusing on our team and individual development as long as there is collective team development and just really going out on the court and working together to win.”
Head coach Kate Paye praised Eschmeyer and Swain for helping organize the retreat, stating it helped build “a championship culture.” Paye was quick to say their goal is to play in the NCAA tournament, something they have not done since the 2023-24 season, but she also acknowledged the fierce competition they will face.
“Obviously we expect to be playing in the NCAA tournament,” Paye said. “We have an extremely challenging non-conference schedule. We are the only power four school to play five other power four schools and five true [non-conference] road games. I think we’ll learn a lot about ourselves. And with such a new roster, we want to learn about ourselves early.”
With the team lacking seniors or fifth-year players, a big question will be team leadership. Paye, however, expressed faith in their young roster.
“You don’t get to Stanford without being a leader and having leadership qualities and leadership skills,” Paye said. “We are going to count on every single woman on our team, all 12 of them, to be leaders in some way that’s authentic to them.”
There may be a lot of unanswered questions about this team, but Swain chose the word “hungry” to describe the upcoming season of Stanford women’s basketball.
“I think that we are obviously a very young team, but there is room for opportunity and for us to grow individually and together,” Swain said. “I’m just really excited. We’re hungry, ready to go, ready to work, and ready to win.”
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Frosh share their Stanford highlights (so far)Wilbur Dining’s pho bar, learning to bike, late-night pizookies — here’s what freshmen think makes the Farm special.
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A few weeks into freshman year, The Daily asked members of the Class of 2030 to describe their favorite aspects of Stanford. Here’s what they said.
Many of my nights have included playing pickleball with friends until the court lights shut off. We have affectionately come to know this as “mickleball,” or midnight pickle ball, even though the courts actually close at 11 p.m. This is often followed by a series of events: singing to Niko at Lakeside Dining, ordering garlic fries and pizookies, studying for a bit and playing Brawl Stars. Through these late-night activities, friends-of-friends have become some of the people I spend the most time with, and I’ve found an outlet to de-stress.
I could write an ode to Wilbur Dining’s pho bar. From the steaming containers of warm broth, to heaping piles of sticky noodles and tubs of toppings, the bar provides the opportunity to customize the perfect bowl of pho. Sometimes, I like it spicy, with extra chili oil; sometimes, just noodles and broth are all I need to make me happy. In the midst of the rush of new everything — from classes to people to bike routes —the constant presence of the pho bar has been reassuring. It is just nice to come back again and again to the same hot meal every night, even in the midst of the current summer-like heat.
At the start of high school, I told a friend: “It’s lucky I’m not going to Stanford because I wouldn’t be able to bike.” I was terrified of a bustling 35-acre campus with 10,000 bikes on the West Coast. Now, I’ve flown 2,500 miles with a rickety department store bike that’s taken me to Town & Country cookie shops, Memorial Church photoshoots and Arillaga late-night dining right across from the best dorm (Wilbur Soto). As I bike across campus, I’m learning how to balance myself, explore places with friends and defy my extremely unfit 14-year-old self.
As a member of the Structured Liberal Education (SLE) program, our discussion sections have been some of the most stimulating experiences of my life. They’re the perfect combination of energy, ideas and jokes. I have never been in such an extraordinary environment before. The feeling of being matched and challenged over philosophical texts makes my heart race more ardently than anything else (perhaps with the exception of quiz bowl). I have gained insights I would not have arrived at on my own, and it makes me appreciate how amazing of a community SLE has gathered.
As a former hermit whose parents would constantly nag her to come out of her room for once, I have undergone a transformation in the short time I’ve been at Stanford. Though I’ve certainly enjoyed the dining hall desserts and the feeling of wind on my face while biking across campus, it’s the feeling of consistent community that lingers with me. Whether it’s through social mixers, late nights in the study lounge or grabbing dinner with familiar or new faces, the unique people I’ve met have been my favorite part amidst the changes of college.
A week at Stanford is like a month anywhere else. There’s always something happening on each corner of campus, but so far my favorite part has been building friendships! Whether it’s our late-night “study” seshes in the Crungeon (the Crothers dungeon, i.e., our basement), picnics on the oval or trips around the Bay, the community I’ve built here so far has brought me so much joy. Stanford truly feels like home!
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Stanford’s RAs aren’t ready to unionizeZerr argues that with or without an NLRB petition, Stanford RAs have a ways to go before they're ready to unionize.
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Some of Stanford’s resident assistants (RAs) have spent the past year organizing to address what has been described as understaffing, low pay and a lack of communication with administration. After investing considerable time and energy, their proposed solution is a union. I have had nothing but fantastic experiences with hardworking RAs in my time at Stanford. I am in favor of fair wages and robust support for the work that they do.
However, the issues raised publicly by Resident Assistants United Rising (RAUR) have failed to convince me that unionization would address their concerns.
Most importantly, it’s not obvious what their strategy with unionization actually is.
Recently, RAUR made the politically savvy move of withdrawing their National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) petition to avoid a scenario where student worker labor rights are overturned nationwide. However, as they mention in their statement, RAUR is still seeking union recognition. Regardless of whether they pursue voluntary recognition by the University or a union election at a future date, RAUR needs a clearer list of goals and stronger internal relationships. It is precisely because RAUR lacks a coherent set of demands or a clear strategy that I argue the University is right to be apprehensive of potential labor strife. Likewise, this lack of strategy indicates that RAUR is simply not ready to negotiate a contract that will be a net benefit to their members.
Early RA concerns last year centered around alleged understaffing of certain residences and the increased workload that fell upon some of them. Appropriate staffing levels and workloads are a key component of fair employment standards. However, rather than clearly outlining this as part of their platform, RAUR fails to quantify appropriate staffing levels at all. Understaffing is a relative term: one of the houses cited last year as being understaffed still had the same number of RAs as the frosh dorm I was in, with well under half the number of residents.
The current RA compensation of $12,400 has also been framed as an equity issue for first-generation and low-income (FLI) students because it does not fully cover room and board. This is in spite of the fact that RA pay is treated as a financial aid stipend; low-income students serving as RAs already have their room and board covered via financial aid. Stanford’s official financial aid guidance on RA stipends notes that the payment received does not “impact eligibility for institutional scholarship funds.” Viewed this way, Stanford’s RA compensation level and method are consistent with the University’s commitment to need-based financial aid.
A key aspect missing from the discussion on RA pay is that bringing this pay in line with the cost of room and board – $22,944 for the current academic year – for the roughly 450 RAs would cost an additional $5 million. While that may seem like a drop in the bucket, the reality is that university budgeting processes are incredibly complex and essentially every dollar is spoken for. In a constrained budgetary environment (primarily due to the Trump administration’s increased endowment tax), justifying new spending becomes even more difficult. Is RAUR prepared to make a detailed and thorough argument on where new funding might shift from?
Underpinning many RA complaints is the perceived lack of communication with administration. While it is true that unionization and collective bargaining enhance leverage during the contract negotiation process, it’s possible that day-to-day communication between RAs, resident fellows (RFs) and other supervisors could become more bureaucratic, not less. RAs at Georgetown won formal grievance channels in their union contract, but previously informal communication channels and flexible job duties were rigidly defined and enforced. How does RAUR aim to add formal grievance processes while keeping any current supervisory structures they may prefer to rigid alternatives?
Resolutions to these publicly voiced demands don’t even make strategic sense when put with one another and with the RAs’ mission at Stanford.
If the union wants a reduced workload and well-scoped job responsibilities for RAs, that limits their ability to be peer mentors and look out for the safety of their residents, one of the RAs’ core missions. Clarified and codified job responsibilities also empirically allowed administrators at Brown to concede minimal pay increases in their RAs’ first union contract last year.
If the union’s focus is on higher pay, constrained budgets might limit ResEd’s ability to hire the same number of RAs, thereby increasing workload.
If RAUR ultimately wants RAs to be employees rather than student mentors, that pay may no longer be a portion of financial aid and instead become taxable income. This would only reduce take-home compensation gains and harm FLI students who want to step into RA roles.
These examples make it clear just how many factors are at play on an issue which RAUR has painted as black and white. For decision-making within any complex organization, there will often be factors held in tension with one another. Demonstrating an understanding of this reality is key: to avoid another challenge, the path toward union recognition involves showing Residential Education (ResEd) that the union will be a reasonable and mutually beneficial partner in managing the working relationship between RAs and the University.
Conceding that administrators must contend with a myriad of factors and articulating an achievable and clear vision for the future of being an RA is what matters most for RAUR to get a seat at the negotiating table – and the evidence suggests that they simply have yet to outline this vision.
At a minimum, the pragmatic political reality of the situation means that de-escalating public rhetoric is the only real pathway to productive unionization. If RAUR is serious about developing a coherent plan and advancing RA interests rather than simply antagonizing the University, everyone involved, including ResEd, needs to find a way to save face.
In my time here as a student, I’ve yet to speak with an administrator who wasn’t happy to share their perspective and discuss issues when approached with a genuine willingness to learn and exchange ideas. In the short term, Stanford’s RAs would be better served by seeking out targeted, collaborative solutions to the specific issues that they feel are the most impactful. Maybe that’s creating new peer or mental health support systems for RAs. Maybe that’s exploring ways that staffing can be best allocated in the future to spread out workloads. It likely does involve pushing for more pay.
None of this would preclude Stanford’s RAs from once again making a concerted union push once they articulate a clear set of goals. But right now, even after abandoning the NLRB petition, our RAs are in no serious position to unionize.
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Daily Crossword #028Click to play today's 15x15 crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords daily and a full-size crossword biweekly.
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Demonstration protests defense tech conferenceSpeakers this year will include members of the U.S. Office of the Secretary of War and the former Taiwanese president.
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Stanford is hosting its fourth annual meetup for defense contractors this week, called DEFCON. The student-run conference brings together a host of AI, military, and weapons technology companies to promote industry engagement and recruitment at Stanford.
A Tuesday tabling event for the conference was met by students protesting the military tech industry, one of whom carried a large cutout criticizing Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel ’89, JD ’92.
DEFCON has historically brought Stanford students and military tech leaders into conversation on campus. Speakers this year will include the founders, CEOs and CTOs of major defense companies, members of the U.S. Office of the Secretary of War and the former Taiwanese president.
The tabling event outside Encina Commons marked the beginning of the conference and included such companies as Arkenstone, Z1, Umbra, Castlelion and Gallatin, who displayed images of their technologies in action alongside physical drones.
In protest, around fifteen students stood quietly across the road, holding signs and an artistic depiction of Peter Thiel. Eventgoers watched them for some time. Protest organizer Arin Iverson ’27, however, described the event as primarily for the passersby.
“The most important thing was not to change hearts and minds because I think that’s very difficult,” said Iverson. Instead, he said the rally intended to demonstrate that “there is an active opposition to the presence and recruitment of students by defense contractors on campus.”
The protestors’ signs read ‘WELCOME TO DEATHCON,’ while Iverson puppeteered the cutout of Peter Thiel, which sported devil horns, bloodstained hands, a book reading ‘How to commit genocide and go to Hell’ and a sign reading, ‘Soul of P. Thiel: SOLD.’
Iverson said that to draw attention to their cause, the group hoped to create “something of a spectacle” using their cutout of Thiel. Palantir itself is one of the biggest sponsors of DEFCON.
Fellow protestor Reid Smith ’28, who serves as co-president of the pro-Palestinian student group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), said the protest also intended to criticize the ‘funnel’ of Stanford students into the defense industry. “We’re funneling all of the immense talent at our university to military/AI tech startups … to kill people overseas,” he said.
Another protestor, Andrew Chen ’27, agreed. “I just don’t think we should be killing people in Palestine [or] using our army to suppress people all over the globe…Stanford plays a direct role in funnelling students into that type of career,” said Chen.
His favored first step would be for Stanford to stop “platforming these people who run these huge corporations that do objectively evil things.”
Iverson and Smith said their protest was not widely publicized, and that the group intentionally limited its size, to abide by Time and Place restrictions at Stanford. Iverson told The Daily that, “We weren’t using amplified noise, we weren’t blocking any sidewalk or road,” and that this was an important factor for ensuring a peaceful protest.
Though some students crossed the road to speak with the protestors, the protesters were mostly separated from the event itself.
One DEFCON staffer, Andreas, expressed appreciation for the ability for students to peacefully protest. “I’m really thankful we live in a country where people can protest and disagree. It’s their right and they should protest if they feel strongly,” the staffer told The Daily.
Correction: A previous version of this article erroneously described Thiel as CEO of Palantir, rather than a co-founder. The Daily regrets this error.
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Economics professor Adrien Bilal selected for TIME100 Next listBilal made the list for his work on the long-term economic consequences of the climate crisis.
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Assistant economics professor Adrien Bilal was selected to join the TIME100 Next 2026 last Wednesday for his work on long-term economic consequences of the climate crisis. Next 2026 is a list of the world’s most influential rising stars in various fields, from business and entertainment to the arts and scientific research.
Bilal’s most well-known work advocates for the efficiency of introducing decarbonization strategies such as domestic carbon pricing and overhauling electricity generation. He received French newspaper “Le Monde”’s Best Young Economist Prize last March for work in shifting the climate policy debate away from the local scale and towards the global supply chain.
He also won the prestigious Frisch Medal for his joint development of a model that quantified the misallocation cost of labor friction, which is the gap in skill, cost, or time that prevents viable workers from instantly matching with employers.
His views and findings on policy are best summarized by Bill McKibben, environmentalist and author of his TIME bio. McKibben wryly wrote of one line in Bilal’s most popular study, which featured his calculation of GDP risk, that “[the line] is econospeak for ‘what on earth are you doing propping up coal plants and shutting down wind farms?’”
With his Time100 Next recognition, Bilal joins Katherine Dafforn (Biology, the University of Massachusetts Boston) and Yu Deng (Mathematics, the University of Chicago) as one of only three professors honored on the list.
Bilal is also a fellow at the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research, where he focuses on climate change and its relation to spatial and labor economics.
According to Bilal, the news came as a surprise. His initial reaction was, “So surprised, but very pleasantly surprised,” he said. “You see some academics on the list, but not that many.” He hopes that the selection will bring greater public awareness to the research and its implications.
While Bilal’s work mainly warns that neglecting the global economics of environmental degradation can have unprecedented consequences, such as a 50% drop in the world’s GDP by the end of the century, he also emphasizes that climate policy’s benefits can extend beyond the environmental.
“If we can bend the temperature curve,” he said, “then you would be in a situation where as economic growth accelerates, living standards improve faster than what we‘ve been used to and global health also improves faster.”
Pete Klenow — Bilal’s colleague, a professor of economics policy and Senior Gordon Fellow at the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research — said the honor was “well deserved.”
“Just as striking is how quickly he has done it,” Klenow told The Daily. “[Bilal] finished his Ph.D. in 2020 and already has a record… that compares favorably with tenured faculty at the best departments in the world. We are lucky to have him as a colleague, and I expect he will be one of the leaders of the field for a long time.”
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‘Not complacency, not denial, but confidence’: Washington Post editor calls for trust in American institutionsJames Hohmann, a former editor-in-chief of The Daily, pointed to the work of the press.
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The Washington Post’s Deputy Opinion Editor James Hohmann ’09 told Stanford students in a Tuesday talk that American institutions should still be trusted, and that they could come back stronger after facing pressure.
The event, titled “The Guardrails Are Holding: A Case For Confidence in American Institutions,” was hosted at Green Library.
Hohmann illustrated the role of institutions by recounting his experiences as a Stanford undergraduate. A former editor-in-chief of The Stanford Daily, Hohmann said he spent time as an undergraduate studying, and sometimes procrastinating, in Green Library.
The building, he said, contained examples of the important role that American institutions have historically played. A first edition copy of Galileo’s “Sidereus Nuncius” (“Starry Messenger”) — the 1610 work in which the astronomer first published observations made with a telescope — is held in Green Library, for example. Preserving and carrying on knowledge like this, Hohmann said, is what American institutions do.
While current political institutions such as the judicial system are “not perfect,” Hohmann nonetheless believes that the American system stays accountable because of multiple checks and balances. He pointed to the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, which was dropped this spring, as an example.
The investigation centered on accusations of corruption regarding Powell’s handling of renovations at the Fed’s headquarters. After being closed in April, it was referred to the Fed’s inspector general. The case ended after Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for D.C. James Boasberg found that the government had produced “essentially zero evidence” of a crime.
Hohmann also commended the resilience of the press, which has been targeted by the Trump administration in recent months. Most recently, the president wrote on Truth Social that The New York Times “and many other artificial media outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our country,” after the Times reported empty seats at his Saturday rally in Ohio.
“The other half remains,” Hohmann said, referring to the important role of mass media as the “fourth estate,” a branch essential to democracy that runs parallel to the executive, legislative and judicial branches.
He pointed to the Washington Post’s exclusive reporting on Trump secretly switching planes in Turkey in July ovdr concerns regarding a possible Iranian attack, as well as the Post’s reporting last month that a U.S. intelligence assessment found Saudi Arabia has not ruled out developing nuclear weapons. These examples, Hohmann said, suggest the American press is still doing its job despite immense pressures from the administration and low public trust.
According to Hohmann, as a former history major, the United States’ current moment could be another episode of the historical instances in which American institutions improved after challenges. He pointed to past episodes that exposed weaknesses in American institutions — Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court, Harry Truman’s seizure of the steel industry and Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal. In each case, he said, the system ultimately corrected itself and “institutions [came] back stronger through reform.”
To “study the weaknesses” of the system and repair them, Hohmann said, is the proper way to preserve and strengthen institutions.
Hohmann’s employer, The Washington Post, is one such institution that has faced headwinds in recent years. Jeff Bezos purchased the publication in 2013 for $250 million, and made the decision to stop making presidential endorsements in 2024.
This year, the Post’s publisher made the “hard decision” to close its Middle East bureaus over budgetary concerns, Hohmann said. The cuts, announced in February, eliminated roughly one third of the Post’s staff, including its entire team of Middle East correspondents and editors.
“The bureau system is expensive, but [the Post is still] covering extensively on the Middle East,” Hohmann said.
Vice Provost of University Libraries Micheal Keller, who hosted the event, had his own comments regarding American democracy. The country must “rescind [the Citizen United decision] in the years to come,” he said. That decision allowed unlimited political spending by corporations and unions.
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Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law partners with Journal of DemocracyThe change marks the end of the journal’s ownership by the National Endowment for Democracy.
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Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) announced last spring the beginning of a partnership between Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the quarterly political science publication, “Journal of Democracy.” Though the journal will continue to be published by John Hopkins University Press, the new partnership marks the end of the U.S. Congress-funded National Endowment for Democracy’s (NED) ownership of the journal.
NED, the Journal’s founding sponsor, has faced significant challenges in the last few years. The nonprofit came under attack from the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in 2025. DOGE cut off the NED’s access to the foundation’s endowment before a judge issued an injunction to restore access to funds. Though the NED’s funding was interrupted, the Journal continued publication through Johns Hopkins University Press, its longstanding publisher.
CDDRL’s director, political science professor Kathryn Stoner, said the “Journal of Democracy” has officially left the NED and is now an independent organization. According to Stoner, the CDDRL now has institutionally dominant representation on the editorial board, even as the journal maintains its longstanding editorial independence.
The change is a welcome one for co-editor Will Dobson, who told The Daily that it was “in the Journal’s best interest to be an independent entity.” Dobson wrote that the Journal “sought an institutional partner to help bolster the Journal’s work” and that a collaboration with CDDRL was a “natural partnership.” Since its foundation in 1990 the “Journal of Democracy” has been associated with Stanford scholars, including founding co-editor and political science professor Larry Diamond, who also previously served as director of CDDRL.
As part of the partnership, Dobson noted that the Journal will hire two editorial interns from Stanford’s student body each quarter. Stoner told The Daily that CDDRL will continue to provide expert advice to the Journal’s editors, and that the center will now contract with the Journal’s 501(c)(3) to produce issues.
An editor’s note from the Journal’s most recent issue explained that the NED’s commitment to the journal “never wavered” and that the Journal was the NED’s “cerebral partner.” The note also touched on the changing circumstances that have come to bear on democracy studies, writing that “democracy, and the norms that sustain it, are being sorely tested.”
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Bay Area to vote on transit tax measureNovember brings to the ballot a proposal to raise the sales tax to fund BART and Caltrain.
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It’s Friday rush hour at the Palo Alto Caltrain station, and the 5:25 p.m. is running late.
People heading home from work and school stand with bikes and scooters on the crowded northbound platform. The train pulls in at 5:50 p.m., 25 minutes behind schedule.
“Usually, it’s been good,” Caltrain rider Megan Mayerle said of on-time service. “The last couple months have been really bad, and I do not know what’s going on.”
Mayerle, who works at the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine in Stanford Medicine, was on her way home to San Francisco. She takes the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and Caltrain about five days a week.
Soon, Mayerle will be able to weigh in on whether to fund the transit options she relies on. On Nov. 3, Bay Area residents will vote on Senate Bill 63, a local revenue measure for public transit funding. Also known as the Connect Bay Area Act, the bill would raise taxes to fund transit agencies like Caltrain, BART, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (Muni) and Alameda-Contra Costa Transit (AC Transit).
SB 63 would establish a Public Transit Revenue Measure District — a special jurisdiction for a tax — in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara and the City and County of San Francisco. The bill would raise the sales and use tax — on the sale, storage and use of retail goods — by 0.5% in these counties and 1% in San Francisco. Sales tax is collected by retailers at the point of sale, while use tax keeps buyers from avoiding taxes by purchasing goods online or from out-of-state sellers.
If approved, the proceeds would be allocated to specified transit agencies for 14 years.
“Regional funding, increased coordination, financial efficiency, and safety, cleanliness and reliability reforms are urgently needed to both preserve and improve public transit service,” the bill states.
The Bay Area Council, a business and civic leadership non-profit organization, gathered signatures last year to place the measure on the ballot and is campaigning for its passage next month.
SB 63 will ensure transit systems avoid service cuts and continue providing frequent, convenient service, according to council President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Libby Schaaf.
“Transit not only helps students, workers and seniors, many of whom don’t own cars, by providing affordable and essential transportation, it also supports a healthy economy that ensures job opportunities,” Schaaf wrote in a statement to The Daily.
She added that public transit reduces carbon emissions from automobiles that reduce air quality and contribute to climate change.
“A yes vote for the Regional Transit Measure [RTM] is a vote for strong mobility options, a strong economy and a healthy environment,” Schaaf wrote.
San Mateo resident Marlen Gutierrez works in Stanford’s Office of Accessible Education as the Student Registration Coordinator. She recently started taking the Caltrain to work instead of driving, citing gas prices.
“It’s better to be able to unwind on my way home too and not be stuck in traffic,” Gutierrez added. “So far the times have been pretty reliable.”
But not everybody is on board with the measure. The Committee for Affordable Bay Area Transit (CABAT) opposes the RTM, criticizing the tax’s impact on working families and calling for a wider reform of the Bay Area’s transportation systems.
“The broader issue concerns the cost, governance and service provided by the current transit establishment, which we believe is incompetent, corrupt and massively costly/wasteful,” president Gregg Dieguez wrote in a statement to The Daily.
CABAT is not calling for the elimination of Caltrain or BART services, Dieguez said. Rather, they want transit agencies to manage costs and labor and cut down top-heavy administration before raising taxes.
“Unfortunately, many voters will treat the RTM vote as a simple choice between another regressive sales tax and ‘Carmageddon,’” Dieguez wrote. “In reality, the issue is ‘What type of transportation best fits our needs, what should it cost and who can be trusted to operate it?’”
Mayerle and other passengers waiting for the train on Friday were unaware of the upcoming vote on the RTM.
“I would be for it without having read it,” Mayerle said. “Seems like we have to pass one of these every three years, though, so I’m not quite sure why they can’t use any money to improve anything.”
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Strawser | Let Cornell be Stanford’s call to action for survivors"Survivors deserve a strong culture of accountability and compassion that puts them, not their assailants, first," writes Strawser.
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Content warning: This article contains references to sexual assault.
The night that I blacked out as a sophomore in 2022, two women from my dorm were there for me. One, a year younger, helped me walk straight toward the 5-SURE ride. The other, my RA, sat beside me as I waited to be taken to the hospital. Certainly, either one of them could have taken advantage of me. But they never even considered it.
I was supported by everyone who interacted with me: the women who got me home, the administrators who fairly handled my reckless, underage drinking case. No one ever made me feel like I, as a person, was wrong for what I did and how I chose to seek help. I consider myself lucky. Unfortunately, the case of many women in vulnerable situations on their college campus is the exact opposite.
One such woman is the former Cornell University student who recently filed a lawsuit to allege gang rape while under the influence of drugs that she was forced to take. Going by Jane Doe, the plaintiff alleges that seven then-members of the Cornell chapter of the Chi Phi fraternity forced her to snort ketamine on one of their erect penises, take other substances and be subjected to numerous acts of sexual violence for nearly seven hours. She is not just arguing that Cornell officials, various Greek life figures and a local bar were complicit in the underaged drugging and gang rape she experienced. She is going so far as to say a trusted friend of hers at the time — Matthew Ingalls — was the first to propose sex and the one who lured her into the room in which she was abused.
On many levels, the case of the Cornell 7 — Ingalls as well as Scott Kretzschmar, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Jonathan Newell, Scott Norris and Diego Sarabia — demonstrates the realities that the women in our lives know all too well. For starters, 35% of undergraduate women at Cornell reported experiencing non-consensual sexual contact in 2025. Nearly 90% of college victims in general report knowing their abuser. Over 20% of women report having experienced sexual assault at some point in their lives. This data demonstrates why the Cornell case hits close to home for women everywhere.
Evidently, Cornell’s culture is to blame — the Cornell 7 are no anomalous ‘bad apples.’ The pervasiveness of sexual assault speaks to a student body too willing to look the other way and a culture of surivors feeling as though their silence is the only peace they will ever get. Rape culture is alive and well at Cornell. It is something that I — a survivor who repeatedly covered sexual assault for The Stanford Daily nearly four years ago — believe the Farm is no exception to. Survivors deserve a strong culture of accountability and compassion that puts them, not their assailants, first.
To say that the SHARE Title IX and Title VI Office delays justice and is poorly run would be a gross understatement. The SHARE office took two years to suspend a student’s assailant, despite assuring her it would not take longer than four months. The most recent annual Title IX report on their website is from three academic years ago. The SHARE office even omits from its list of misconceptions about sexual assault the ‘stranger danger’ falsehood.
By delaying justice, preventing transparency and misinforming the campus community on cases of sexual assault, the SHARE office leadership is discouraging survivors from filing a report in the first place. This is a malignant institutional cycle that downplays the severity of sexual assault and preserves campus rape culture.
Stanford’s systematic betrayal of survivors is not exclusive to the SHARE office, for it also includes morally repugnant cuts to sex education and assault prevention resources on campus.
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE) James Hamilton and Vice Provost for Student Affairs (VPSA) Michele Rasmussen stripped Beyond Sex Ed (BSE) from mandatory New Student Orientation (NSO) programming. Sexual assault awareness program Flip the Script was also cut. VPUE and VPSA are working in tandem to make it harder for students to dispel anti-survivor myths, foster a more upstanding campus culture and understand the nuances of consent and power.
Stanford Law School (SLS) has stated the position that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is someone whom it “would be honored to host.” By entertaining the notion that Justice Thomas is an honorable character, SLS has sent the message that Anita Hill — who accused Thomas of sexual harassment while she was his subordinate — was wrong to speak her truth. By platforming him, SLS subtly suggests to its female students and faculty that they would also be wrong to speak up.
The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and the computer science department continue to have Bill Gates on their advisory board and building name, respectively. Gates knew Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted sex offender when he repeatedly met with him in the 2010s. To have him advising a vital source of leadership at Stanford, and have his name on the same building that survivors see on their way to class, sends the message that even the men who spend years in silent complicity with sex crimes are rewarded.
It is no wonder that, under the University’s put-survivors-last approach, it only expelled 0.3% of reported sexual assailants between 1996 and 2013. Stanford’s track record is that it will neither be strong enough against cases of sexual assault nor give students the tools to combat rape culture itself. The years of rape culture accumulate to the point of, for example, fraternity brothers committing rape three times as often as their non-fraternity peers. Emboldening rape and other facets of sexual harm is so core to Stanford’s leadership that it infects decisions made beyond Title IX and sex education directly.
Any one of these issues with Stanford’s schools, departments and leaders would be appalling and worthy of resignation in isolation. But by the power of pattern recognition, from NSO to SLS, I cannot help but see Stanford as a systemic accomplice to rape culture itself. This pattern can only be broken if we hold each other and the University accountable in the drastic ways that this moment calls for.
Students, faculty and staff should demand that the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors follow the bold example set by the mayor of Ithaca, New York, who acted decisively against Cornell’s appalling record on sexual violence. The Mayor rightfully proposed a blanket denial of city permits for Cornell student groups’ gatherings in Ithaca. The Board of Supervisors should go one step further and place conditions on moving forward with StanfordNext — the University’s bold plan for future campus land development. The Board should demand de-housing for Greek life organizations complicit in sexual harm and that the University hire the seasoned, trauma-informed attorneys that survivors can actually rely on. Government force is needed to show Stanford that its complicity in rape culture will not go unnoticed.
Looking to on-campus governance, every Faculty Senate meeting and town hall with university leadership should be used to demand Bill Gates’ removal from the Doerr School’s advisory council and the CS building. A true moral fire should be lit ablaze to ensure that SLS and any other organ of the University not host the likes of Justice Thomas ever again. Refusing to honor and platform the individuals directly engaged in or complicit in sexual harm should be a red line that we no longer cross. The Faculty Senate should certainly entertain the threat of a no-confidence vote in senior university leadership to force their hand on survivors’ behalf.
We should thrust that moral clarity into our friendships, relationships, club memberships and even class enrollments. Even if it means mood-ruining conversations, the Farm must be a place where every remaining social vestige of rape culture is extinguished.
I can think of no better voice for inspiration than what The Cornell Daily Sun’s Editorial Board said in its bold push against the Cornell 7:
“To Matthew Ingalls, Jonathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar: We know who you are and we refuse to let you benefit from this University’s concealment.”
For far too long, every manner of sexual harm and violence has profited from Stanford’s widespread betrayal of survivors. Stanford, like Cornell, is no exception to the rape culture that keeps survivors from speaking their truths and securing their peace.
As the Stanford community, we must follow the example set by The Cornell Daily Sun’s bold reporting, the moral clarity of its Editorial Board and the iron will of the City of Ithaca’s mayor to put survivors above all else. Let this be our call to action for survivors and against university business as usual. They deserve nothing short of full justice, peace and belonging at the Farm.
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EVGR-B trash compactor fire closes chutesThe fire, originating from a trash compactor, drew multiple firetrucks.
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Albert Wang, a first year master’s student, was walking with friends when he saw firetrucks heading toward Escondido Village Graduate Residence B. “As we got closer, the smokiness got more intense, and then we saw a big screen of smoke,” he said. “We’re like ‘oh, crap, I think there’s an actual fire.’”
The fire broke out in EVGR-B’s trash compactor room on Oct. 3, around 6:30 p.m., according to Wang, attracting multiple firetrucks to the scene. Over a day later, residents were still unaware that a fire had even happened.
“It was quite intense. But I still did not know what was happening,” Heesang Yoon, a third-year Ph.D. student, said.
Yoon was in his studio when he heard an abundance of sirens. He heard no fire alarms from his studio.
“There [were] a lot of ashes and some food remnants,” Yoon said, describing the scene when he later went outside. “I thought it was from the barbecue pit, but, an hour later, I got a message that it’s from the trash.”
Yoon and other EVGR-B residents received an email from the EVGR housing service center informing them the trash chutes would be temporarily closed and cordoned off. The message attributed the closure to an isolated fire. The trash, recycling and compost chutes in EVGR-B are still closed with no estimated repair time.
“Modern fire alarm systems in high-rise buildings like EVGR-B are designed to alarm only on the floor(s) on which the fire is detected, the floor above and the floor below,” university spokesperson Luisa Rapport wrote to The Daily. “It is typically safest for the remainder of building occupants to ‘shelter in place’ and remain in unaffected areas of the building.”
Since the trash compactor was on the first floor, the alarm only sounded on the first two floors. Once the fire was detected, “[it] was quickly extinguished by the automatic sprinkler system,” Rapport wrote. “Responding firefighters and staff…confirmed that the fire did not pose a threat to campus, and no community-wide alert was issued.”
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Daily Diminutive #191Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords daily and a full-size crossword weekly.
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Kaytranada brings irresistible groove, expert mixes to San JoseThe hypnotic DJ's music is exponentially more captivating in concert.
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Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
Kaytranada just makes people want to dance.
As the headliner for the Sleeping on Gems Fest in San Jose last month, the Canadian DJ commanded the crowd from a 360-degree stage as he switched back and forth between boards facing opposite sides. Even with his back turned to half the audience at a time, fans remained captivated, maintaining an incessant bounce even between songs.
Kaytranada was a master of energy, carefully balancing the anticipation of his big hits to weave in his lesser-known songs.
Just a few minutes into the set, he played “Need It,” which, with Masego’s repetitive chorus making it easy to sing along, immediately got the crowd moving. Soon after, he played “Snap My Finger.” Pinkpantheress’ vocals overlaid on the vibrant electronic track — the melody seemingly influenced by Wham!’s “Everything She Wants” — locked everyone into the rhythm and kept the groove going.
The richness of the sound and reactions to the first few songs made clear that headphones cannot do Kaytranada’s music justice. The atmosphere the DJ creates is unique, filled with a kinetic energy that moves throughout the crowd.
Concert attendees, including Josh Buenviaje ’27, also noticed the difference in hearing Kaytranada’s music live.
“I’d been listening to him for years, but seeing him live was just like a surreal experience,” Buenviaje said. “It was better than I could have even imagined.”
Planes also flew over Discovery Meadow during the set to land at the nearby San Jose airport, creating a dreamlike aura at the outdoor venue.
Toward the middle of the set, Kaytranada played “Lover/Friend,” featuring Rochelle Jordan — one of the festival’s slept-on gems who performed right before the DJ.
Despite being a lesser-known artist, Jordan drew a crowd and excited fans. “I hadn’t even heard of her, but thought that she was a great performer,” Buenviaje said.
In the later part of his set, Kaytranada brought out popular songs “YOU’RE THE ONE,” “Witchy” and a flurry of songs from his “BUBBA” album — “Freefall,” “Go DJ“ and “10%.”
He seemingly saved the best for last, playing cemented hits “Be Your Girl” and “Intimidated” in the final 15 minutes of the set. “I know this is your favorite song right here,” Kaytranada told the crowd as they clapped in unison to the beat of “Intimidated”.
Kaytranada had a unique way of engaging with the crowd, not only instructing them to dance, but busting out moves himself and incorporating lights triggered for specific beats in the songs.
“He just understands his audience really well,” said Buenviaje. “When we were dancing, he was dancing. That was really cool of him as a performer to be so in touch with the people that he’s making music for.”
During the start of “Dance Dance Dance Dance,” people would pose every few seconds. As the song continued, more people caught on, making the set feel like a collective experience.
“Everyone was grooving, everyone was dancing and we were all synced,” said Buenviaje.
The DJ’s perfectionism was also on display. After dropping the beat to a song, which led the crowd to break out into dance, he was seemingly frustrated with his mixing and transitioned into a different track. “Hold on,” he said, “I want to do something else.”
Even before the set started, he instructed the technicians over the mic to turn down the bass on the speakers, which was notably overpowered throughout the festival.
Kaytranada has previously spoken about his perfectionism, including when discussing the rationale behind the title of his debut album “99.9%.” After spending more than two years working on the album, the artist repeatedly thought he reached the final cut but was “always only 99.9% sure,” leading to his album name, he told i-D magazine.
His efforts have not gone unnoticed by fans. These countless iterations have culminated in an exceptional live experience and a must-see show.
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Cardinal roundup: Men’s water polo sweeps LA teamsSwimming and women’s volleyball win big in an action-packed week of Cardinal sports.
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With the largest crowd that college swimming has seen in a decade at the edge of their seats, Stanford swimming dramatically triumphed in the third meet of the College Swimming League (CSL), scoring 550 points to beat the University of California, Berkeley, The Ohio State University and Auburn University on Oct. 2. CSL meets are dual gender, meaning that results from the men and women’s teams are combined into one score for the whole university.
The Cardinal victory was sealed with two finishes in the final event of the night, the 4×50 medley super skins. On the women’s team, sophomore Alana Berlin, senior Lucy Thomas, sophomore Ella Jablonski and sophomore Annam Olasewere combined to win the super skins with a 1:38.50 in the final. The team also earned second-place points with Ohio State disqualified. The men’s team entered the race with the Cardinal trailing the Golden Bears by 30 points, a sum that meant that the team needed a disqualification of Cal to win. Then, in the second leg of the relay, a Berkeley relay swimmer left early, and they were disqualified. With that ruling, Stanford attained important first and second place points. They overcame the point deficit and won by 6.5 points over the Golden Bears.
In a particularly dominant showing, senior Caroline Bricker won three titles during the event, starting off with a three-second faster time in the 200 fly, and was named the SwimSwam Women’s MVP of the meet.
Stanford is now tied for third in the CSL rankings with Virginia and Indiana. Their next CSL match-up is on Oct. 16, where they hope to continue their strong start to the season.
The women’s volleyball team (9-5, 2-2 ACC) attained back-to-back victories at Maples Pavilion this weekend, sweeping away Virginia Tech (4-9, 1-3 ACC) and Virginia (5-8, 1-3 ACC).
On Friday night, the Cardinal secured their first ACC win of the season, finishing in three sets against Virginia Tech, 25-16, 25-23, 25-14. Senior opposite hitter Jordyn Harvey led the charge with 17 points, with sophomore setter Logan Parks keeping a tight grip over the offense (29 assists, two kills, eight digs) and junior middle blocker Lizzy Andrew hitting a match-best five blocks, alongside nine kills and two aces.
Against Virginia on Saturday evening, senior offensive hitter Julia Blyashov led the team to a sweep, 25-12, 25-23, 25-13. During the game, Blyashov hit a career-high 0.607 attack percentage, with a season-best 18 kills, six digs, an ace and a block. Parks dispensed 44 assists, while sophomore libero Spencer Etzler gathered 14 digs and an ace.
Next, the team heads to Notre Dame (4-9, 1-3 ACC) on Oct. 9 in hopes of extending their winning streak.
The Cardinal (8-2-1, 1-2-1 ACC) managed a comeback win against Duke’s Blue Devils (5-7, 0-4 ACC) on Oct. 2. In Duke’s Koskinem Stadium, the team faced a two goal lead in the second half, before sophomore Jack Pymm scored a penalty and junior Alex Chow sent in a half volley in the span of 37 seconds in the 58th minute. From there, Stanford took control of the game, with a pass from Pymm to sophomore Aiden Reilly bouncing off the back of a Blue Devil defender and into the net. The game ended 3-2.
In their penultimate home game, the team will return to the Farm on Oct. 11 to play Clemson.
In the Battle in the Bay — the men’s tennis team’s second tournament of the season — freshman Gus Grumet and sophomore Mark Krupkin made it to the doubles semifinals. Along the way, they beat No. 2 TCU — who defeated the Cardinal in last year’s NCAA Super Regional — in the quarterfinals, with a dominant 8-3 win. They fell to No. 18 Michigan State in the semifinals. Both players were knocked out of the singles’ bracket in the round of 32.
The team will return to competition, in Seattle, at the ITA Northwest Regional Championships from Oct. 15-20.
In their 13th straight road loss (their last road win was in Sept. 2024), the Cardinal (2-3, 1-3 ACC) lost 57-3 to Wake Forest (4-1, 2-1 ACC). Demon Deacon quarterback Gio Lopez ran for three touchdowns and passed for two, achieving Wake Forest’s largest margin of victory ever in an ACC game.
Overall, the Cardinal were held to 197 yards of total offense. In the second quarter, Stanford was able to score once with sixth-year kicker Emmet Kenney’s 43-yard field goal.
The football team will head to Indiana to face Notre Dame (5-0) this Sunday. Kickoff is set for 12:30 pm PT.
In their first road losses of the season, field hockey (7-4, 0-3 ACC) fell to Virginia (6-4, 2-3 ACC) 5-2, and Louisville (9-4, 3-1 ACC) 1-0.
Against Virginia, a frenzied back-and-forth set of goals from both teams took over the first half. Right after a formidable save by junior goalkeeper Anya Jackson, junior Jenny O’Grady scored the opening goal of the game, her fifth goal of the season. The Cavaliers retaliated with two more goals, before senior fullback Mia Clark sent the ball to senior midfielder Liv Martin, who sent it into the cage, achieving her first goal of the season. Unfortunately, in the third quarter a penalty corner and counterattacking tallies by the Cavaliers broke through the strong Stanford defense, despite eight stout saves against 21 shots by Jackson.
The first half of the game against Louisville functioned more as a war of attrition, with neither side able to score a goal. With a mighty defensive performance, Jackson prevented four shots, the first of her nine saves during the game. In the second half, Louisville was able to tally off of a penalty corner, while the lone bid by senior midfielder Kate Nemec was halted in its tracks.
The team will return to campus this Friday to face off against Duke (9-2, 4-0 ACC) at 6 p.m.
With a full Los Angeles sweep weekend, men’s water polo (12-1) achieved successive victories against No. 1 UCLA (15-1) and No. 3 USC (12-2).
Two weeks ago, the team had fallen to UCLA, but achieved their revenge with an action-packed game that ended 19-15 and handed UCLA their first loss of the season. The first and second period were reasonably even, with redshirt senior utility player Guido Leonardi’s final minute goal eking out a 4-3 lead in the first period, which became an even 5-5 in the second period. Similar last-minute goals dominated the third and fourth period, with a late UCLA goal in the third period, and final goal by senior attacker Gavin West in the fourth period. The offense of the team was formidable, and redshirt senior goalie Bernando Herzer put on an incredible defensive performance with nine saves.
The next day, the team led another defensive masterclass, keeping USC scoreless the whole first period. Junior center Will Schneider, with two first period goals, led the charge to build a six-goal lead in that time. In the second and third period, the teams traded goals back and forth, but the Cardinal were able to maintain a three goal lead, 14-11. In the fourth period, two goals by seniors Alex Georgzhe and James Rozolis Hill kept the momentum on Stanford’s side. USC managed a last-minute goal, but the Cardinal secured the victory, winning 16-12.
The team will be back at the Farm to host Santa Clara on Saturday at 1 p.m.
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Nostalgic Thoughts: OsmanthusIn the final installment of her column, Zhang fulfills her childhood promise of moving to Kyoto.
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In her column “Nostalgic Thoughts,” Alaina Zhang ’27 reminisces on the past and reflects on why we miss it at all.
A soft tide of osmanthus greeted me this morning in Kyoto.
I was at Doshisha University’s Imadegawa campus, where summer has quietly faded to the backstage for fall. Today felt almost like spring though, and as I walked by the trees which have begun to become familiar, I caught the faint, sweet scent of osmanthus. It is one of my favorite smells in the world — in Wuxi, I would often have desserts sprinkled with osmanthus, and the fragrant smell and sweet flavor always reminded me of home.
I was walking and reflecting on my first two weeks in Kyoto, a place I first visited with my mom ten years ago. Ever since then, I had wished to return to Japan to study abroad. Ten years later, as I promised myself, I have returned, as if nothing has changed at all.
Wandering through Kyoto felt like walking through the past. Interlocking power lines, narrow streets, dancing shadows on translucent umbrellas and the passing bikes were all traces of an era that has remained even as modernization continued. One of my favorite things to do was to stare into my reflection on a trundling train — it was not really about my reflection, but about how in those moments, I could feel time passing more vividly than anywhere else as the train snaked underground.
My first two weeks in Kyoto were a mosaic of images. Fushimi Inari as the sun began to set, the kitsune statues gazing back at me. Deciphering the stream of impossibly quick words on a karaoke screen. The comforting buzz at an izakaya. Hearing the rain patter against my umbrella. Watching the world rush by from a shinkansen window. Late night walks to the convenience store.
The warmth between people here felt the way I imagined my hometown was long ago. When I went into an izakaya on the first day, I was struck by how lively and down-to-earth the place was. The young part-timers with towels strung around their necks yelled orders across the room and greeted customers.
There is a saying in Chinese called Ren Jian Yan Huo, which I would translate as “the glow of fire in the human world.” It was the kind of atmosphere I craved as a child, to exist inside a bustling community full of chatter and joy. In Kyoto, a place far away from home, I’ve experienced once again the feeling of being a kid, wide-eyed and curious about the action around me, yet safe and content.
I suppose my journey through this column about nostalgia has been searching for the feeling of being alive. Whether it’s going back into my past, my family’s past or a past that I could never quite touch or live in, I have been thinking through how, as a kid, the world seemed so expansive and inviting. Perhaps my entanglement with nostalgia is an escape mechanism back to days when my emotions were simple, pure joy or sadness. Perhaps nostalgia is a mourning for what has been lost.
Whatever I have been missing about the past, I seem to have found a fragment of it in Kyoto. Just like the osmanthus, my nostalgia will perhaps bloom again and again, in a different city, in a different season, when that familiar scent arrives upon a welcoming wind.
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Stanfordle #159Enjoy The Daily's Stanfordle. The Daily produces Stanfordles on weekdays.
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