In his most recent column installment, Puri writes on how the Trump administration is demolishing critical institutions without bothering to know why they were constructed in the first place.
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Back when they had more ideas than subservience, those who call themselves “conservatives” liked to invoke “Chesterton’s Fence,” a parable by the English philosopher G.K. Chesterton. His allegory, they said, illustrated the difference between progressive and conservative attitudes toward institutions.
Chesterton wrote, “There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’”
The parable’s wisdom is this: Do not destroy something before you understand its purpose — the reason for which someone labored to build it. Especially because it is much harder to construct a fence than to tear one down.
Oftentimes, the aim of a longstanding institution — one of Chesterton’s fences — is fulfilled so successfully that it is considered natural by new generations, and therefore, assumed to be inevitable. It is then when such a fence is most vulnerable, as people see the costs of maintaining it but fail to appreciate the benefits. Only after destroying it do they realize the conditions it produced were quite unnatural.
Progressives confronted this lesson in 2020, among other times, following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Condemning law enforcement as irredeemably bigoted, they sought to “defund the police.” Many cities obliged, only to find that general adherence to laws (including those against murder) is not a given. Americans determined that police are a sometimes dangerous yet extremely necessary pillar beneath civil society.
These days, it is Republicans — especially the occupant of the White House — who are mowing down Chesterton’s fences with glee. The president and his subordinates are oblivious to history, and thus, of the tremendous efforts and sacrifices undertaken to deliver once unimaginable blessings of modernity. They are blowing up the foundations of skyscrapers and expecting the structures to stay suspended in air.
The emblematic image of this administration’s “Destroy first, ask questions later” mindset was Elon Musk, leader of the misnamed Department of Government Efficiency, brandishing a chainsaw to symbolize his incurious cuts to the federal workforce. Incurious because Musk’s team did not think to check whether certain workers they jettisoned oversee an arsenal of nuclear warheads or combat avian flu.
Fired workers can be rehired, though. Other useful things, like due process of law, cannot be reconstituted so easily. The requirement that government prove one has committed a crime before punishing them for it is not some nicety, as Vice President Vance pretends, but an indispensable barrier against tyranny, as the nation’s founders knew and the 14th Amendment’s authors reiterated. When government can exact punishment without having to marshal proof of wrongdoing, the innocent are no more secure than the guilty.
Most living Americans do not remember a time when thousands of children were sentenced to wheelchairs by polio each year, or when contracting measles by age 15 was an expectation. Our escape from these and many other horrific diseases was not a miracle, but the result of human dedication and ingenuity distilled into vaccines. The Secretary of Health and Human Services now wishes to see how healthy Americans can be with fewer vaccinations. We will soon find out.
Participation in international exchange is another one of Chesterton’s fences under the ax. Protectionism through high tariffs was the norm throughout history, predicated upon pre-economic instincts of national loyalty. An ungovernable system of free trade had to be forged over decades, without which modern levels of prosperity and abundance would be impossible. Now, as empty store shelves approach, Americans will learn just how much of their lifestyles came from overseas. Children, according to the president, will need to make do with just three dolls and five pencils.
Our most dangerous ingratitude, by far, is for the security that comes from a relatively peaceful world. This, too, is a historical aberration. Most Republicans, including those in the executive branch, seem to have no idea why America maintains alliances with fellow democratic nations in Europe and beyond. The reason they miss is that collective security was, and remains, the key to realizing the unprecedented global stability they take for granted. This ignorance has bred contempt, which is why the president is intent on exploiting and threatening America’s allies. At a certain point, they will cease to be just that.
Thomas Hobbes recognized that life in mankind’s natural state was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” If the current administration succeeds at tearing down all of Chesterton’s fences that surround it, the nation will realize that its natural state is much the same.
This article has been updated to include a more accurate hyperlink to demonstrate Puri’s argument regarding police defunding.
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Delta Delta Delta loses house for 2025-2026 academic yearThe sorority failed to meet their minimum occupancy requirements and, despite meeting with Fraternity and Sorority Life staff last Tuesday, will not receive their house back.
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The Stanford chapter of the Delta Delta Delta (Tri Delta) sorority will no longer be housed at their current residence, 702 Bowdoin St., next year after failing to meet University minimum occupancy requirements, according to an email that members of the sorority received.
Members of the sorority met with Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL) staff last Tuesday to discuss the change. Although Tri Delta tried to appeal the decision, their attempt was ultimately unsuccessful due to missing the deadline, said member Anna Klein ’28.
“We know this is not the decision you had hoped for; however, we remain committed to supporting your organization during this time of transition and into the future,” wrote Associate Vice Provost Samuel Santos and Fraternity and Sorority Life Director Amanda Rodriguez in the joint email, which The Daily reviewed.
Santos also wrote in an email to The Daily that members who previously planned to live in the house would be able to apply for non-Greek housing using the regular house and room assignment process. Additionally, the sorority will be able to reapply for housing during the 2025-2026 year for the 2026-2027 year.
“Delta Delta Delta is an important part of fraternity and sorority life and Stanford’s residential community,” Santos wrote.
The Daily has reached out to Tri Delta’s leadership for comment.
For Klein, the decision was disappointing. “The hardest part, though, will be attracting new members to the org next year during rush, since having the house is a big attraction,” she said. “There are several people who have already dropped from our pledge class because of the house.”
However, Klein remains optimistic. “Sisterhood is more than just a place, it’s the people,” she said.
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Four Stanford students named Goldwater ScholarsFour undergraduate students received the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship, which connects them with mentors, aids them with costs and aims to foster their love for research.
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Eric Markarian ’26, Jennifer Hamad ’26, Katherine Healzer ’26 and Michelle Park ’26 received this year’s Goldwater scholarship, joining the 113 Stanford students who have earned the title since 1989, the scholarship’s inaugural year.
“Becoming a Goldwater Scholar is a testament to the life-long commitment I have made to serve humanity and science through academic research,” Hamad wrote.
Goldwater Scholars receive an annual fund of $7,500 for academic achievement in “natural sciences, engineering and mathematics” for the duration of their college education. This year, a total of 441 college sophomores and juniors across the country received the award.
The Goldwater Scholarship is named after Arizona senator and Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater and was established as a “living memorial” to him.
The four Stanford Goldwater recipients each discovered a passion for research at a young age.
Park, who is studying engineering physics and pursuing a coterminal degree in computational and mathematical engineering, first became interested in physics after reading Neil deGrasse Tyson’s books and watching “Cosmos” while growing up.
“I had my very first science fair project in eighth grade where I made a model of the solar system with magnets,” Park said. “That was my first exposure [to] research.”
Park is currently a researcher in physics professor Risa Wechsler’s galaxy formation and cosmology group. She recently started working on a complex cosmological modeling project, using computer simulations of the universe to “bridge the gap between what we observe and what our models predict about how galaxies have evolved over time,” Park wrote.
Markarian began clinical volunteering in high school and came to Stanford interested in the pre-medical track. He cemented this passion when he received his first research position freshman year in the Airan Lab, where he still works.
The lab is investigating whether focused ultrasound can remove disease-related brain byproducts — such as those from Alzheimer’s, strokes or hemorrhages — to reduce long-term damage.
“A big part of what I’ve been doing over the last couple years is figuring out if we can get things out of the brain with this modulation tech,” Markarian said.
Markarian decided to create his own undergraduate major, bioengineering and health systems design, after feeling misaligned with biology, human biology and bioengineering (BioE). The major, he said, is “a mix of BioE” with “engineering, tech and public health.”
Markarian hopes to make an impact in healthcare by engineering medical technologies. “You can make something, but if it’s not made for the people who actually need it, and they can’t access it, then in my opinion there was no point in making it,” he said.
Hamad was first exposed to scientific research when she was 12 years old. “I knew it was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” she wrote to The Daily. Her research today relates to investigating unsolved medical problems, such as cancer and HIV.
Healzer currently works as a medical researcher. She studies biology and was inspired to become a researcher with the goal of “curing blindness” by “reversing the progression of glaucoma,” the world’s leading cause of irreversible blindness, she wrote.
Several of the students cited support from professors and the principal investigators in their labs, emphasizing the importance of mentorship in inspiring their research. The Goldwater Scholarship also includes a program that matches students with mentors in similar fields.
Park shared that she met geophysics and electrical engineering professor Dustin Schroeder at a national tournament in middle school and has been his mentee ever since. “[I am] deeply grateful for his incredible mentorship and support over the years,” Park said.
Students pointed out that the community of Goldwater Scholars has already been a rewarding one.
“The Goldwater community has been deeply inspiring, as it is a group of students from across the country who are incredibly passionate about science and discovery,” Healzer wrote to The Daily. “I have enjoyed connecting with other scholars, sharing ideas and learning about their diverse areas of research.”
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Students and faculty advocate for academic freedom at pro-democracy rallyOn Friday, students gathered in White Plaza for “Stand for Democracy,” a day of action organized by Stanford Education and Democracy United in the face of recent attacks on academic freedom.
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Over 100 students rallied in White Plaza Friday afternoon to support academic freedom and free expression amid the Trump administration’s standoff with U.S. universities. The demonstration, titled “Stand For Democracy,” was organized by the Stanford chapter of Education and Democracy United (EDU), a national group of educators and students formed at Tufts University after the detention of Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk.
The event ran from 12 to 3 p.m. and featured student and faculty speeches, student band performances and tabling by campus organizations including StanfordVotes, the Stanford American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Stanford Women in Politics (SWIP), Students for Educational Equity (SEE) and the Stanford chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
The “day of action” arrived as a response to federal policy changes affecting college campuses across the country, such as freezes on federal funding for universities, the detention of student activists like Öztürk and the revocations of visas for international students.
“The stakes for higher education and democracy at Stanford in the wider U.S. are very, very high right now,” said Stanford EDU founder and Outreach Coordinator Turner Van Slyke ’28 in an opening speech. “Alone, it’s really easy to feel powerless in response to these attacks… If we want this to stop, we have to work together.”
Van Slyke described the event’s mission in three words: urgency, agency and longevity. He and the EDU team aimed to spark concern over threats to academic freedom and rally support for a sustained pro-democracy movement at Stanford, Van Slyke said.
EDU Director of Media and Communications Jennifer Levine ’28, an opinions managing editor for The Daily, said that she has observed political apathy at Stanford, which she believes stems from a feeling of helplessness that arises in the face of a “barrage of bad news.” Levine hoped that “Stand for Democracy” would help combat such apathy by providing people with the means to take action.
“What this does, more than anything, is build community in a forward-facing way,” Levine said. “So when the time comes to put pressure potentially on any… [violation of] educational democracy, we have a population of students behind us ready to mobilize.”
Organizers said their initiative was nonpartisan, despite its opposition to actions by the Trump administration. “No matter where you fall on either side of the partisan line, I think that people can agree that we want to keep schools as pillars of democracy,” said EDU Event Coordinator Amelia Overstreet ’28.
Van Slyke echoed this sentiment. “This is not about resisting a specific party or politician,” he said. “It’s about building a better, freer university system.”
During the event, participating clubs offered letter writing to congress members, phone banking and public art activities. Student bands Marmalade and Richard and the Red Flags also performed live music.
Morgan Rangel ’28, a friend of Overstreet and Levine, said she was inspired to see the community unite in support of democratic ideals.
“I saw how much care my friends put into this event and how passionate they are,” Rangel said. “I’m just so proud of them, and it brings me hope for the future.”
The event brought together students and faculty. Anna Bigelow, a religious studies professor and a member of Stanford Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP), said she was grateful to collaborate with other campus organizations concerned about democracy.
“This is exciting because there’s all these other groups that are trying to raise awareness, to have conversations about voting, about freedom, academic freedom, about immigration,” Bigelow said. “We really feel strongly that Stanford should be aware and active about all the things that are happening in the world.”
EDU organizers said the event was only the beginning of their work. “This isn’t a one and done thing — this is an ongoing effort,” Overstreet said. “And by being visible today, hopefully we’ll get more Stanford students on board for the EDU chapter at Stanford.”
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Cold moon, hot questions: NASA director studies life beyond EarthNASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory director Laurie Leshin discussed various outer space endeavors in an earth and planetary science seminar open to Stanford faculty and staff on April 15.
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A thick icy shell spans the surface of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. Beneath it lies a vast ocean — twice the volume of our planet’s — that teems with the possibility of life. This body of salt water lends potential clues to inform NASA scientists studying life beyond Earth.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) launched the Europa Clipper mission in 2024 — one of many projects that aim to tackle the fundamental question of whether we are alone in the universe. But how does an icy moon hundreds of millions of miles away help in answering it?
In an earth and planetary sciences seminar last month, JPL’s director Laurie Leshin shared video montages and context for projects like the one sent to Europa. She said that the answer to the origin of life remains elusive given the messy nature of the Earth’s archaeological record — wind, weather and water have disorganized ancient evidence that contains the first billion years of solar system history. Thus, scientists have had to turn elsewhere for answers, and Europa has shown evidence of possessing a massive sub-surface salty ocean, exciting the planetary community.
Ocean worlds in solar systems like our own are “the best places today that we might actually find evidence of extant living things,” Leshin said, generating nods from the audience of Stanford faculty and staff in a Geology Corner classroom.
The Europa Clipper will perform 50 flybys of the moon while in orbit around Jupiter, gathering data on its composition, geology and surface interactions that will provide information about potential habitability.
“As someone deeply passionate about space exploration, I’m always astonished by the complexity behind these large-scale missions,” said Vittorio Colicci, a first-year earth and planetary science Ph.D. student. “[Leshin] described spacecraft as ‘modern cathedrals,’ which I think perfectly captures the hard work and vision that brings them to life.”
Laura Schaefer, a planetary sciences professor who attended the seminar, believes that missions dedicated to studying Earth and sending technology beyond our orbit are not mutually exclusive endeavors.
“It’s like shower thoughts. You are working on one thing, and you discover something totally different,” Schaefer said. “There’s a lot of ways in which exploring other planets is beneficial to us.”
In the past, studying Mars’ atmosphere as a dusty giant has helped scientists understand how dirt and debris affect climate patterns on Earth. Similarly, Venus exemplifies the conditions of the runaway greenhouse effect, in which the accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere continuously traps heat. While Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations differ vastly from those that caused the runaway effect on Venus, studying its chemical makeup has helped researchers understand what Earth’s threshold of CO2 emissions might be.
Even if the Europa mission does not identify life, scientists remain open to unexpected discoveries. Anton Ermakov, an assistant professor and planetary scientist, is involved in JPL’s Juno spacecraft studying Jupiter. He said that while scientists base missions on an expected hypothesis, the actual data often challenge the very nature of the questions they ask.
“If we discover life forms on different planets, I would not be surprised if they were so different from what the Earth life forms,” Ermakov said. “That would lead to a complete transformation of our understanding of biology and evolution.”
Results from the spacecraft are fast approaching. April 11 marked five years until the mission reaches Jupiter’s orbit.
For a moon that lies 390 million miles away, “It’s practically tomorrow that we will be out at Jupiter and seeing what’s going on with Europa,” Leshin said.
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‘Dear Boomer’: AI and changing timesIn the latest installment of "Dear Boomer," Helen Hudson '74 gives advice to students about AI, a difficult job decision and the importance of change in friendships.
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Fifty years ago, I rode my Kawasaki from Portola Valley onto campus, usually squeaking into class just in time. While much has changed since then, one thing has remained constant: our humanness. We still search for meaning and need connection. We still have dreams, and we still screw up. In the last 50 years, as I’ve changed careers and locations, I’ve never stopped appreciating and observing my fellow companions. So, “Ask Boomer” anything. Surprise me. Life is short. Let’s add on to it.
— Helen Hudson ’74
Want your question to be featured in the next column? Ask Helen here!
What are your thoughts on artificial intelligence (AI) — should students be using it or does it compromise academic integrity?
AI is a universal game changer and with us to stay. “Artificial,” though, means “not authentic.” AI cannot understand either our intentions or our motivations, and that is why human input and guidance is crucial.
As a student, it’s great for research and technicalities — but not for voice. If you don’t make the work your own, you won’t achieve confidence in your skills. A law professor friend of mine said he can always tell if a student’s paper was generated by AI. “It reads like the taste of those mashed potato flakes you get in a box,” he said.
Personally, I dislike both ChatGPT and autocorrect because I rarely like the suggestions they proffer. Besides, would you send an AI-generated letter to a lover? Any astute soul will catch the counterfeit. As for integrity, if you compromise your personal code in anything, everything else is tainted by association.
What do I do if I am choosing between two jobs? One pays better and sets me up for a better future, which matters to me as a first-generation student. The other seems more exciting and is more aligned with my interests but is higher risk. How do I make peace with my decision either way?
First, you can never guarantee what will, “set you up for a better future.” You simply don’t know, nor can you predict it. The promise of “better pay” is not only fleeting but often not worth the gruel of the work.
Second, if another job is “more aligned” with your interests and “more exciting,” it’s a no-brainer. Grab it. The best time to “take risks” is when you are young and just beginning — not when you’re 40 and have kids and a mortgage.
As a first-generation student, you understand struggle and have a resilience that the more entitled likely do not. So, be brave. Remember, you never really “make peace,” with a decision. You “find peace” when you choose what is more aligned with your true self. If you start with that, you cannot go wrong.
It’s junior year, and I feel like my friends and I are completely different from the people we were when we met. Is that normal?
You’re probably not “completely” different, just different enough that you can see the changes in yourselves. It’s normal and healthy. It means you are changing, and while it can feel scary, embrace it. Change puts a bounce in your step and renews your outlook. Without it, life has no meaning.
Would you want to go back to your awkward years? Change is also the main reason that relationships don’t last. One person changes faster or differently than the partner and the gap between them grows too wide. If you’re lucky, you’ll continue to change until you die. If you’re luckier, you’ll have a great friend or two who keeps step with you over your lifetime.
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University ‘not aware’ of reported higher education collective opposing Trump administrationThe University said it is “not aware of this effort, if it exists, or of any peer institutions involved in it” following a Wall Street Journal report last Monday.
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The University is “not aware” of a collective of prestigious universities opposing the Trump administration, wrote University spokesperson Dee Mostofi in an email to The Daily.
According to reporting from The Wall Street Journal last Monday, the informal private group, which includes Ivy League institutions and leading private research universities, has strategized responses to Trump’s attacks on academic autonomy, research funding and international enrollment.
“We are not aware of this effort, if it exists, or of any peer institutions involved in it,” Mostofi wrote, adding that Stanford is, however, working with peer universities “on actions to advance higher education.”
The Trump administration’s extensive demands for Harvard last month, which called for changes in leadership and hiring practices and “audits” of alleged bias in classrooms, reportedly accelerated the collective’s discussions. University president Jonathan Levin ’94 and Provost Jenny Martinez have publicly backed Harvard’s resistance to Trump’s demands, writing that the school’s objections are “rooted in the American tradition of liberty.”
However, University leaders have faced criticism for not doing enough to oppose the Trump administration. An open letter authored last month, which now has nearly 3,000 signatures from Stanford community members, urged Levin and Martinez to publicly condemn the Trump administration’s actions toward higher education.
Last week, Levin also faced criticism for his decision not to sign a public letter challenging federal “overreach and political interference” in higher education, which was signed by peer institutions such as Harvard and Princeton. Levin defended his absence at a Faculty Senate meeting, citing his preference not to sign open letters.
Members of the Trump administration are concerned about universities banding together in resistance to its policies and have warned at least one school to abstain from such cooperation, according to The Wall Street Journal.
For his part, Levin said there “should be more cooperation” between universities at a Stanford Political Union (SPU) event last month and has often referenced the University’s involvement in lawsuits opposing Trump’s research cuts.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that some university leaders expressed concern that openly backing Columbia after the university received federal funding threats in March could provoke retaliation from the Trump administration. While the coalition of university presidents reportedly has no intention of ceding operational control, the Journal noted they may consider superficial concessions to appease the White House.
The University has not expressed public support for Columbia.
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Daily Diminutive #058 (May 5, 2025)Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords three times a week and a full-size crossword biweekly.
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Her POV: ‘Actual People’ chooses to lose post-grad bluesIn her directorial debut, “Actual People,” Asian American filmmaker Kit Zauhar stars in a comedy about a young woman making disastrous choices in her final week of college.
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“Actual People” (2021) begins with a poem titled “I Know I Am Not an Easy Woman.” This epigraph immediately invites questions about what kind of difficult woman will be portrayed. Is she difficult because she resists patriarchal conditioning and speaks out against sexist oppression? Or is she difficult because she is plagued by unfortunate events caused by her lack of decorum? Riley (Kit Zauhar) is decidedly in the latter camp, a fact that makes her both compelling and exasperating to watch.
Riley is a 22-year-old biracial Asian American college senior stuck in a state of arrested development. She is about a week away from graduation and describes herself as “absolutely terrified” of what comes next. Her lack of post-grad plans earns her a steady stream of admonishments in nearly every conversation. As a philosophy major, she declares she has no skills; the bigger issue is that she has made no plans. The film chronicles the series of increasingly disastrous choices she makes as she avoids thinking about what comes next.
As easy as it is to cringe at Riley, it is hard not to root for her. She is winsome and surrounded by friends who love her. She is also reeling from heartbreak: her long-term boyfriend broke up with her, and she is making up for lost time by exploring hookup culture and pursuing a new crush.
Riley’s ne’er-do-well nature informs much of the humor. In one scene, she realizes she has forgotten about the deadline for a paper. Her classmate suggests she try Adderall to help her focus. Her first time on the substance allows her to complete the assignment, but she ends up enduring an awkward conversation with her professor, who informs her she is failing the course. The scene highlights her passivity and inability to fight for herself. Riley’s biggest concern? Whether she will still be able to walk at graduation if she has to retake the course during the summer.
The trouble with walking around with a broken heart is that it can make you feel like nothing matters. Interestingly, there is a parallel between Riley no longer being half of a couple and her difficulty navigating her biracial identity. During an outing with friends, there is a debate about whether Asian Americans should benefit from affirmative action. Riley remains mum on the subject.
At another point, Riley offers to get boba tea with a white male friend. She is unsure if she likes boba, but all the other Asian and Asian American students drink it, and she does not want to feel left out. This invitation leads to a microaggression that Riley notices but does not quite know how to challenge.
In addition to starring as Riley, Zauhar wrote and directed the film. “Actual People” is her directorial debut and a work of autofiction. Zauhar also took inspiration from her life by casting her sister, Vivian Zauhar, as Riley’s younger sister, Valerie. Vivian is a breath of fresh air in the role — extremely charismatic and a natural performer in front of the camera. Valerie also embodies a different version of the “difficult woman” archetype: she is assertive, unapologetic and willing to deceive to get her way.
Whereas Riley faces critique and skepticism from peers and professors, it’s Valerie who levies the harshest blow. During a tense argument, she tells her older sister that she has “no sense of self.” Riley prides herself on never being offended, but Valerie’s words cut deep. Riley has been so busy distracting herself — pretending that college is not “real life”— that she’s never had the conviction to just pick something to be and give it her best.
Visually, the film has a cinéma vérité quality. The handheld camera work and extended scenes of dialogue are used to confer an organic look to the film. Voiceover is used for text messages, with characters using flat intonations to convey information, underscoring how easily meaning gets lost in digital communication. There are also small vignettes — styled like Instagram stories — that appear on screen throughout the film. It is a microcosm of how people use technology to keep tabs on one another even as they remain emotionally out of touch.
My affinity for “Actual People” stems from how sharply it underscores the problems of living in an information-saturated society. Knowing more doesn’t make it any easier to know what to do with your life. However, that doesn’t spare us from the responsibility of choosing how to live — even if we’re committed to being difficult people.
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Meet Gordon Chang: From Piedmont to pioneering Asian American history at StanfordFor history professor Gordon Chang, studying history “places individual experiences in a broader continuum and context,” which is reflected in his work as a scholar of Asian American history.
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“To understand an Asian American experience, one needs to understand history, society, sociology, culture, religious ideas — that’s what constitutes Asian American studies,” Gordon Chang M.A. ’72 Ph.D. ’87, history professor and the Olive H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities, told The Daily.
For Chang, studying history is also personal. “It places individual experiences in a broader continuum and context,” he said. “That’s why I would recommend everybody study their own history to have an understanding of what comes before us, why we wind up where we are, who we are.”
Born in Hong Kong, Chang was raised in Oakland’s Piedmont neighborhood. After studying history and East Asian Studies at Princeton, he came to Stanford for his graduate degrees in history. Chang returned to Stanford to teach in 1990, focusing on race and ethnicity, diplomatic history and Asian American history.
Chang’s interest in the field is rooted in his family. His family’s public engagement as Asian Americans has provided him with a valuable model, he said.
Chang’s father was a Chinese artist who immigrated to the United States during World War II. “He was always involved in trying to promote the relationship between the East and the West, so that always intrigued me,” Chang said.
His mother was a third-generation Chinese American who grew up in California. Members of his maternal family were “involved in different civic organizations and pioneering as Chinese Americans in different fields,” he said.
Chang’s aunt, for example, was the first Chinese American school teacher in San Francisco. “She became very well known as a civic leader but also as an educator,” Chang said. “Today she has a school named after her: Alice Fong Yu Alternative School,” the nation’s first Chinese immersion public school, established in 1995.
“I’m very proud of their accomplishments and their pioneering spirit. Because of them, I was always interested in US-Asia relations and Chinese American history,” he said.
Attending school during the years of the Vietnam War was another “transformative experience” for Chang, sparking his interest in U.S.-Asia relations further.
Chang directed Stanford’s Asian American Studies Program from 1996 to 2002 and the Center for East Asian Studies from 2012 to 2016. In 2012, he created and co-directed the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America at Stanford Project, recovering the history of an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Chinese migrants who constructed the first transcontinental railroad between 1863 and 1869. From 2019 to 2022, Chang was also the senior associate vice provost for undergraduate education.
History professor Albert Camarillo, who has known Chang for almost 40 years and collaborated with him to build the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), wrote that “Gordon is one of a small group of faculty who have successfully bridged the gap between the University and the broader public by bringing humanities research to the Asian American community and beyond.”
Last year, Chang also co-founded the Asian American Research Center at Stanford (AARCS) with music professor Stephen Sano and psychology professor Jeanne Tsai. Chang currently serves as the inaugural director of AARCS.
Tsai wrote that Chang’s “genuine knowledge, expertise, warmth, level-headedness, inclusiveness, trustworthiness [and] generosity” sets him apart from most in the field.
“He is the perfect person to lead AARCS, especially at this moment in time, when we need leaders who we can admire and trust to do what’s best for our communities,” Tsai added.
Growing up, Asian Americans were “relegated to spots here and there, very much marginal — invisibly, culturally and politically,” Chang said.
His high school in Piedmont had two non-white students — Chang and a Japanese American classmate — out of a graduating class of 200. At Princeton, among his class of 800, Chang recalled three Chinese Americans, two Japanese Americans, 15 Black Americans and one Puerto Rican student.
While at Princeton, Chang took to the East Asian studies program and Chinese history — especially the imperial era before Sun Yat-sen and the republican era — because of personal ancestry and his curiosity about post-revolutionary, communist China.
“China was a big unknown. This is now post-revolutionary China — communist China — and in the news there was so much worry of war between the United States and China. I really wanted to know a lot more about it,” he said.
While Chang was a student, however, Chinese history post-1945 “didn’t exist academically,” he said. Because of a lack of available documents about communist China, history departments felt it was difficult to understand contemporary China, much less teach it. Seeing this, Chang decided to pursue his graduate studies at Stanford because of history professor emeritus Lyman Van Slyke, who studied the Chinese communist movement.
When Chang first went to college in the early 1970s, he saw a “dismissive attitude” toward ethnic history, which included Asian American history. “There was a prejudice that said ‘there’s really not much to study [and] Chinese Americans are not much of a topic,’” he said.
“Government records and other historical records are overwhelmingly populated by material generated by the white population,” Chang said. “People just didn’t think non-whites were very important, so we didn’t have that collection of material.”
“But that was all very wrong, and that’s what I’ve faced over these years being a faculty member — locating primary materials, source material and writing,” he said.
In his scholarship, Chang has sought sources including biographical records of Chinese immigrants from immigration services on Angel Island, records from the Chinese American Civic Alliance organization in San Francisco (now stored at Green Library) and diaries and letters that regularly turn up.
Camarillo wrote to The Daily that Chang’s “public history work in the telling of the story of Chinese railroad workers of the 19th century is a good example of how he has wonderfully promoted public history.”
Lately, Chang has seen growing interest in the academic field in Chinese American history in America, as well as overseas and diasporic Chinese history in China.
“So many people left [China], and the lives they led overseas in Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Europe, United States, Africa, all attracted a lot of interest,” Chang said. “There’s a lot more effort to recover that history, so I think there’s certainly much more activity around studying Chinese American history than in the past.”
For Chang, seeing this growth of interest in Chinese American history, for example in curricula of American history, “has been encouraging.”
Chang’s latest step in his Stanford career has evolved with his daughter, Chloe Chang ’25. “It’s been fun for me to hear from her what her life at Stanford as a student is like,” he said. “It’s very different. I see Stanford from being a professor, a teacher and … an administrator, but now I understand it as a parent.”
Chloe and her sister Maya Chang, a junior at University of California, San Diego, wrote to The Daily, “our dad has always been pretty humble and has high standards. When I was young, I didn’t realize how much work he did, or how famous he was. As I got older, I would casually mention that my dad was Professor Gordon Chang and people would be shocked! People always say things like ‘you do know that your dad is a real rockstar right?’”
“I see him talking to his students, and I can tell he really cares about them and their work and learning… I run into him a lot on campus and it’s always really funny, but nice to see him. I surprised him by showing up to one of his classes the other week just to say hi,” Chloe wrote.
“We jointly mentored several grad students over the years, so I witnessed his insightful and supportive approach to training young scholars,” wrote Estelle Freedman, history professor emerit.
As a pioneer in Asian American Studies and Asian American History, Chang “has played a pivotal role in building the Asian American community at Stanford and beyond through his support of generations of Asian American faculty, students and staff,” Tsai wrote.
“I think all roads lead to Gordon — everyone knows and loves him as a colleague, scholar, teacher, mentor and friend,” Tsai wrote.
“He is an academic at heart, always analyzing situations and his sources. We know he is becoming even more recognized for his work … because he has done a lot that has gone unnoticed or unappreciated,” Chloe wrote.
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Chang’s aunt was the first Chinese American school teacher in San Francisco to teach speech therapy, when she was actually the first Chinese American school teacher in San Francisco in general.
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R&DE expands housing for class of ’29In order to accommodate an approximate increase of 150 incoming freshmen, R&DE expanded two upperclass dorms into four-class residences.
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Due to an expected 150 student increase to the freshman class of 2029, Stanford’s Residential and Dining Enterprises (R&DE) has expanded housing for undergraduate students, changing two dorms to four-class residences: Junipero and Sally Ride.
This increase in enrollment was announced by University president Jonathan Levin ’94 during a Faculty Senate meeting on April 10. Levin said that the “creation of educational opportunity” is an “important response” to the national uncertainty regarding federal funding of universities.
“The fact of the matter is that we turn away many, many qualified students. It’s within our capability to educate more of them and to share the knowledge that we create in more expansive ways,” Levin told the Senate.
Previously, Junipero, located in Wilbur Hall, and Sally Ride, located in Stern Hall, were upperclass dorms only. Next year, an expected 50% of the rooms will be filled by incoming freshmen.
“R&DE worked with our partners in Student Affairs to identify where the additional frosh would be assigned. Junipero and Sally Ride were chosen because they are locations that have predominantly one room doubles,” R&DE spokesperson Jocelyn Breeland wrote in an email to The Daily.
“Frosh will be assigned to these residences according to the process outlined in the Approaching Stanford information they will receive over the summer. The locations of frosh rooms within these residences will be determined by [Residential Education],” Breeland wrote.
Undergraduate students at Stanford are guaranteed four years of on-campus housing, and all freshman housing assignments are made in random order. The freshman dorm experience is defined by a strong sense of community and traditions, such as “on calls” on Friday and Saturday nights and dorm trips funded by the University and at times, additional student payment.
“We’re thrilled to welcome frosh into the Junipero community. The frosh housing experience at Stanford is so special, and it’s an honor to be part of it,” Cynthia Bailey, Junipero resident fellow (RF) and senior lecturer in computer science, wrote to The Daily.
A current Junipero resident assistant (RA), who requested anonymity for fear of professional retaliation, said they were “surprised” by the decision to make Junipero a four-class dorm, “given that it’s one of the only dorms left in Wilbur that does have upperclassmen.”
“I can tell you that a frosh dorm is a lot more work; it’s a lot more intensive, and I think the energy in the dorm is very different than an upperclass dorm,” the RA said. “There have been dorms that have done really well with it and definitely others that have struggled quite a bit with it.”
The RA shared that not all six Junipero RAs have been hired for the next year, which they believe influenced the decision to change the makeup of Junipero.
“I was a little surprised that [R&DE] was giving them frosh, just because [the RFs] are so new to it,” the RA said. “But, I wish them the best of luck and that they find the community balance they want.”
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On birthdaysSakamoto writes about her 19th birthday, which was both a celebration and a loss in different ways.
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There is a certain terror that accompanies the rudimentary nature of our being. And I guess it took me nineteen years to arrange these words, these feelings, onto a piece of paper.
Like any birthday, this one left as abruptly as it came. Like any birthday, I tried to coexist amidst its insufferable contradictions. Birthdays are simultaneously the mourning of an end and the celebration of a beginning. It marks the end of childhood (long lost, I know) and the beginning of adulthood (I’m mired in it, I know). It is the grieving of all that we once were, and a crystallizing hope for all that we aspire to become. It is perhaps one of the greatest contradictions that life has to offer us: a funeral and birth conspired into one lap around the sun. At least, that’s the dramatized form of it.
What I struggle to understand, every year, is why birthdays ought to carry any meaning at all. Gabriel Garcia Marquez famously writes in 100 Years of Solitude, “Everyday is Monday.” Taylor Swift sings in “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”, “I act like it’s my birthday everyday.” These questions, eliciting poetically elusive resolutions, have time and time again been expressed by some of the greatest writers, poets and singer/songwriters of our time. So, why do they continue to charm us? Why do they continue to plague us?
The easy answer lies in the idea that we ought to celebrate our existence, and that of others. The more challenging one, however, lies in a kind of revealing that is far more intrusive.
Having a determined day to celebrate our being has become an excuse to take the rest of our days for granted. Professor Lowry Pressly’s words, a short remark at the end of my tech ethics seminar rings clearer each day, “Like the flip of a switch, we just expect the light to turn on. We have come to expect things.” We are continuously ensnared in the trap of believing that everything will always come — today and tomorrow — as they are. We forget the fundamental impermanence of all things.
We readily neglect the “insignificant” moments that weave themselves into the story of our lives, until the things we prescribe as “important” have been submitted to canvas — we have become so submissive. In turn, we are blind to the beauty that resides before our eyes amidst neverending deadlines: assigned dates ascribed to assigned meanings. We convince ourselves that they hold meaning.
I try not to think about all that I forget to celebrate. But I ought to. And so do you. Birthdays have become an excuse to reject celebrating the wealth of joy that exists in everyday, mundane magic.
I’m not trying to say that birthdays don’t carry any meaning or that they shouldn’t. Certainly, they do. Certainly, we should celebrate ourselves and our loved ones — especially when they inspire a gathering that reminds us of our tethered truths. This beautiful and sacred tradition should be protected, but we must recognize a wrinkle to this truth. A random day out of the year shouldn’t justify a self-inflicted starvation of the everyday promise that reveals itself to us — if only we look, if only we live. So don’t wait 365 days to celebrate the gift of life. After all, we are always just beginning.
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Next Creator Collective unites creators in communityThe Next Creator Collective, formed by Tyler Newman ’25 and Jenny Duan ’26, seeks to make space for content creators on campus.
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From “Day in the Life of a Stanford Student” vlogs to room tours to college decision reaction videos, many students craft a creative online persona to go along with their in-person identity.
However, content creation can be a lonely business; each step of scripting, filming and editing is usually a solo endeavor, and it can be hard to stay motivated. Feeling the lack of community in their work, content creators Tyler Newman ’25 and Jenny Duan ’26 formed the Next Creator Collective in December 2023 to establish a community for content creators on campus.
The Next Creator Collective holds weekly creator hours on campus for student creators to come together and work on content. Duan said these hours designated for content creation are “a space for people to workshop and hold themselves accountable.”
The collective’s largest initiative so far has been the Creators on Campus conference held April 5. The conference drew over 100 student creators from Stanford and other universities and featured popular content creators like Tim Chau, founder of Impact Media, and Lillian Zhang, a financial literacy influencer. Representatives from Adobe, YouTube and TikTok also shared about the future of the creator economy space.
Brighton Brown ’26 was the design lead for the conference and helped create promotional materials and slides. Designing for the conference helped Brown, who is not part of the Next Creator Collective, realize the passion that people poured into content creation.
“I don’t have any social media, and so I thought it was really cool to see how [content creation] is really a job for a lot of people,” she said.
Brown also sees an interplay between design and content creation. Notably, content creators don’t just focus on graphic design, but also on how their content speaks to their audiences.
“I’m a designer, so I think design is literally everywhere, but especially in content creation,” she said. “It’s not just the looks of your graphics, it’s how you design your content and how you want to address your audience. All of that is being designed, and so it’s kind of cool to see how intentional people are about addressing [their] audience.”
Newman told The Daily that many conference attendees formed friendships that led to dinner and beach trips afterward, and one attendee canceled their flight to stay an extra day.
“The biggest takeaway from the weekend was that people, even with really big follower accounts, feel lonely in this industry,” Newman said. “But I think an even bigger takeaway was that even though a lot of people do feel lonely, there can be community that can be built, and it can be strong and lasting as well.”
Stanford is also a unique place to be a content creator. According to Newman, there’s a strong demand for Stanford-specific content from people curious about life as a student, but the Stanford environment tends to devalue the work of content creators.
“There’s often a lot of taboo around content creation especially at a university like Stanford, where subjects [that are] more tech-related may be more valued,” Newman said. “If people see people with cameras out and recording themselves, there might be a stereotype like, ‘Why are you doing content when you’re at Stanford?’”
However, Newman believes that content creation is equally as valid as other forms of creative expression like art or dance, and pushes for more students to recognize the discipline and hard work of content creators.
Duan believes content creation is more important than ever with the advent of artificial intelligence. The human aspect of content creation, in which content highlights a creator’s personality, style or daily routine, can be more appealing than statistics or data in differentiating one from the crowd.
“When we say content creation, we don’t mean only making TikToks. It’s a really good way to establish credibility online, especially in a world where more and more people are turning towards the digital space for verification, discovery, connection and business opportunities,” she said.
Above all, Duan and Newman emphasize that Next Creator Collective seeks to act as a community space for current and aspiring creators. As technology continues to evolve, both see content creation becoming more influential and mainstream at Stanford.
“Being aware of and being receptive to new changes in terms of people’s use of technology — content creation being one of them — is really important, so that people don’t miss the wave of, ‘what’s next?’” Newman said.
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Daily Diminutive #057 (May 2, 2025)Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords three times a week and a full-size crossword biweekly.
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Winslow Homer paints a Darwinian dramaIn this painting, we meet a vulnerable, starving fox in a merciless winter landscape. How will it fare?
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Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
Seashore, Maine, dead of winter. Waves, deafening waves, assault the boulders lining the seashore. Snow, whalebone-white with blue undertones, blankets stone and soil by the waves. Tension, anxious stillness, smothers the landscape as it struggles against the weight of the snow.
Against this forbidding backdrop, American painter Winslow Homer (1836–1910) introduces us to a fox treading through the snowy foreground. A red fox, abundant in Maine. Homer’s is accurately black-eared and black-legged, its fur orange in the sun, a dollop of white crowning the tip of its tail.
But it’s thin, emaciated. Hungry and hunting. It must have been a week since its last meal; where, in this environment, could it find anything? 12 red berries hang from a leafless shrub to its left, a meager fare. There’s little else on the shoreline, a field of ice.
It’s also slipping, slipping in glacial quicksand. Its hind legs are being consumed, and gravity isn’t on its side. The snow is crunching underneath its feet, crisp and squeaky, thawed by its red-orange warmth.
In this 1893 canvas, we don’t see the fox face-to-face. It’s a kind of nonhuman “Rückenfigur,” a portrait from behind the subject that instantly thrusts us into its mind, body and predicament regardless of whether we so choose. Put differently, this painting is not merely an invitation to identify and sympathize with the animal, but a mandate to become it.
So, let’s follow Homer’s instructions and see what the fox might see, feel what the fox might feel.
The sharp but numbing pain of frigid ice crystals on your skin. The overwhelming stimulation of ocean and snow and wind and hunger and the ground giving way when you need it most — and then without warning, black masses begin circling above, their raucous caws piercing the raw bitter air, their pitch-black feathers rendering them demons in low light, flapping and cawing, cawing like laughing.
These crows, they’re ravenous, too. They’re in search of a meal hearty enough to feed all seven of them. The two ringleaders of the group have set their sights on our fox, beckoning over the remaining birds, eyeing it over and considering how best to proceed.
Do crows eat foxes? The painting’s title, “The Fox Hunt,” answers in the affirmative. But no matter; anything will eat anything if the conditions require it.
But, more pressingly, what is our fox to do? It has not the advantage of flight nor the energy to sustain a fight. It’s grounded by gravity and being pulled deeper down. It set out as a predator and now finds itself the prey. It suffers a reversal of fortunes and fates.
What looms in the air between one lone fox and seven restless crows — two directly above, five more incoming?
Homer considers this question carefully. He animates that air with kinetic drama, between the bellowing of the birds and the ruffling of their feathers. He charges it with electric anticipation in leaving open what comes next. And, crucially, he permeates it with a delicate precarity that binds both species, because they’re playing a zero-sum game. We’re bearing witness to a terrifyingly ruthless Darwinian struggle for the privilege of survival.
I want to turn your attention to the lower left corner of the composition, where Homer has signed (and dated) the picture. “HOMER,” in slanted capital letters half-sunken in snow. The serif on the “H” peeks out above the ice; so, too, with the bushy tail of the “R.” The front leg and tail of his signature overtly echo those of his fox.
What are the implications of this mirroring of forms? Homer implies that he identifies with this fox’s plight — or, at least, with the fox itself, often symbolic of shrewdness and cunning. He was 57 when he made this picture; was he thinking about the permanence of his life’s work and of his legacy? Darwin had published his theory of natural selection a mere three decades prior in 1859 — was this a commentary on the gut-wrenching reality of interspecies dynamics?
Or, considering that Homer loved the ocean and did indeed paint “The Fox Hunt” in winter, is this scene a broader meditation on the insignificance of any single temporal existence in the face of Nature and her forces?
These questions make me think of another, later work by Homer, one he created months before his death in 1909, sixteen years after “The Fox Hunt.” “Right and Left,” it’s called. It shows two goldeneye ducks, their plumage rendered with virtuosic precision, shot mid-flight by a hunter at sea. Two elegant, startled birds in that state of limbo between life and death, moments before falling into the waves, never again to fly.
It makes me think Homer is continually mulling over ideas about transience and legacy — and about how best to capture these tensions of life in paint. In his seascapes and shorescapes we find fearful and staggeringly beautiful depictions of violence, precarity and the exigencies of survival. These poetic pictures present themselves as open questions with little interest in specific, concrete answers. Their tensions and ambiguities are as complex as the natural dynamics they describe.
When Homer signed “The Fox Hunt” in letters half-obscured by snow, I wonder if he worried his legacy would suffer a similar fate, drowned out by vicissitudes of time and taste.
Today, he’s hardly a household name. But he need not worry. The paintings he left behind — those are timeless.
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From the Community | Why hasn’t Stanford signed the AACU letter?Janice Bressler ’77 calls upon University president Levin and Stanford to sign the American Association of Colleges and Universities letter and to defend — what she calls — a nonpartisan attack on democracy.
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As an alumna (‘77), a lawyer, a Jew and an American, I was baffled when I learned that Stanford had not signed the letter “Call for Constructive Engagement,” published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU). Signed so far by 568 universities, colleges and leaders, the letter constitutes a collective stand against the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to control and repress the students, faculty and administrations of the country’s institutions of higher learning. Trump’s weapons in this campaign include the illegal abductions of foreign students and the abrupt and massive defunding of university research. I started hunting for an explanation for Stanford’s silence.
At a meeting with the Stanford Faculty Senate, University president Jonathan Levin ’94 offered a defense of Stanford’s failure to sign on with the hundreds of other higher education signatories. Referring to the AACU letter, Levin told the Faculty Senate: “I don’t disagree with the sentiments in that letter, I just prefer not to sign open letters in general. I think it’s good practice at a university for people to formulate and express their own views.” Levin also seemed to suggest that verbally supporting Harvard’s resistance to the White House’s demands was enough to defend its students and faculty against censorship, abduction and defunding. To his credit, Stanford has also joined several lawsuits challenging White House cuts to Stanford’s research funding.
I agree with President Levin that “it’s good practice at a university for people to formulate and express their own views.” But that has nothing to do with acknowledging the vital importance of concerted and collective action in the fight now underway across the country over fundamental principles of academic freedom. This is not a partisan issue, and there can be no honest debate on this fact: the Trump administration is weaponizing the considerable power of the federal government to dismantle, intimidate and domesticate this country’s universities and colleges. In doing so, Trump and his cabinet are demeaning and flouting the rule of law.
I am asking that Stanford do the right thing and sign the AACU letter. I make that request not on the basis of any specialized expertise, but because of an urgent need to do everything possible to vigorously challenge Trump’s assault on our fundamental democratic institutions that is, at this point, self-evident. I am not suggesting that signing the AACU letter is without risk. I understand that President Levin and the trustees have concerns about possible retribution by the Trump administration in the form of further funding cuts. But as Columbia University has shown, a university’s attempts at appeasing Trump by complying with illegal and unprecedented demands may not protect its federal funding.
Moreover, there is no real ethical wiggle room in this situation. Silence and failure to use the full extent of Stanford’s power and prestige to resist an attack on the core principles of the academic enterprise is a kind of complicity.
The AACU is still accepting new signatures to its “Call for Constructive Engagement.” I hope that anyone reading this letter will join me in demanding that President Levin reconsider his refusal to sign the letter. If there is anyone interested in helping circulate a formal petition to that effect, I can be reached at the email below. By signing, Stanford will go on the record as joining hundreds of other colleges and universities in robust resistance to the Trump administration’s attacks on academic freedom and fundamental Constitutional rights. Collective statements by institutional actors have a persuasive and political power that individual statements cannot.
Janice Bressler received her BA from Stanford in 1977. She can be reached at janice.bressler@gmail.com
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UGS co-chair submits letter of resignationFollowing allegations of attempted election fraud, the UGS discussed a letter of resignation from co-chair Ivy Chen that arrived after a bill was introduced to expel her from the senate.
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Following accusations of attempted fraud in the recent ASSU election, Undergraduate Senate (UGS) co-chair Ivy Chen ’26 M.A. ’27 submitted a letter of resignation to the UGS eight minutes before the UGS weekly meeting Wednesday. Chen did not attend the meeting.
Prior to Chen’s resignation, the UGS was set to vote on a bill to expel Chen, who was running for Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) president, from the UGS for alleged election fraud. The bill accuses Chen of asking then-elections commissioner Christian Figueroa ’27 to “manipulate votes in her favor.” Figueroa resigned as head elections commissioner the next day.
During the ASSU election last week, the Elections Commission did not include Chen’s bid for ASSU president on the ballot when she could not find a vice president following her running mate and UGS co-chair, Gordon Allen ’26, withdrawing from the race.
Figueroa presented the bill to expel Chen alongside ASSU President Diego Kagurabadza ’25 during the Wednesday meeting.
“In my four years at the ASSU, this is the most egregious conduct, or at least allegation of conduct, that I have encountered, and these charges are detailed in the legislation,” Kagurabadza said.
Figueroa presented a document with a typed transcription of messages between Chen, Allen and himself at the meeting. The document alleges that Chen asked about “what individuals have access to the Qualtrics voting platform,” mentioned “a ‘nuclear option’ in which Figueroa could change people’s votes in her favor” and asked Figueroa “to pull through for” her “as a friend.”
“There is nothing for me to lose if I don’t win this,” Chen allegedly wrote to Allen. “I sound corrupt right now, but I have lost too much.”
The Daily obtained a copy of Figueroa’s document but was unable to verify its validity. The alleged messages on the document were typed, formatted and partially redacted by Figueroa.
Parliamentarian Noah Maltzman ’25 M.S. ’26 asked Figueroa why he failed to present the document at a UGS working session held Tuesday night. At the working session, Chen, Allen and Figueroa all presented their perspectives on the matter.
“There’s shady business all around. And the fact of the matter is, in my mind today, we did not get to see the full picture, and I don’t think we ever will,” Maltzman told The Daily on Wednesday. “The fact that Ivy was not here to defend herself really bothered me. I think that this almost felt like an unfair trial, quote-unquote.”
In her letter of resignation, Chen shared that “it was never [her] intention to interfere with or undermine the democratic process” and that she was “choosing to step down so that the Undergraduate Senate can continue its work without distraction.”
“To my knowledge, no concrete evidence supports the claims being made,” Chen wrote. “While I do not believe I acted with malicious intent — and never intended to compromise or manipulate any aspect of the election process — I understand how my words and behavior may have been misinterpreted or caused concern.”
Kagurabadza questioned if the UGS could “reject a resignation letter.” He said that Chen failed to “properly” acknowledge the attempted election fraud allegations in her letter.
According to Maltzman, while the UGS has no bylaws on rejecting a letter of resignation, the UGS cannot take action if a senator chooses to leave on their own accord.
“I’m quite disappointed that we offered her this option to consider resignation and provide a way to work through this expulsion bill without necessarily having to go through expulsion. I can only speak for myself, but because of this resignation, I am now more comfortable moving forward with the censureship bill,” UGS Appropriations Chair David Sengthay ’26 said.
Following Chen’s resignation letter, Sengthay encouraged the authors of the bill to amend it to a vote of formal censureship rather than expulsion.
UGS senators Celeste Vargas ’27 and Ethan Alfonso ’27 also voiced approval for moving forward on a bill to censure Chen.
“This is unsatisfactory to me, personally,” Vargas said.
The UGS also discussed the slate that won for senior class president, LIFT, which included two cabinet members not officially listed on the ticket. The Elections Commission issued a warning and a request for comment from LIFT, according to acting elections commissioner Gabriela Holzer ’25.
LIFT clarified that “to accommodate greater workload” the slate brought on two “leaders who’ve consistently shown their ability to plan and execute” in a statement to The Daily.
“While only four of us could be listed on the official ballot this past week, the reality is that our team of six will always continue to work as one,” the statement said. “It has always been LIFT’s intention to expand the Senior Class government to allow all six of us to serve as official Senior Class Presidents this upcoming year.”
The UGS will vote to certify the results of the election next week.
A previous version of this article misstated that the UGS, not the Elections Commission, issued a warning and request for comment from LIFT.
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Stanford alumna sentenced to four years in prison for DoorDash-style drug delivery serviceStanford alumna Natalie Maria Gonzalez ’15 was sentenced to four years in prison for operating the online drug delivery service, The Shop.
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Stanford alumna Natalie Marie Gonzalez ’15 was sentenced to over 50 months in prison last Friday for running an online drug delivery service. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Gonzalez was convicted of “conspiracy to distribute a mixture and substance containing methamphetamine.”
Gonzalez received her bachelor’s degree in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. During her time as an undergraduate, she was part of the Global Urban Development Project, Chocolate Heads Movement Band and Students for a Sustainable Stanford, among other student groups, according to her LinkedIn.
After graduating, she attempted to create multiple sustainability-related startups that “either flopped or dissipated due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to the sentencing memorandum. According to the University, she also re-entered Stanford in 2024 for a master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering.
In 2023, she started The Shop, an illicit on-demand drug trafficking service on the messaging platform Signal. The business ran from April to September 2023 before an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) investigation found the group’s stash at their Menlo Park location.
Gonzalez and her co-defendants exchanged cryptocurrency for cash to limit digital records and used “crypto mixers,” services that combine multiple users’ cryptocurrencies together, to conceal the money’s origin.
Attorney Daniel Pastor noted the business’s sophistication, writing that it was marketed as “offering the convenience of Silicon Valley order-and-delivery apps”.
The sentencing memorandum stated that Gonzalez’s offense level was affected by her role as the leader of the ring, her clean record and her admission of wrongdoing.
Gonzalez’s Stanford education and relatively comfortable upbringing were noted during her sentencing.
“Instead of using her intelligence and her social connections to obtain lawful employment or to continue striving to succeed as an entrepreneur, she created a Silicon Valley drug delivery service to enrich herself,” Pastor said in the sentencing memorandum. This was part of Pastor’s rationale for recommending a more serious sentence for Gonzalez than that of her co-defendants.
Pastor also remarked that Gonzalez did not seem to have considered her business as harmful. In a text sent to the OCDETF’s undercover agent, Gonzalez told the agent to “make sure we are sharing responsibly rather than contributing to addict[ions] that are damaging people.”
However, given the prevalence of fentanyl-laced drugs and Gonzalez’s own description of The Shop’s customer base as consisting mostly of “students and young professionals,” Pastor considered Gonzalez’s assumption to be “naive.”
Gonzalez pleaded guilty. In a letter to the court, she wrote that “[her] whole delusion came crashing down.”
“What once felt justifiable now feels deeply misguided,” Gonzalez wrote.
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GSC reviews OCS charter, assesses funding for club sportsThe Graduate Student Council suggested changes to the Office of Community Standards charter and reviewed funding requests for club sports and several graduate student groups during its April 28 meeting.
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The Graduate Student Council (GSC) reviewed a bill to ensure enforcement of the Office of Community Standards (OCS) charter during its Monday meeting. GSC co-chairs Emmit Pert, a fourth-year chemistry Ph.D. student, and Áron Ricardo Perez-Lopez, a third-year computer science Ph.D. student, authored the bill to protect due process rights for students and to keep the OCS accountable to its charter, they said.
“I find it problematic that the OCS has a mechanism where they can request you admit guilt before they have done any investigation,” Pert said. “It seems inherently problematic that you can offer plea bargains before you’ve done any investigation. No student should ever accept a plea bargain at the beginning if they think there’s any chance they’re going to be exonerated.”
Pert noted that he does not have an issue with the OCS providing students with an opportunity to accept responsibility before a trial but said he hopes the OCS can do a preliminary investigation and inform students as to whether there seems to be enough evidence to find them responsible for a violation.
The representative to the Faculty Senate Artem Arzyn ’26 M.S. ’26 shared her experience going through the OCS process as someone who was ultimately found not responsible during a four-hour hearing that took place 50 weeks after the initial notice.
“At the beginning of my process, my conduct counselor asked me, ‘Do you really want to spend so much time going through this process?’” Arzyn said. “There very much is pressure from within the system for people to accept responsibility.”
Arzyn also voiced her concerns about students using the OCS to target other students.
“Theoretically, a student could just submit a bunch of letters against people they don’t like saying they all cheated on an exam,” Arzyn said. “These students would then likely be pressured into accepting responsibility.”
Councilor Laurel Kim J.D. ’26 emphasized the impact the OCS process could have on a student’s reputation.
“Because of the sanctions being so traumatic, I’m sure for students they leave a big bearing on what you can do and what you’re known for on and off campus,” Kim said.
The GSC also reviewed funding for club sports. GSC treasurer Zev Granowitz ’23 Ph.D. ’27 said that certain sports were receiving an “inordinate amount” of funding, close to thousands of dollars per graduate student.
“We are trying to have clubs provide funding to teams based on their membership rather than based on how expensive the sport is,” Granowitz said.
Andy Yin, co-treasurer and third-year math Ph.D. student, emphasized that the GSC will still provide adequate funding for club sports, but that on their end, the clubs must use funding in a manner consistent with GSC principles.
“One of our principles is that students across the university should all have an equal opportunity to get roughly the same amount out of what they are paying in,” Yin said.
Additionally, the GSC approved funding requests for other graduate student groups, including the International Policy Students Association and Stanford Science Penpals.
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Stanford Light Opera Company prepares for historic Memorial Church productionStanford Light Opera Company is rehearsing for the first ever student-run musical in Memorial Church: “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
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Stanford Light Opera Company (SLOCo) is currently preparing for its upcoming show on May 9 and 10 — the first ever student-run musical to take place at Memorial Church. Inspired by Victor Hugo’s classic novel and Disney’s 1996 film adaptation, SLOCo will be adapting “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” the tragic story of Roma dancer Esmeralda and cathedral bell ringer Quasimodo, whose physical appearance has made him an infamous outcast.
“We are looking forward to showcasing themes such as ableism and persecution of different groups, including the Roma people,” said assistant director Arushi Agastwar ’25. “We hope to handle that in as sensitive a way as we can.”
Ashley Celada ’25, an ensemble member, added, “This musical brings us the opportunity to learn more about these topics, about cultural outcasts and about the Romani people. I feel like not a lot of other productions have really thought to look at that.”
Besides the show’s meaningful themes of justice, persecution, fate and freedom, something that makes this year’s production even more special is its staging in Memorial Church — a fitting location for a story that transpires in the Notre Dame Cathedral and incorporates Catholic themes.
“When I stepped into Memorial Church for the first time in order to see the show on stage, I thought I was in a different world,” Agastwar said. “Rather than a typical show, it’s more like an experience happening all around you.”
SLOCo will make use of the immense setting to draw the audience into the show. On opening night, attendees should expect the organ roaring at the back of the church, actors singing from the balcony and cast members moving through the audience itself.
“We’re beginning to break the barrier between traditional theater and what shows could look like in the future,” said technical director James Clark ’25. “Why does every show have to take place in a box? It doesn’t, and that’s the really fun thing we get to do here… I think [the audience’s] expectations are going to be met and surpassed, and that’s a testament to our hard work.”
With more than 100 people working on the production, including undergraduates, graduate students and community members, the show has also served as a gateway to bring a community of ambitious people together.
“It’s just such a beautiful amalgamation of so many different talents and skills. You have these incredible actors, you have the best sound techs, you have the best scenic designers, the best lighting designers, everyone coming together to build this masterpiece of a show,” Clark said.
This year’s production includes seasoned members of SLOCo as well as first-year members like Emily Mannion ’27, who plays the lead role of Quasimodo. Mannion, whose parents met at Stanford through theatre, has always wanted to be part of performances like this.
Ensemble member Diego Ahmad-Stein ’24 M.S. ’25 referenced the solo musical performances in Disney’s film adaptation, promising that audience members “can definitely look forward to those being awesome in our production as well.”
After quarters of rehearsing, SLOCo is ready to transform one of Stanford’s most beautiful sites into medieval Paris.
“The cast that we have working on this project is incredible,” said Ahmad-Stein. “And I think if you come see the show, its specialness will speak for itself.”
Tickets for “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” are available for purchase here.
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Stanford Admit Weekend: ProFros Find The FarmStanford University welcomed the incoming class of 2029 for its annual Admit Weekend. Watch what the prospective freshman had to say about their time on The Farm.
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Stanford University welcomed the incoming class of 2029 for its annual Admit Weekend. Watch what the prospective freshman had to say about their time on The Farm.
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School Deans told to prepare for budget cutsIn a Tuesday email, School of Humanities and Sciences Dean Debra Satz directed program directors and chairs to model budget cuts of up to 15% in advance of a possible decrease in funding this September.
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Deans at the Graduate School of Business (GSB), Stanford Medicine and the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S) were directed to model budget cuts in their schools. H&S Dean Debra Satz requested that H&S program directors and chairs model the effects of “significant” budget cuts in their divisions in a Tuesday email obtained by The Daily.
The email stated that Satz and others in Stanford’s seven schools had been asked by Provost Jenny Martinez to model budget cuts and submit “high-level plans” for their implementation. H&S’s planning exercise involves modeling a 10% and 15% cut to general funds and a 10% cut to endowment funds.
Graduate School of Business (GSB) Dean Peter DeMarzo wrote in an email to the Daily that the GSB “received the same guidance as other units on campus.”
Stanford Medicine Chief Communications Officer Cecilia Arradaza wrote that, “In response to federal research funding changes, the School of Medicine, in alignment with the university, has established a Research Preparedness Task Force to ensure our community stays informed and equipped to navigate this shifting landscape.”
Stanford Law School (SLS) Dean George Triantis wrote, however, that he “wouldn’t have any information to contribute” regarding potential budget cuts.
Satz stated in the email that budget cuts of this nature may occur as soon as September 1, 2025.
“This is a difficult exercise, since there is a great deal of uncertainty about both the size and the timing of the cuts,” said Satz. “Still, it’s certain that cuts are coming.”
Satz wrote that H&S leadership has already sent “rough ranges” for budget cuts to the Directors of Finance and Operations (DFOs) and Associate Deans (ADs) of each program within the school. Satz also stated in the email that DFOs and ADs would receive training sessions to help execute the plans, but stressed that the exercise should be a “faculty led” effort with input from program directors.
These directives come at a time of financial uncertainty for the University. Martinez and University President Jonathan Levin ’94 announced a University-wide hiring freeze on February 26 in response to potential cuts to NIH research funding. The Trump administration has also proposed a cap on NIH funding for “indirect costs” of medical research at universities and other scientific institutions.
Congressional proposals also suggest tax increases on the current endowment, which provides over ⅔ of the budget for graduate and undergraduate financial aid, faculty salaries, research and programs such as libraries and student services.
Other universities already face dramatic cuts to federal funding. On April 15, Harvard University refused a list of demands from U.S. President Donald Trump that included ceasing recognition of pro-Palestine student groups and commissioning an “audit” of students and staff for viewpoint diversity. In response, the government froze over $2.2 billion in federal funds. Harvard retaliated by suing the administration on Monday amid the administration’s review of a further $9 billion in federal contracts and grants.
In the past several weeks, Trump has frozen $1 billion for Cornell, $790 million for Northwestern, and $175 million from the University of Pennsylvania. At risk of losing $400 million in federal grants, Columbia capitulated to a list of Trump’s demands on March 21, which included banning face masks, giving security officers the ability to remove or arrest students, and taking control of departments that offer courses on the Middle East.
“I appreciate all you are doing to keep us moving forward, even in the face of serious headwinds,” Satz wrote to close the email.
Correction: This article was updated to include comment from additional sources.
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From the Community | The problem with conversations on DEIJaylon Jones '26 reacts to recent conversations around DEI, calling on Stanford to re-evaluate the importance of fact checking when having discussions.
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Recently, Stanford professor Hakeem Jefferson responded to a piece published in The Stanford Daily by Stanford professor Johnathan Berk. In his response, he criticized Berk’s assertion that diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) seemingly has no place at Stanford. Jefferson’s response was refreshing because it brought factual reasoning to the now ongoing debate around DEI on Stanford’s campus.
Articles like Berk’s, conversations in classrooms and public sentiment around DEI have certainly become more prominent in the media, an increase perhaps aided by the Trump administration’s vehement opposition to DEI as both a concept and an institution. However, much of this public sentiment — Berk’s argument being a prime example — lacks even basic factual reasoning to bolster its claims.
In Berk’s piece — as Jefferson points out — he completely misunderstands the effects of the G.I. Bill, despite referencing it to support his argument. Berk cites the G.I. Bill to convince readers that it was foundational in providing “bright young minds from all strata in society” the opportunity to attend private universities like Stanford. Jefferson refutes this, firmly asserting that the bill overwhelmingly benefited white Americans — not “all strata of society.”
The lack of factual grounding continues when Berk argues in Jefferson’s words that “poor white students are now disadvantaged by an admissions system supposedly more taken by the stories of Black poverty than white poverty.” Jefferson doesn’t just disagree with the claim, he calls it what it is: false and deeply misguided. Most critically, Berk provides no evidence whatsoever to support it.
In truth, Jefferson is doing what any scholar should do when analyzing another’s argument: he attacks the logic, scrutinizes the evidence and considers the context from which those claims arise. Meanwhile, Berk — and many others now emboldened to speak out against DEI — rely on skewed interpretations of history, cherry-picked anecdotes and most importantly, a fundamental misunderstanding of what DEI actually is to argue that Stanford need not champion it.
Berk isn’t alone in making unfounded claims or misrepresenting DEI altogether. Weeks ago, The Stanford Daily published a story interviewing students on campus about their thoughts on DEI. One individual who requested anonymity (for good reason) boldly asserted that DEI was “a way of lowering standards for certain people.” She continued, “If we want society to function the best, it’s necessary to have competent people.”
What evidence is there that standards are lowered for “certain people” when DEI is applied? I unfortunately cannot answer this, since my peer cannot reference anything to bolster her claims. At the same time, she beats the dead horse argument that by somehow having DEI programs, we are inevitably favoring incompetent people over competent people. Our anonymous friend is surely entitled to her opinion, but it lacks tangible evidence.
Worse, she attempts to “clarify” her stance by saying, “I’m not coming from a place of hate… you should put in the work to succeed instead of having to rely on your background.” What she really meant was that the benefactors of DEI are not working as hard as “everyone else,” and therefore they can bypass any and all inhibitors to social mobility — whether systemic or not — by simply working a tiny bit harder. Such an assertion reminds us that even Stanford’s “best and brightest” — despite receiving an elite education — can still cling to ignorant and unfounded beliefs. Her opinion, I bluntly assert, is likely acquired via thorough indoctrination into the American fairytale of social mobility without barriers.
While Berk and our anonymous classmate are only two voices in this larger debate, their unfounded reasoning reveals a deeper problem: some vocal opponents of DEI on campus often come armed with little factual understanding of what DEI is, what it aims to do or why people believe it’s necessary in the first place. And this is precisely what makes meaningful conversations around DEI so difficult. Those most opposed often enter the discussion with subjectively skewed views — views they seem to hate DEI for yet cannot justify with anything beyond personal discomfort. Perhaps the real roots of their discomfort lie in biases and prejudices they’d rather not confront.
We go to Stanford University. However, my peers somehow cannot fathom that rigorous engagement with our ideas is required — opinions supported not by how we feel but by what is true and what can be verified as true. How can conversations on DEI be productive when factual reasoning underlies so few of the arguments made? How can this conversation move forward if all we’re working with is subjectivity and blatant misrepresentations of DEI?
I will assert here and always that we need conversations on DEI. Those conversations empower individuals to understand what the other side is thinking, how they form their arguments and where compromise is possible (or where disagreements may simply remain). That’s the work we should be doing on this campus, and it’s work I support.
However, both a professor and a student at this university have recently made claims that are either blatantly false or rooted in profound misunderstandings of DEI. That leaves very little room for productive conversation. Jefferson could’ve spent his time defending the values of DEI; instead, he was forced to fact-check Berk line by line because Berk did not grant him the privilege of a debate grounded in reason.
If conversations on this matter are to continue, there must be a mutual respect for facts — facts presented with the necessary context to bolster one’s position and, yes, to challenge others. That is what will lead to real, meaningful conversations about DEI. That is what can move us past circular debates over what we think DEI is and whether or not it belongs on campus. Whether our campus is ready for this level of discourse is another question entirely. But if Berk and the anonymous student are any indication of the broader opposition, then we may be too busy fact-checking to move any argument forward.
So, no — we do not, on face value, have a “DEI problem” at Stanford. Stanford’s weak-willed administration has already demonstrated its willingness to compromise diversity in admissions. What we do have is a problem with the conversations surrounding DEI, and unfortunately, it’s the loudest and least factually sound voices that are leading the debate.
Jaylon Jones ’26 is an undergraduate studying political science and history.
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Asking Stanford: Why did you choose to go to Stanford?In honor of College Decision Day, Daily staffers share why they chose The Farm.
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“Asking Stanford” is a series of small stories from Stanford students that comes together to highlight the diversity of experiences and perspectives on campus.
From the ages of seven to 18, I slept with an unboxed Gabriella Montez Barbie on my nightstand. After watching the highly acclaimed “High School Musical 3,” attending Stanford became my dream. If Gabriella could do it, I could too.
Once I arrived on the Farm, I was overwhelmed by the constant opportunities to engage with new ideas, interesting people, and unique traditions. It seemed like everywhere I looked there was something to say yes to that was refreshing, exciting, and colorful. Manage the women’s basketball team? Yes. Write for The Daily? Yes. Stay up till dawn laughing with people I met 30 minutes ago? Yes. Go on a scavenger hunt in San Francisco? Yes. Take classes taught by a Nobel Laureate? Yes. Go fountain hopping? Yes. Meet people who are exceedingly passionate and fun and enthusiastic? Yes.
Upon reflection, Stanford has taught me the power of yes. Of trying new things. Of taking advantage of every unique opportunity that life provides you. I am eternally grateful for my four years here and for the countless people I have met who will be in my corner for the rest of my life. The people you meet here are people who you could not find anywhere else. – Chase Klavon ’25
There’s this idea in social neuroscience that humans rose to the top not because we memorize facts, but because we excel at sharing information. We are not the fastest, strongest, lightest or most sharp-nosed species on Earth. Yet, through language and attuned communication, we learn to organize and create new things.
I think Stanford reflects this idea perfectly. It is the ideal hub for absorbing and disseminating knowledge. In conversations with my professors, TAs, classmates and most often, my friends, I have learned about everything, from computer hardware to democracy in Latin America, consumer sociology to climate-change ecology. I spend most of my days thinking about linguistics and learning design — I may never be an expert in other things. Still, I know that if I ever need an answer, I can find one from someone who cares more deeply about that topic than anyone else in the world.
When I was in high school, I would downplay how much I cared about things so as not to tank my social credit. My love for Stanford practically seeps out of my pores, perhaps because I have never felt so welcome, challenged, seen or known by a place. It is imperfect and always in flux, but after three years, I still haven’t lost the feeling of profound peace and disbelief that I am here.
I chose Stanford because I wanted to be where great minds do great things; I’ve been even luckier to discover that it is where great minds exist within great friends. – Erin Ye ’26
When I came to Admit Weekend, already decided on STEM, I realized that — from the Bing Overseas Studuies Program, to the rich curriculum in SLE (Structure Liberal Education) to the centers on campus that focused on ethics, the Asian American experience or public service — Stanford could help me be a lot more. Stanford has the breadth and depth to equip me with the multifaceted and interdisciplinary skills I’ve needed and wanted as I’ve ventured out beyond its boundaries.
The beauty of Stanford lies not just in its academic excellence but in how it encourages cross-pollination between fields. I’ve found myself drawn to many classes outside of my major, from English seminars about the American Road Trip to ethics courses that challenged me to consider the value of disagreement in democracy. My friends study music, classics and math or art practice and CS. In a given week, I’ll work with the Ethics Center at Stanford Law, have a chat or a class in the Graduate School of Business (GSB) and go to my lab’s meeting in Stanford Medicine. I’ll meet an Olympian in my classes and a farmer’s daughter in my dorm. There’s a lot to be experienced and learn here. I think that’s part of what makes Stanford so magical. — Sonnet Xu ’27
As I write this, it’s 75 degrees, and the sun is shining brilliantly from a deep blue sky. I’m sitting on the front lawn of my dorm in a swimsuit top and flip flops. While the weather is an obvious plus of Stanford (and believe me, you’ll feel it when it’s January, and it’s 60 degrees and sunny), I think what I’m doing on the lawn is even more indicative of just how amazing Stanford is.
I’ve just sent an email coordinating logistics with the CEO of a global health nonprofit, whom I’m bringing to campus this week for a speaker event. Right after I finish writing this, I’m going to record myself speaking French for an assignment. Then, I’ll write the opening remarks for my Indian dance team’s spring showcase. I’ll finish coding a game based off of one that Steve Wozniak invented before he co-founded Apple, and I’ll work on some audio transcriptions for a psychology study I’m helping out with. If I feel so inclined, I may pop over to the pool and go for a swim —– I wanted to go after my run this morning, but my timing was off, and I needed to make it to my class about creating justice in biotechnology distribution. Later, I’ll finish editing my article for The Stanford Daily about running a half marathon, and I’ll go to my global health club’s study night with cookies (on Stanford’s dime) and then hang out with my roommates and dorm friends. This is a typical day for me at Stanford.
I can’t speak to what other colleges are like, but Stanford truly facilitates a culture of exploration and pursuing my passions and all things that bring me joy, even when they seem different and unrelated to one another. When I first visited here, I sensed that openness, and Stanford has proven me right and far outdone my expectations. There is no other time like college to find out what you enjoy and pursue those things. Do it here. – Anya Vedantambe ’28
On my first day at Admit Weekend, I told everyone I wasn’t sure where I was going yet. But as the days went on and I got to experience what days at Stanford were, I left that weekend telling everyone I was already committed to Stanford.
I came in as a sociology major but have changed my pathway more times than I can count since I’ve been here. But each time I changed my major, I was reminded why I chose to come to Stanford: there’s always encouragement to venture out into unknown territories. I’ve been able to explore computer science classes, creative writing courses and earth science laboratories while being supported for not yet deciding on a route to take. The ability to explore new courses, meet people you otherwise wouldn’t cross paths with and find new interests that would have remained unearthed is why I chose Stanford. – Sterling Davies ’28
When approaching this decision, I first built a pro-con list, but quickly realized that schools of Stanford’s caliber all offer similar stellar academic resources, networking opportunities and career development. Comparing cold statistical details was useless. What truly sets Stanford apart? As a pre-law student passionate about social sciences, I can attest that there’s no better environment than Stanford. Attending has pushed me beyond my comfort zone while nurturing my intellectual curiosities.
Stanford’s exceptional well-roundedness — from law to medicine, business to liberal arts — encouraged me to explore previously unimaginable paths. I tried my hand at Python programming and linear algebra coursework and even joined a neuroscience lab to study 3D human genome. At the same time, it’s been a dream come true as a prospective international relations major to meet Hillary Clinton during the presidential election, hear Andrew Yang’s perspectives on Universal Basic Income and receive funding for summer internship at a human rights non-profit in Geneva. These experiences shaped my goal to pursue double majors in international relations and bioengineering with a focus on biotechnology security.
Stanford is a place where you feel empowered to explore new areas because of the number of specialized introductory courses and innovative research programs. Most importantly, it’s a place where people embrace your ideas, where interdisciplinary connections form. Stanford isn’t just an option — it’s the future. – Jenny Wang ’28
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UGS introduces bill to expel co-chairMembers of the ASSU elections commission introduced a bill to expel UGS co-chair Ivy Chen ’26 M.A. ’27 from the UGS on Wednesday. They plan to announce it at the meeting the same day.
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Two members and one recently resigned member of the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) elections commission, along with ASSU President Diego Kagurabadza ’25, submitted a bill to expel Undergraduate Senate (UGS) co-chair Ivy Chen ’26 M.A. ’27 from the UGS on Wednesday.
The bill accuses Chen, who was running to serve as ASSU President, of seeking “to undermine the democratic process” in the 2025 ASSU election. It alleges that, in a meeting with former elections commissioner Christian Figueroa ’27, Chen “implored Figueroa to manipulate the votes in her favor” and “suggested that Figueroa would not be caught or penalized for such conduct.” Figueroa stepped down from his position as elections commissioner the following day.
Figueroa clarified that he “immediately reported the incident to the proper ASSU officials” and has “since assisted in the investigation” in an email to The Daily.
“It is my intention this evening to provide evidence to the components of the bill,” Figueroa wrote. “I stepped down to preserve the public trust in the electoral process… It was an honor and a privilege to serve as the ASSU Elections Commissioner.”
Chen did not respond to The Daily’s request for comment.
The day before Chen’s meeting with Figueroa, Chen’s running mate and UGS co-chair, Gordon Allen ’26, withdrew from the race, citing an “environment where [he] felt like the working dynamic was not going to be productive for the overall student body.” When Chen could not find a new running mate, her slate was left off the ballot.
The UGS will issue a “formal notice” of an expulsion vote at their weekly meeting on Wednesday, according to a statement issued by David Sengthay ’26 and Jadon Urogdy ’27 on behalf of the UGS. The statement clarifies that the final vote will take place at the following UGS meeting, scheduled for May 7, allowing Chen to “speak in her defense” and all UGS Senators to “weigh the facts before voting.”
“We want to be clear: this is not a personal attack. Instead, it is an effort to uphold the standards of integrity and fairness to which every elected official is accountable,” Urogdy and Sengthay wrote. “Our responsibility is to the student body, and our actions reflect a commitment to transparency, not personal judgment.”
Urogdy shared that the statement “demonstrates that every student deserves an association that upholds the values of integrity and transparency,” in a message to The Daily.
“While this is undoubtedly a tough time for the ASSU, I hope that it does not detract from our productivity this year and the promising future of the Association,” Urogdy wrote.
Sengthay told The Daily that he is “quite concerned about the allegations.” He shared that, in a working session last night, the UGS heard evidence from the authors of the bill, including Figueroa and Kagurabadza, as well as testimony from Chen.
“If they are true, it is a clear violation of the ASSU Constitution and the ethical standards expected of any senator,” he said. “The UGS is committed to the values of democracy and ethical standards that come with being an elected official on this campus.”
The elections commission, particularly this last year, has been no stranger to controversy. On April 17, third-year Ph.D. student in physics Sephora Ruppert filed a petition on behalf of several ASSU, UGS and Graduate Student Council (GSC) candidates accusing the elections commission of a enforcing a “public financing deadline that violates the Joint Bylaws of the ASSU and undermines the principles of a fair, transparent, and inclusive election.”
“As a result, multiple candidates across several races have been denied funding eligibility,” the petition stated. The council unanimously voted to deny the case on April 23.
Last year, former ASSU Senator Carmen Kang sued the elections commission — as well as Chen, Allen and four other senators — for alleged election fraud. Kang ultimately rescinded her petition the day the ASSU council convened. The UGS unanimously voted to expel Kang from the senate in the fall for seeking to “unconstitutionally suspend the selection of Undergraduate Senate officers.”
Unlike previous actions brought against or by the elections commission, the move against Chen comes in the form of a bill, which will require two-thirds of the UGS to approve and will not appear in front of the ASSU Constitutional Council.
“My hope for the next Undergraduate Senate meeting is that we get better information about specifically what happened between Ivy and the Elections Commissioner,” said Mandla Msipa ’26, a former UGS Senator. “I don’t think that Ivy is a bad person… [or was] acting maliciously. It’s entirely possible that she said things that she probably shouldn’t have, but we just need information.”
The UGS plans to debate the bill tonight.
Ananya Udaygiri ’26 contributed reporting.
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Fashion’s great reshuffle: Who’s leading luxury?Even as luxury brands swap creative directors to favor quiet luxury, function and strategy, the gender gaps persists at the top of the fashion world.
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Simmi Sen ’28 is a designer who also studies design and CS at Stanford. Keeping her finger on the pulse of cutting edge of fashion, Sen guides readers through the often unexplored fashion industry in her biweekly column.
The luxury fashion industry is undergoing one of its most dramatic transitions in history. In just over a year, a wave of creative director exits swept through houses like Fendi, Celine, Chanel, Givenchy, Tom Ford and Loewe. These shifts reveal evolving consumer expectations, brand strategies and a redefinition of modern luxury.
Creative directors have always been the soul of a fashion house. They don’t just design clothes — they shape a brand’s identity and translate storytelling into garments that drive cultural relevance and commercial success. However, the pressure to constantly innovate while managing global business demands has led to creative fatigue and strategic resets.
Kim Jones stepped down from Fendi in October 2024 after four years of balancing dual roles as artistic director at both Fendi (womenswear and couture) and Dior Men. Hedi Slimane’s at Celine, which was once defined by sharp youth culture, saw diminishing returns as consumer tastes shifted toward quieter luxury.
To regain momentum, brands are refreshing their creative leadership: Givenchy brought in Sarah Burton in September 2024 for her technical mastery and Demna left Balenciaga in March 2025 to revitalize Gucci after a period of decline.
Post-pandemic, luxury fashion has shifted from maximalism to “quiet luxury,” favoring craftsmanship, subtlety and functionality. This shift is reflected in recent appointments, like Michael Rider at Celine and Sarah Burton at Givenchy.
Rider, formerly at Ralph Lauren and Phoebe Philo’s Celine, brings a refined, minimalist touch. His vision for Celine returns to timeless tailoring and understated elegance and moves away from logo-driven flash.
Burton, known for her emotionally rich work at McQueen, debuted at Givenchy in 2025 with a collection inspired by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Her style merges classic couture with modern precision, blending heritage with fresh perspective.
According to a report by Bain & Company, demand for understated, high-quality fashion rose 12% in 2024. McKinsey projects over 60% of Gen Z luxury buys in 2025 will prioritize quality over brand name. This shift reflects a broader reset in consumer values.
In January 2025, Prada acquired an 80% stake in Versace for €1.25 billion — a notable discount from the $2.15 billion Capri Holdings (then Michael Kors) paid in 2018. Earlier estimates placed Versace’s value closer to €1.5 billion, but recent market volatility — including tariff pressures — contributed to the reduced valuation.
This acquisition reflects a broader restructuring in luxury, where creative leadership and ownership are being reset together. Just as legacy houses appoint new creative directors to redefine identity, Prada’s move reimagines Versace, merging its bold legacy with Prada’s minimalism to appeal to today’s value-driven consumer.
As part of the acquisition, Dario Vitale — formerly at Prada — was appointed to lead Versace, signaling a creative reset. Vitale brings a more sculptural, refined aesthetic, marking a shift from Donatella Versace’s bold, maximalist legacy. While some suggest Prada could’ve negotiated a better deal by waiting, others view the timing as a rare chance to acquire an iconic label at a strategic inflection point.
According to Prada CEO Andrea Guerra in a Prada press release, “Versace has huge potential. The journey will be long and will require disciplined execution and patience.” The move is expected to attract new customers to Prada, blending Versace’s baroque energy with Prada’s minimalist DNA, an emblem of how luxury brands are reinventing themselves in a slower, more value-driven market.
While luxury fashion is reinventing itself, the gender gap continues to be perpetuated.
One of fashion’s earliest female-led houses — Lanvin — was founded in 1926 by Jeanne Lanvin, who launched the first made-to-measure menswear line by a Parisian designer. Yet nearly a century later, women remain underrepresented in top creative roles.
While Burton at Givenchy, Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta, Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior, Miuccia at Prada and Emily Adams at Bode are notable exceptions, most appointments still go to men — even though women make up the majority of luxury’s consumer base.
Many luxury houses draw creative talent from narrow pipelines — like elite ateliers like Cifonelli, Maison Camps de Luca, and Caraceni — where women are underrepresented or excluded. Even in broader maisons like Dior’s tailoring workrooms or Chanel’s “flou” ateliers, leadership often remains male-dominated. Add this to a lack of mentorship and visibility for women in senior studio roles, and the gap widens further.
As luxury reinvents itself, the gender gap persists. While women make up the majority of the luxury market, few hold top creative roles. As a woman and a designer, I believe more female creative directors aren’t just needed for equity — they’re essential to designing clothes that empower, flatter, and reflect the lived experience of the modern woman.
This reshuffle marks a pivotal generational shift. Some brands are reclaiming heritage. Others are embracing reinvention. What unites them is the need to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving market.
Brands are now prioritizing coherence and consistent creative direction over celebrity-driven flash, with less emphasis on star power and more on designers who can deliver a unified vision.
At the same time, talent mobility is on the rise. Designers like Matthieu Blazy exemplify how creative DNA is increasingly shared across houses, reflecting a more fluid and collaborative industry culture. Functionality and versatility have also become key: consumers now favor well-made, adaptable garments over logo-heavy spectacles, echoing a broader shift toward quality and practicality.
As new creative heads step into place, the 2025 runway calendar will reveal whether these bets pay off. Either way, the next chapter in luxury is underway.
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‘Think like a creator, but behave like a journalist’: Symposium surveys an evolving media landscapeJournalism professor Janine Zacharia moderated the 2025 Rebele Symposium, in which she sought to bridge the gap between legacy mainstream media and online content creators.
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At the 2025 Rebele Symposium held Tuesday in Encina Hall, moderator and Stanford journalism professor Janine Zacharia asked what lessons legacy media and new content creators — or “news influencers,” as Zacharia called them — can learn from each other.
Zacharia was joined by guests Peter Hamby, host of Snapchat’s “Good Luck America” series, Matt Kiser, author of newsletter “WTF Just Happened Today” and Kyla Scanlon, author of “In this Economy: How Money & Markets Really Work.”
The annual Rebele Symposium, named after the late publisher and philanthropist Rowland “Reb” Rebele ’51 and his wife Pat Rebele, is hosted by the department of communication. The Rebeles have funded the Rebele Internship Program since 1986.
In 1979, the world watched as video killed the radio star. Fast forward to 2025, more people favor online content creators over legacy mainstream media. According to a Pew Research Center survey, nearly 40% of U.S. adults under 30 regularly get news from online content creators.
Hamby worked at CNN for ten years before joining Snapchat. “Twitter did not exist when I started at CNN, and [neither did] all of these things that we now take for granted… Things have changed, and we’re very much more creator focused, which is why I was hired at Snapchat.”
Hamby mentioned that his former coworkers at CNN are seeing the change firsthand. Legacy media is now trying to “think about the small screen instead of the big screen,” as broadcasting cable makes way for social media and streaming.
Scanlon, an online economic commentator, seeks to teach social media audiences about economic concepts. Scanlon majored in economics, financial management and business data analytics at Western Kentucky University, using her background to help people understand issues today.
However, Scanlon recognizes that there are lots of other content creators that share misinformation and harmful advice, especially in the field of economics. She also thinks that influencers who scare people with lies get more engagement on social media.
“I think if you’re acting in good faith, it is really useful to have some sort of expertise in whatever you’re talking about,” Scanlon said. “I have a background in economics and finance, and so I’m able to leverage that knowledge into my videos. There are definitely bad actors out there, and that’s why things like media literacy are so important.”
Zacharia noted that social media algorithms do not factor in a “credibility score,” only engagement.
Hamby lauded Scanlon for aiming to create credible content on platforms that can be full of misinformation and disinformation. “But you know, I feel like for every Kyla, there are 10 people who are fudging the facts,” Hamby said.
The Pew Research Center survey also found that 77% of the influencers have no prior affiliation or background with a news organization. Regardless, in this time of millions of posts and different content creators, Kiser finds that he “loves the chaos.”
“It feels like the internet has this new blood, and there are more voices,” he said. “I just love that anyone can just start something, publish something and practice.” Quoting the lead singer from a San Francisco band, the Dead Kennedys, Kiser said, “don’t hate the media, become the media.”
In regard to the rise of artificial intelligence, the panelists’ reactions ranged from hopefulness to fear, but Kiser believes that the human aspect will win out in the end.
“My news product could very easily be replaced with ChatGPT. But the difference is that ChatGPT is a bunch of servers somewhere, and I’m a person, and people have connected with me,” Kiser said.
The panelists agreed that mainstream media is not going away, but needs to adapt to the times and learn new business models.
“I think like a creator, but behave like a journalist,” Hamby said.
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Students granted temporary restraining orders against the Trump administration after visa revocationsStudents and employees were issued temporary protection against government officials after their visas were revoked in a federal court hearing Friday.
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At a federal hearing in Oakland on Friday, dozens of college students and alumni, including a current Stanford student, received temporary restraining orders (TROs) to protect them against further action from the Trump administration after their visas were revoked in the past few weeks.
Senior District Judge Jeffrey White granted the orders to 40 plaintiffs at the Northern District of California in Oakland. A majority of the plaintiffs were students or recent graduates with either an academic (F-1) or an Optional Practical Training (OPT) visa, including students at Stanford, University of California, Berkeley and across the Bay Area.
The temporary restraining orders will grant the plaintiffs protection for an additional 14 days, as the federal court discusses the matter of imposing a nationwide injunction at a second hearing this Wednesday, which would give all individuals whose visas were revoked a TRO. The parties will appear in court on May 13 for a hearing to discuss a preliminary injunction, which would extend temporary relief for the plaintiffs past 14 days and until a full trial.
Throughout the country, judges are issuing more TROs for those affected by visa revocations. On April 18, a federal court in Georgia ordered a TRO for 133 student plaintiffs and that their Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) status will be reinstated.
Nationwide, the Trump administration has revoked 4,700 visas, including F-1 and OPT visas. Nearly 2,000 of these visas were F-1 visa revocations, affecting around eight Stanford students, according to an April 14 update by the University.
On Friday, the Trump administration announced that it would reinstate all of these revoked visas as it creates a framework to address SEVIS revocations. This has already taken effect, as Stanford released on April 27 that seven students have had their visa statuses restored.
“By and large, we’ve actually seen courts be very responsive to these kinds of claims exactly because they have such massive consequences for people,” said Tyler Bishop J.D. ’20, who is also litigating against the Trump administration’s changes to elections.
Jesse Bless, an attorney representing 15 plaintiffs whose visas were revoked, including the current Stanford student, said that “almost all” of the plaintiffs “have had a brief run-in with the law… There’s an arrest or something, or a citation.”
Bless said that one of his clients had his visa revoked following a citation for catching two more fish than allowed at a pond in New Jersey. Another had been using an unauthorized speedometer in his car.
Bless described his clients as panicked, uncertain and scared because of their changed status, with one leaving the country after having been notified.
“The idea that you can uproot somebody’s entire life based on something so minor, something so small, is really antithetical to the idea of who we are as a country,” Bishop said. “They’ve planned their entire lives around being able to be here and to study and to contribute to our society and to our schools.”
The plaintiffs’ attorneys are still hoping to receive a preliminary, and a potential nationwide, injunction to ensure students do not face any consequences because of the period in which they lost their legal status.
“One, the government could change its position tomorrow morning,” said Johnny Sinodis, an attorney representing several plaintiffs in the case. “But two, the [new visa reversal policy] doesn’t take into account the fact that there’s a gap now for all of these individuals, of their OPT and of their F-1 status.”
While the plaintiffs have received temporary protection and the Trump administration is planning to restore all previously canceled visas, Bless noted the legal battles have taken a toll on all parties affected.
“The trauma to these families was overwhelming,” Bless said, who previously worked at the Department of Justice. “We’re actually spending a lot of government money fighting losses. I’m not in the government anymore, but I think judges would appreciate it if we work together to find a solution.”
Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Kurlan and chief of the Civil Division for Northern California Pam Johann, who defended the U.S. government in the case, declined to comment. Stanford Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic also declined to comment.
Siddharth Bhatia ’28 contributed reporting.
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Stanford’s Elic Ayomanor drafted by Tennessee Titans in fourth roundTennessee Titans grab Stanford’s Elic Ayomanor at No. 136, adding the Canadian playmaker to revive an offense that lagged in 2024.
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The Tennessee Titans kept stockpiling weapons for new franchise quarterback Cam Ward on Day 3 of the NFL draft, snagging Stanford wide receiver Elic Ayomanor with the No. 136 pick in the fourth round. The 6-foot-2, 210-pound Canadian becomes the third offensive skill player Tennessee has added after taking Ward first overall and Florida wideout Chimere Dike at No. 103, underscoring general manager Ran Carthon’s intent to resuscitate an offensive attack that ranked in the bottom-10 of the league in most metrics.
Ayomanor arrives in Tennessee with a resume that suggests he will be of immediate help for the Titans’ wide receiver room. As a redshirt freshman and sophomore at The Farm, Ayomanor played in all twelve games each season. His collegiate career-defining game came against the Colorado Buffaloes in 2023 where he carried Stanford to the 46-43 overtime win with 294 receiving yards and a trio of touchdown receptions.
In his sophomore year, he had 63 receptions for 831 yards and recorded six receiving touchdowns, tied with fellow wide receiver Emmett Mosely V in the 2024 season. Three of those receptions were made back-to-back at the start of ACC conference play against TCU, NC State and San Jose State, following Bryan Tremayne in 2021 in scoring a receiving touchdown three games in a row. That same year, he was also the leading wide receiver for a majority of the games, seven out of the twelve played in 2024.
If Ayomanor’s learning curve mirrors his Stanford surge, the Titans could turn a draft-weekend flyer into a reliable chain-mover — and perhaps, at long last, climb out of the league’s offensive cellar.
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Stanford baseball drops weekend series, bounces back against HornetsStanford salvaged a rough Wake Forest series with 2-1 win over Sacramento State, yet faces an uphill NCAA path, needing a near-perfect finish starting at Boston College.
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Stanford baseball (22-19, 7-17 ACC) steadied itself Monday night with a 2-1 win over Sacramento State (26-18, 10-5 Big Sky), a quiet but badly needed victory after a bruising weekend in which Wake Forest (30-16, 12-12 ACC) took two of three at Sunken Diamond.
Stanford opened the Wake Forest series in dramatic fashion Friday. Junior Cort MacDonald went 3-for-4 and lined an opposite-field single in the 12th inning that scored Saborn Campbell for a 7-6 walk-off, the program’s third walk-off victory of the season. Stanford’s pitching was suspect, as it issued 14 walks and hit two batters for the Demon Deacons, but junior Sam Garewal entered the contest late and stabilized the game on the mound. Garewal recorded the final four outs, three came via strikeouts, and was credited the victory.
Saturday’s matinee looked equally promising. A four-run eighth turned a 7-5 deficit into a 9-7 lead, and head coach David Esquer handed the ball to sophomore closer Aidan Keenan with three outs to go. Instead of securing a series-clinching win, Wake Forest rifled five consecutive singles, plating five runs and stunning Stanford 12-9. The meltdown overshadowed multi-hit days from junior Ethan Hott, MacDonald and freshman Tatum Marsh.
With a series win at stake, the Demon Deacons finished the job Sunday as they shutout Stanford 10-0 in seven innings. Freshman Parker Warner opened with a scoreless first, but five relievers combined to issue nine walks and the game spiraled early. Walks continued to be the pitching staff’s bugaboo as they wrapped up the weekend with 31 free passes for Wake Forest’s batters. The shutout was only Stanford’s second of the season, but it’s second in the last six games.
Twenty-four hours later the Cardinal finally exhaled behind junior right-hander Nick Dugan. The Eureka native surrendered six hits over seven innings, striking out six without a walk to move to 5-0 on the season. Garewal once again entered the game late and slammed the door with a perfect two-inning save — his first at Stanford — and the offense mustered up all the support it would need in the first inning. Back-to-back doubles from senior Trevor Haskins and MacDonald, followed by Marsh’s infield single and an RBI grounder from junior Jimmy Nati, produced the Cardinal’s only runs. Stanford is now 15-2 against non-ACC opponents.
Monday’s victory pushed Stanford a few games above .500 overall, but the road to the NCAA College World Series remains narrow. A recent analysis of the Cardinal’s current placing in the standings has calculated that the Cardinal likely need at least 10 wins in their final 13 games — and most of those must come in league play — to match last season’s ACC threshold of 31-21 overall and 15-15 in conference play. They have lost two games since this projection, which suggests the Cardinal may only have one loss to play with the rest of the season. It’s a tall order, but a tourney birth might still be possible for a squad that started the season winning 15 of their first 18 games. Another dominant run will be necessary as the season reaches the home stretch.
The Cardinal now head to Boston College (22-23, 9-15 ACC) looking for their first conference road series win since early March. Stanford opens the four-game series Friday at Shea Field in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.
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Police Blotter: Breaking and entering student residences, rape and grand theftThis report covers incidents from April 22 to April 28 as recorded in the Stanford University Department of Public Safety (SUDPS) bulletin.
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This report covers incidents from April 22 to April 28 as recorded in the Stanford University Department of Public Safety (SUDPS) bulletin. Learn more about the Clery Act and how The Daily approaches reporting on crime and safety here.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the instance of rape at Arguello Way and Bowdoin Lane.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the instance of burglary at 328 Lomita Drive.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the instance of burglary at 17 Comstock Circle.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the instance of burglary at Jenkins House, Escondido Village Building 17, Escondido Village Studio 4, Lyman Graduate Residences and Golf Driving Range Facility.
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News section burns out covering Trump, goes on hiatusNews writers from The Daily cite their caffeine, mental health and overtime concerns in their much needed break from covering current events.
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Editor’s note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.
Author’s note: Journalistic ethics typically would not permit an ongoing Opinion columnist to write on the matter at hand. However, the executive team’s promise of a backdoor solution to financial troubles have proven most appealing to him.
News section editors and staffers announced to The Stanford Daily community that they will take an “immediate, much-needed” hiatus, citing “caffeine, mental health and overtime concerns” amid the Trump administration news cycle.
“News has been on the frontlines of transparency and accountability. There are absolutely no regrets about the quality of the work we did. However, there comes a time when we must put ourselves first. That time is now,” the News section announcement read.
The hiatus comes amid reports of caffeine intake, employment lawyer consultations and therapist visits increasing 189%, 303% and 567% since the Trump inauguration, respectively. After their announcement, News editors and staffers left The Daily building with their overnight bags packed and ready to “finally sleep in the dorms again,” editor Kaph Fein ’27 said.
“There’s been all this Trump stuff we’ve had to cover. There’s lawsuits here, deportations there and geopolitical embarrassments everywhere,” said beat reporter Karine Doocy ’28. “As a journalist, I need a serious break. As a history major, I need a therapist.”
The Daily’s executive team is “very aware of the ‘allegations’ being made against us,” editor-in-chief Bill Owens ’26 said. There are plans to address the matter with even more TreeHouse pizza at The Daily’s print production parties.
George Triantis J.D. ’89, the employment lawyer representing News staffers and editors during their hiatus, wrote that “it’s an unfortunate situation that these bold student journalists have been put in. But for me, I’ve racked up an unreal amount of billable hours. Business is booming.”
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When a patient saves your life"There are systems in place to resuscitate a heart, to preserve brain tissue after ischemia, to restore function to limbs that have long been still. But where is the protocol for the doctor, the researcher, the nurse who feels themselves deteriorating in real time?" asks Alexander, neurosurgery student at Stanford.
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Content warning: This article contains references to suicide. If you or someone you know are in need of help, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
Picture this – it’s 2022, you have been staring at the same wall for a week when you decide: you have lived long enough.
For months, the thought has lingered: “I don’t want to be here.” But it has never felt final. Until now. You lie on the floor, sobbing so hard you forget what breathing is supposed to feel like. You have spent your life moving forward, but suddenly, there is no forward left.
Your work in clinical research has been the last thing tethering you to the world. You are part of a historic neurosurgical trial to implant stem cells into ischemic stroke patients, attempting to restore movement where none remained. The science is meticulous, the process exhausting, but the potential to change lives is undeniable.
Yet, even in medicine, no one teaches you how to save yourself.
There are systems in place to resuscitate a heart, to preserve brain tissue after ischemia, to restore function to limbs that have long been still. But where is the protocol for the doctor, the researcher, the nurse who feels themselves deteriorating in real time (see: burnout)? They are taught to diagnose others, to measure suffering on standardized scales. What scale measures the silent, unseen weight carried by those in medicine? What is the love story behind those who give it endlessly? It’s surprising to see how creative one gets to scale up rock bottom.
You run at night past “The Angel of Grief,” her marble body slumped in eternal mourning. In her dismantled presence, you see yourself in this marbled antithesis: where emotionally collapsing is considered beautiful (see: post-mortem). A monument to loss, still standing.
You should have seen this coming. Depression has always lived around you, but never in you. You thought you were immune. You were not. You empty your wishes out into the sky with the hopes a shooting star hears you. How can you expect the dead to reprise affection (see: grief)?
October 2022 arrives with a diagnosis: adjustment disorder with excessive dysphoria, PTSD. It’s hard for others to notice when you are bleeding in full bloom on the surface, crying in the rain to feel a little less alone, surrounded by other tears (see: trauma).
They say love is supposed to be a kind of reprieve, but you have never known it that way. Yours growing up has always been conditional: something given sparingly, taken back without warning (see: lack of empathy). The kind that demands to be proven, chased, earned. The kind that turns absence into a weapon.
And maybe that’s why it took you so long to recognize what was unfolding in the operating room.
You would rather stay in bed and rot, let the weight of yourself fold inward. But there is no option for that. The patient is here. So, you move, even when every cell in your body begs you not to.
It’s ironic being on the other side of mental health — no longer seeing it from the view above. Society begs us to hear others before it’s too late, yet — unless you pay your entire life savings to a professional — who is there to listen? How many people really understand how difficult it is to open up (see: excessive shame)? Not to feel like a burden or judged? Is this the aftermath of trauma? More suffering?
When you step outside the confining tunnel vision both put you in, you remind yourself you do this because you care. You reinforce positive energy, though oftentimes, it is left in the void. Despite it all, there is this burning desire to do it again. To rebuild something from the wreckage, from your crooked past. Maybe, today is the day your spine is built upwards.
The surgeon moves with precision, his voice steady, his hands unwavering. Love, but in its purest form: uncomplicated, undeserved, freely given. No expectations, no conditions, no waiting for it to be taken away. A patient in need. A physician who answers. You are suddenly reminded that there is love out there. It is incredibly unfamiliar and so nourishing. This is not a typical love story, but it’s the most genuine form of one — unconditional and pure.
And you, who have spent so long searching for meaning, realize you are watching it unfold in front of you. For the first time in months, you feel something other than pain.
I do not want to die.
The dark clouds do not vanish, but I can finally see through them. The weight of your suffering is still there, but so is something else — something you had forgotten how to recognize.
Hope.
Love is the doctor who dedicates their life to restoring function. Love is the patient who reminds you why you are still here.
I’ve always believed my purpose existed to help others. I never considered that medicine, in its own strange, imperfect way, might be the place where I save myself.
It is unfamiliar, but I recognize it now. This is home.
This patient saved my life (see: empathy).
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Gohari | Dr. Sober-Love, or how I learned to stop judging and accept the jägerbombIn her latest column installment, Gohari shares why she doesn't drink alcohol and criticizes the stringent rules surrounding underage drinking at Stanford.
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Nearly halfway into the final quarter of my freshman year, I have yet to drink any alcohol at Stanford, a fact I don’t plan to change even after I am 21. Perhaps fittingly, I am often gobsmacked by the not-so-legal lengths my fellow frosh go just to procure a drink… and further convinced that they shouldn’t have to be so sneaky just to partake in one of the most universal human vices. Over-consumption of alcohol is always a risk, but banning alcohol until age 21 makes no sense.
Humanity’s love of alcohol is not new to the modern era; rather, the human desire to imbibe is theorized to be baked into our DNA thanks to alcohol consumption’s potential evolutionary advantages (read: alcohol’s ability to get us to both overeat and procreate carelessly). Indeed, alcohol consumption has likely been an enduring part of hominid culture since before H. sapiens walked the earth, with the enzyme to break down alcohol emerging millions of years before the first humans did.
Why is it, then, that Stanford — and the U.S. more generally — places such great emphasis on abstaining from alcohol until after 21, a seemingly arbitrary age that is not in alignment with the vast majority of Western countries? No one is denying the potential harm that abuse of alcohol can bring, whether that be an increased risk of violence, liver disease or general poor decision making, but making the legal age 21 will not suddenly stop these problems.
One could argue that 18-year-olds are simply not responsible enough to decide whether they should drink. However, that claim conflicts with the U.S.’s assertion that the very same 18-year-old is responsible enough to deploy in the military, get married (in all states but two), receive the death penalty, make their own medical plan and purchase a firearm, among many other choices that are arguably more life-changing than having a singular beer. In most states, one does not even need to be 18 to gain access to a potentially deadly product; after all, 16-year-olds are regularly given dominion over a 3000-pound death machine (also known as a car). Somehow, a teenager as young as 14 in some states can legally navigate the roads in potentially lethal machinery, yet a legal adult under age 21 cannot opt to order a glass of wine with their steak.
This quirk of U.S. law can be traced back to a Californian activist group called Mothers Against Drunk Driving that successfully advocated in the 80s to raise the drinking age from 18 to 21. The policy stayed because, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety administration, there is “strong evidence that MLDA-21 laws reduce drinking, driving after drinking, and alcohol-related crashes and injuries among youth.” Indeed, drunk driving fatalities have greatly decreased in the U.S. since the law was implemented in 1984.
On the other hand, Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries have also seen lower drunk driving fatalities during this time period, and unlike the U.S., they did not need to lower their drinking age to make it happen. This suggests that increasing the minimum legal drinking age did not directly cause less drunk driving fatalities, or at least, that this change in law was not the only reason. After all, cars are significantly safer than they were in the ’80s, not to mention the shift in culture to favor substances like marijuana (driving while high happens less often than driving while drunk). In fact, one study by Yale and Harvard researchers found that drunk driving fatalities were already on the decline before the implementation of the 1984 law, and the rate of decline actually slowed once the law was passed. Although the association between the law and drunk driving is clear, this does not necessarily mean causation.
History also shows that banning alcohol backfires. The Prohibition in the 1920s outright banned alcohol under very similar reasoning to the 1984 law, assuming that people simply cannot be trusted with liquor. In the short term, the ban was successful, and consumption dropped significantly. However, people could not be parted from their liquor forever, and it wasn’t long before the American Mafia filled that void, gaining power and profit by illegally smuggling alcohol. Their illicit liquor sometimes proved toxic, contributing to about 1000 tainted spirits deaths yearly as people could not seek out medical treatment without being questioned about how they got the alcohol in the first place.
While nothing so egregious as an outright ban is on the horizon today, prohibition of alcohol for 18 to 20 year olds has a similar detrimental effect by inadvertently encouraging those who need help for their alcohol use disorder to hide their issues instead. Society’s stigma of underage drinking has pushed these drinkers into secretive, risky behavior for fear of judgement and retribution. Normalizing light-to-moderate drinking could reduce alcohol’s rebellious allure and make it easier for those struggling to reach out for support.
In accordance with federal law, Stanford explicitly bans alcohol usage for those under age 21 but also obligates RAs to report any instances. While administration gives three chances with increasing consequences before serious disciplinary action, the culture of reporting underage alcohol usage — even if done responsibly — inadvertently encourages students to hide their consumption. Unfortunately, this can easily backfire if usage gets out of hand: just as those in the Prohibition era did not seek out medical attention for fear of retribution, students may feel it is better to deal with the issue themselves rather than face possible disciplinary consequences if they do seek out help. Although Stanford’s Good Samaritan policy precludes others from disciplinary consequences if they call 911 to help their peers, not all alcohol consumption requires such an extreme response — yet the consequences for even minor usage are unrelenting.
I will likely never drink alcohol, a decision I am eminently happy with. Still, at least that is my choice. If I, a freshly minted 19-year-old, am responsible enough to decide against alcohol for the rest of my life, I should also be able to decide to partake in the time-honored tradition of drinking in moderation. Lowering the minimum age of alcohol consumption, while investing resources in anti-drunk driving campaigns and educational messaging on the drawbacks of alcoholism, will make drinking a safer experience rather than one shrouded in shame.
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‘Preserving Beauty’: Art exhibition spotlights artistic talent among Bay Area mothersThe Creative Mamas Collective organized the exhibition at the Google Huddle in Mountain View to honor the beauty of nature.
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Live classical music filled the Google Huddle building as Bay Area locals perused the “Preserving Beauty” art exhibition on Saturday. Organized by the Creative Mamas Collective, the exposition spotlighted visual art and musical talent of 12 Bay Area mothers through pieces inspired by the protection of nature.
The Creative Mamas Collective started as a Facebook group in April 2024 to connect Bay Area mothers engaged in personal creative projects, according to exhibition organizer and floral artist Mandi Lin. Inspiration to start the group and organize the exhibit blossomed from a desire to encourage Bay Area mothers to continue artistic pursuits even after starting a family — a life event that often turns a mother’s attention away from art to caregiving.
“I just want moms like me who like doing art to be proud of their hobby or what they used to like, and still have a stage for them to shine,” Lin said.
Reshma Bhoopal: “Ebb & Flow” (fused glass)
Artist Reshma Bhoopal’s “Ebb & Flow” series emulated the waves and horizon of the ocean, a place where Bhoopal finds a sense of calm. The fused glass artist used “Ebb & Flow” to capture the comfort she feels when visiting the beach.
Bhoopal also offers workshops of her own and sells fused glass artwork through her business, Arts From Glass. While creating art brings her the most joy, Bhoopal has also dedicated time to administrative tasks like marketing and website maintenance to grow her customer base.
“I read somewhere that ‘the difference between an artist and a hobbyist is that a hobbyist only creates, while an artist stops and does all these other [business] things,’” Bhoopal said. “But art is for the soul, so you have to make time for that too.”
Annapurna Devagiri: “Sun Kissed Petals” (watercolor)
In her series of “Sun Kissed Petals,” artist Annapurna Devagiri depicted native California blooms with watercolor. Six flowers were featured during Saturday’s exhibition: hummingbird sage, golden currant, California poppy, bee plant, scarlet monkeyflower and California fuchsia. The illustrated plants often appear as ordinary shrubs during winter, but sprout vibrant blossoms during the spring and summer months.
Devagiri chooses flowers to paint based on her discoveries during walks with her two sons. After collecting photographs on outdoor hikes, she returns home to catalog her floral sightings in watercolor. As an elementary school substitute teacher, Devagiri hopes that both her students and children appreciate the beauty she’s found in nature.
“I think of [my students and children] as a new generation that needs to know about what is out there in nature for them,” Devagiri said. “And I really want us as an adult generation to preserve these things for coming generations.”
Shruti Gopinathan: “Once Upon a Redwood Grove” (mixed media)
Created with acrylic paint, soil, charcoal, pastel chalk and redwood bark, “Once Upon a Redwood Grove” honored the delicate balance of natural life observed in Californian redwood forests. Artist and climate technologist Shruti Gopinathan was inspired by the Redwood Grove Nature Preserve in Los Altos, a place where she seeks solitude and connects best with her young daughter.
Visiting the nature preserve also makes Gopinathan aware of climate change and feel climate anxiety.
“I know that all of [nature] could go away,” Gopinathan said. “So that was the emotional piece for me, to bring that emotion into life.”
Isabelle Ip: “Solace” (cotton, linen and natural fiber yarns)
Artist Isabelle Ip tried out crocheting for the first time in 2020. In the years since, she’s created her clothing series, “Solace.” All articles of clothing were created out of natural cotton yarns, aligning with the exhibition’s theme to preserve the beauty of nature.
Ip also strove to create pieces in a simple “California style” that would highlight women’s natural feminine beauty.
“[The garments are] not very hard to wear and you don’t really need to be thinking too much about your body,” Ip said.
Elaine Jek: “Almost…” (ceramics and mixed media)
Ceramics artist Elaine Jek brought her ceramics to life by adding narrative to her display, “Almost…”. Jek incorporated objects that symbolize key memories from her daughter’s childhood, inspired by her daughter’s recent move to college.
Tucked into the depths of a stoneware vessel was a tuft of her daughter’s hair; a photograph that brings Jek back to the moment her daughter learned to read Jek’s name on a Legoland mug.
“In their childhood, you see your kid almost everyday. It’s just like nature: you see it everyday and you can take it for granted,” Jek said. “You see it now but you don’t realize that it’s ‘Almost…’ gone.”
Jek’s theme stood out to Roland Hsu, exhibit attendee and director of research for the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford, who found her story to be “lovely.”
“I liked the narrative about sending her daughter to college and planting the seed while her daughter blossoms,” Hsu said. “There’s creating a new life, but then letting go — the same way you would with a seed, and then that tree has to grow its own life.”
Elena Kadyrova: “Camellias of Palo Alto” (acrylic paint on canvas)
For Elena Kadyrova, Saturday’s exhibition represented a step toward working with new media. The cartographic artist usually uses ink and calligraphy to create maps of local areas, but experimented with acrylic on canvas to paint “Camellias of Palo Alto.”
Kadyrova had the idea to create a painting of flowers out of just circles for a long time. She finally sat down and started the piece in February 2024, working during small snippets of time when she could step away from her three kids. Though titled “Camellias of Palo Alto,” the painting inspired exhibit attendees to see different flowers beyond camellias, too.
“Somebody came and said it’s roses. Somebody said it’s a bouquet of different flowers, and the kids are just happy because it’s bubbles,” Kadyrova said. “For me, it’s camellias, but I’m so happy that different people see different things.”
Mandi Lin: “Rooted in Bloom: A Bay Area Map” (preserved flowers and acrylic paint)
The Bay Area’s cities sprung to life as various preserved flowers and leaves in Mandi Lin’s “Rooted in Bloom: A Bay Area Map.” Vibrant florals represented the energy of different Bay Area locations: pink roses marked big cities like San Francisco and Palo Alto, while yellow daisies symbolized the tech energy of Silicon Valley. The Golden Gate Bridge stood out in red and gold buds on an acrylic blue San Francisco Bay, painted by Lin and her 11-year-old son.
A former advertisement graphic designer, Lin began floral arranging as a way to continue pursuing her passion for design after transitioning her attention to family. She has since started her own business, Studio Lorax, which offers custom event decor, tailored floral art and flower arrangement workshops.
As for involving her son in the art-making process: “I always spend time with him, but I also show him how I do what I love, so he gives me the time I need when I am working on my [art],” Lin said. “There are a lot of memories for me and my son when we work on [pieces] and we talk about them.”
Lin also organized an interactive station for exhibit-goers to create Californian poppies out of paper and wire. Final products were added to the exhibit, stuck onto a patch of fake grass near the center of the room.
Lucy Yang: “The Language of Spring (oil on canvas), “The Salt of November” (watercolor on paper), “Salt-Pond A8” (oil on canvas)
Artist Lucy Yang shared two oil paintings and one watercolor piece depicting nature near her home in the Bay Area. After her two children were born, Yang rediscovered painting as a hobby, using art to convey the feelings of different seasons.
Yang has found more time for art as her son and daughter grow older, but reminisces upon the times when she created pieces with her children.
“Some of my house paintings are created by me and my children and I really like that because that time can literally never come back,” Yang said.
Four other Bay Area mothers also shared their work at the exhibition. Nina Chen displayed indigo and natural dye projects, Wen Lan Lu presented her oil painting, Chingju Tsai shared wax paintings and Stephanie Wu performed the cello in multiple ensembles.
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Daily Diminutive #056 (April 30, 2025)Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords three times a week and a full-size crossword biweekly.
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Research Roundup: Replicating a pain transmission pathway and predicting mice behaviorStanford researchers replicated a pain transmission pathway that could help improve future pain treatments, while a “digital twin” helped researchers predict mice behaviors.
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The Science & Technology desk gathers a weekly digest with impactful and interesting research publications and developments at Stanford. Read the latest in this week’s Research Roundup.
Replicating a pain transmission pathway
As detailed in a Stanford-led study published in Nature, researchers successfully created a replica of a neuronal pathway responsible for pain transmission in a lab dish called an “assembloid.”
The pathway, known as the ascending sensory pathway, involves a web of neurons sending sensory information all the way from the ganglions — typically found on our hands — to the cortex. With a replica of this pathway, the researchers were able to both observe the neuronal chemical activity and modulate it by affecting gene expression and other chemical methods.
Why is this important? Chronic pain affects millions of people, and many treatments — especially opioids — are addictive. With a better understanding of how the ascending sensory pathway functions and how it can be modulated, researchers could develop more effective treatments to ameliorate chronic pain.
Psychiatry and behavioral sciences professor Sergiu Pasca, senior author of the study, offered his perspective on the future applications of the research.
“We think screening for drugs that tame sensory organoids’ ability to trigger excessive or inappropriate waves of neuronal transmission through our assembloid, without affecting the brain’s reward circuitry as opioid drugs do — which is why they’re addictive — could lead to better-targeted therapies for pain,” Pasca told Stanford Medicine.
AI and Digital Twins
ChatGPT is an example of a foundational model, in which AI is able to analyze a large amount of text and apply its analysis to other contexts. In a Stanford-affiliated study published in Nature, researchers used an AI algorithm similar to a foundational model to analyze videos of mice watching multiple movies. The model successfully predicted the mice’s neuronal reactions to other visual imagery, acting as a “digital twin.”
Since mice, like humans, have low-resolution vision, their visual system tends to focus more on action compared to finer details such as imagery. To gain a better understanding of mice’s neuronal system, the researchers deliberately chose action movies with extensive movement to properly stimulate them — otherwise, the algorithm would be relying on low-yield data and, more crucially, data that does not represent how mice readily interpret visual information.
Given the scope of the neuronal activity in the brain, it would seem almost impossible to make such predictions. The researchers attribute this predictive capacity to having an extremely large data set. This approach will be especially important for gaining deeper insight into the brain on a neuronal level, according to Andreas Tolias, a senior author of the study and professor of ophthalmology.
“We’re trying to open the black box, so to speak, to understand the brain at the level of individual neurons or populations of neurons and how they work together to encode information,” Tolias told Stanford Medicine.
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ASSU announces 2025 election resultsOn Monday, the ASSU Elections Commission announced Ava Brown '26 and Will Berriman '26 as the 2025-2026 ASSU president and vice president, respectively. ASSU also released the new group of UGS senators, class presidents and GSC senators.
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Ava Brown ’26 and Will Berriman ’26 were elected president and vice president of the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU), alongside a new group of Undergraduate Senate (UGS) and Graduate Student Council (GSC) senators Monday.
Candidates elected in the 2025 election will serve their positions for the 2025-2026 academic year.
Out of the 17,014 total ballots distributed by the ASSU Elections Commission, students cast 3,027 ballots across undergraduate and graduate schools, leading to a 17.79% voter turnout (33.56% and 5.81%, respectively). Last year, 33.07% percent of students voted.
All grants — 22 joint annual grants, 31 GSC annual grants and 166 UGS annual grants — were approved by a simple majority vote.
Executives
Brown and Berriman collected 1,276 votes, or 53.34% of the vote, beating out the only other candidate slate, Artem Arzyn ’25 M.S. ’25 and Raina Talwar Bhatia ’25 M.S. ’26, who gathered 42.52% of the vote. Executive slate and UGS co-chairs Ivy Chen ’26 M.A. ’27 and Gordon Allen ’26 did not appear on the ballot after Allen withdrew from the race last Wednesday.
Brown and Berriman’s campaign, “Your Friendly Neighborhood Cardinal,” focused on community-centered programming and policy initiatives.
All undergraduate and graduate students were eligible to vote for ASSU executives.
Undergraduate Senate
Fifteen students were elected from a 30-candidate race for the 27th Undergraduate Senate. Princess Ochweri ’27, Celeste Vargas ’27 and David Sengthay ’26 MA ’26 earned the most votes. Four of the fifteen elected students are incumbents: Vargas, Sengthay, Jared Hammerstrom ’27 and Yoanna Hoskins ’27. Dan Kubota ’27 won the last UGS seat with 350 votes, beating out Hoyoon Song ’28 in a tie due to a more evenly distributed vote total across class years.
All undergraduate students were eligible to vote.
Class Presidents
Students voted according to their class year in the class presidential elections.
SPARK won the race for sophomore class president, earning 50.66% of the final vote share over second-place candidate AMP and third-place candidate FUSE. SPARK’s candidate slate consists of Anura Bracey ’28, Sam Chen ’28, Jasper Karlson ’28, Angela Li ’28 and Asad Gilani ’28. Their platform promised to “make YOUR voice heard and to bring real, tangible change to our campus.”
In the race for junior class president, PULSE won re-election with 84.29% of the vote, running uncontested. The slate includes Nika Farokhzad ’27, Sofia Irlando ’27, Roome Becker ’27, Madhav Prakash ’27, Justin Yang ’27 and Adam Rourke ’27. Their platform emphasized the slate’s accomplishments over the last year including hosting a formal at The Cantor, handing out pre-midterm snacks in Green Library and hosting sophomore nights at On Call cafe.
LIFT won re-election for senior class president, gathering 56.81% of the final vote share above second-place candidate PRIME and third-place candidate IGNITE. The slate consists of Yara Elian ’26, Rishi Jain ’26, Gabby Edelin ’26 and Pierre Dagsi ’26. Their platform promised to host “Senior Nights,” plan “alumni referral events and resume workshops” and bring Michelle Obama to campus to speak at graduation.
Aili McGregor ’26 and Matthew Guck ’26, who served on LIFT this year, were not included on the presidential ballot due to Senior Class President slates being limited to four members. Edelin wrote in a message to The Daily that McGregor and Guck will continue to work on the team next year on behalf of LIFT, as they appeal to expand the slate number.
“Matthew and Aili’s unwavering commitment to representation and service will continue throughout our Senior year just as it has these last three years,” she wrote. “It has always been LIFT’s intention to expand the Senior Class government to allow all six of us to serve as official Senior Class Presidents.”
Graduate Student Council
Graduate students voted four at-large Graduate Student Council members into office: third-year Ph.D. student in physics Sephora Ruppert, fifth-year Ph.D. student in physics Rory O’Dwyer, third-year MLA student Elena Vasilache, who was an editor for The Daily, and third-year Ph.D. student in math Andy Yin. Two at-large seats remain vacant, with a 26-way tie for the seats.
The remaining nine council members are voted by graduate schools and disciplines.
Maxima Nsimenta MBA ’26 will represent the Graduate School of Business. Fifth-year Ph.D. student in education Leslie Luqueño will represent the Graduate School of Education. Third-year Ph.D. student in sociology Lorena Aviles Trujillo will represent the School of Humanities and Sciences. Second-year Ph.D. student in chemistry Casey Chan will represent the School of Humanities and Sciences — Natural Sciences. Second-year J.D. candidate Laurel Kim will represent the School of Law. Rahul Penumaka M.S. ’25 will represent the School of Medicine. Third-year Ph.D. student in computer science Áron Ricardo Perez-Lopez will represent the School of Engineering, which elects two members.
The seat for the Doerr School of Sustainability remains vacant, with a seven-way tie, as well as one School of Engineering seat, with a three-way tie. Elected members break ties “following at least two minutes for each such candidate to provide a statement to the GSC and two minutes for questions of that candidate.”
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Chan | Why limiting abortion is everyone’s issueChan analyzes the issue of reproductive rights in America through the lens of her father, a women's healthcare provider.
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Being a woman means one experiences certain milestones — puberty, periods, sex education, one’s first visit with an OBGYN, birth control. It’s pretty typical, I’d say, for these moments to be surrounded by support from women in your family. Growing up, that person for me was my father.
In my household, my father, a women’s healthcare provider, is the expert on women’s health. Up until the divisive 2016 election, I lived a life where a male figure, my father, was the main educator and champion of my bodily rights.
The American agenda against abortion — which is disproportionately driven by men — is a complete antithesis to the reproductive values that my father instilled in me.
Our current president claims that his pro-life work is protecting abortion on the very extremes, and therefore protecting society from those he deems “demented late-term abortionists” who “execut[e] babies after birth.” This inflammatory language, meant to confound voters with ethical quandaries, is another example of pro-life fear-mongering. These edge cases that pro-lifers mention — abortions after 21 weeks — falsely villainize women and make up less than one percent of all abortions.
Trump has changed what reproductive healthcare looks like for me, countless other women and those with female anatomy. All of his nominations to the Supreme Court during his first term — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — voted in favor of the 6-3 decision overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. Although Biden was in office in 2022, the reversal of Roe v. Wade during his presidency was planned — in 2016, Trump promised to build a court with enough of a majority to do so.
After the Supreme Court decision in 2022, women in increasingly hostile abortion climates resorted to desperate measures. In a UCSF survey study, the number of participants who used the anti-abortion medication mifepristone without the help of a medical provider doubled from 2022 to 2023. Moreover, since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there’s been an increase in clinically-supplemented abortions — especially ones administered virtually through telehealth, which suggests that women are feeling less safe when accessing abortions outside of their own homes.
The current administration has limited access to abortion even further by wielding the power of the executive. Amidst his return to the White House, Trump enacted the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits national health insurance agencies such as Medicaid from using government funding for abortions. In late January, Trump also weaponized the State Department to forego Congressional support of family planning programs in underdeveloped countries. The legacy of this decision means that 47 million women in developing countries will lose access to contraceptive care, including abortions.
In many ways, Trump’s incendiary remarks and executive actions make him a martyr for the modern day pro-life movement. What some people tend to forget, however, is that pro-life sentiments have always existed.
For example, the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case was highly controversial. The ruling, which determined that the government could not interfere with a woman’s decision to terminate before 24-28 weeks, incited protests immediately after. The recent overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Dobbs v. Jackson, has also been a subject of discourse. In states with total bans, around 67% of women believe that abortion should remain legal in the majority of instances, meaning that the Supreme Court’s ruling is not, in fact, a genuine exercise of “state’s choice,” especially when it comes down to the opinions of the actual individuals who will be affected. Regardless of these statistics, there are still many politicians and citizens cheering pro-life agendas on. Surprisingly, some of them are women.
From 2008 to 2017, 45% of anti-abortion legislation was sponsored by Republican women. In 2020, 16 pro-life female politicians were elected to Senate positions. These politicians are still active in office; in fact, their terms end in 2026, which provides plenty of time for them to work alongside an increasingly conservative Capitol Hill. Moreover, within the electorate, over a third of women believe most abortions should be illegal. It’s clear from data that endangering abortion rights isn’t solely perpetuated by men, but also by women, many of whom are religious.
How, then, do we grapple with the multi-gendered issue of abortion? In today’s political arena, Democrats and Republicans exploit this issue through their political platforms to amass emotionally-charged reactions and garner the women’s vote. Where the political debate often strays away from, however, is the women themselves.
As voters, it’s easier to disassociate from and dehumanize issues by focusing on the masses and the eye-catching statistics surrounding abortion. However, my belief in reproductive choice for women is through my father’s eyes. For him, every case is different. Each woman brings their own reasons, religions, political ideology and upbringing into his clinic. There’s no conscionable way for him to amalgamate his patients into an ambiguous mass.
That’s the way we should think about abortion and reproductive healthcare — as an incredibly private decision that should, but does not, stay between our bodies, partners and the doors of our OBGYN offices. The reversal of Roe v. Wade was just the beginning of a series of rollbacks to our rights, rights that will soon be entrusted to states as an assertive executive, Supreme Court and Congress facilitate this transfer of power in the next few years. As this happens, the privacy that we cherish as citizens will be knocked down in favor of a partisan political agenda.
Ultimately, privacy is about choice. The freedom to make informed decisions in society without government interference is an inherently democratic value. At the end of the day, you don’t have to be a woman to care about abortion rights. You just have to care about democracy and your right to choose within it.
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Rage on the Page: ‘Acts of Service’ by Lillian Fishman is a raw, erotic meditation on power, shame and wanting too muchIn her column, Guleryuz reviews Lillian Fishman's "Acts of Service," which takes the raw material of desire and strips it of metaphor, leaving it red and aching on the page.
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In her column “Rage on the Page,” Melisa Guleryuz ’27 reviews books about anger in women’s literature.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
“I had thought that sex might allow me to forget myself, but instead it made me think more aggressively, more obsessively, about who I was,” thinks Eve, the protagonist of Lillian Fishman’s “Acts of Service.”
“Acts of Service” is not your average queer coming-of-age story; it’s not a romance or a political treatise. It’s a deeply provocative, deeply intimate novel that stares directly at the raw, unfiltered complexities of desire and refuses to look away.
Erotic, cerebral and occasionally excruciating, Fishman writes not to titillate, but to interrogate. She is less interested in what turns us on than in what that arousal says about who we are.
This isn’t a book for the squeamish. It’s a book for anyone who has ever wanted something and immediately hated themselves for it.
The novel follows Eve, a young, queer Brooklynite who begins the story by cheating on her girlfriend and posting nudes online. That act isn’t just reckless — it’s a kind of philosophical provocation, a way of poking her own sense of self with a stick. She soon finds herself in an erotic entanglement with Nathan, an older man, and Olivia, his enigmatic, confident partner.
What unfolds is not so much a love triangle as a shifting landscape of consent, control, humiliation and curiosity. There is sex — a lot of sex — but Fishman writes it in a way that is more existential than explicit. The sex scenes are tools of exploration, acts of language as much as flesh. They are sites of confusion and confrontation.
“I was not entirely at the mercy of what I wanted, but neither was I in control of it,” Eve remarks.
This quote could be the thesis of the book. Eve is constantly at war with her own wants. Her desire disturbs her. It excites her. It betrays her ideology about sex, mocks her moral posturing and reveals just how much of her personhood is an act — especially when she insists she’s above performance.
What makes “Acts of Service” so sharp, so startling, is its refusal to moralize. Fishman doesn’t offer Eve up for judgment, but she doesn’t protect her from it either. She allows her protagonist to spiral, contradict herself and say things that many people would find upsetting:
“Nothing is more ordinary than wanting to be hurt.”
That line lands like a slap: it’s seductive and repulsive at once, daring the reader to flinch. In many ways, Eve is the anti-heroine of the current cultural moment. She’s not here to be your empowering protagonist. She doesn’t want to be a symbol. She’s not interested in liberation narratives or self-help arcs. She’s here to feel something real, even if it’s shameful or ugly. Especially if it’s ugly.
This is a novel that understands something essential about being a woman — especially a queer woman — in a world that commodifies identity and packages pleasure as a moral right. “Acts of Service” rejects all of that. It says, what if my pleasure is messy? What if my desires don’t align with my politics? What if I want to be degraded and it has nothing to do with my trauma? What if I don’t want to be fixed?
Fishman’s prose is clean, spare and piercing. There’s no purple prose here — no breathy metaphors or overwrought similes. Her sentences are tight as a wire, constantly vibrating with tension. Every paragraph feels like an argument between Eve and herself. The eroticism is not just in the sex, but in the thinking about the sex.
“When we say that sex is political, we mean, in part, that it is impossible to do the wrong thing without doing the right thing.”
That line is brutal. It captures the book’s ambivalence, and its refusal to clean up the mess it so lovingly unpacks. Every time Eve gets close to understanding herself, she slips, intentionally, into contradiction. She doesn’t want clarity — she wants intensity, and Fishman delivers.
“Acts of Service” is the rare novel that explores sex not as a plot device, but as a philosophical act. It is provocative in the truest sense, asking questions it doesn’t try to answer. It leaves you unsettled, and that’s the point.
Fishman doesn’t offer catharsis but a mirror: one that’s held too close, angled just so, forcing you to look at the parts of yourself you’ve learned to ignore. The parts you want to want. The parts you want to destroy.
This isn’t a novel you recommend lightly. It’s the kind of book you press into someone’s hands and say, “You might hate this. But if you don’t — you’ll never stop thinking about it.”
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