Following the suspension of student visa appointments last month, the U.S. has expanded its vetting process by demanding access to applicants’ social media presence.
The post Trump administration demands foreign students make social media accounts public appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
The State Department announced on Wednesday that it will consider online presence in the selection process for F, J, and M nonimmigrant visas — the international student and visiting scholar visa categories — and instructed applicants to make their social media profiles public.
The Bechtel Center said in an email sent to international students on Thursday that “this may be important information especially for [students] who will be traveling outside the U.S. and will need to obtain a new F-1 or J-1 visa to reenter.” This means that the measure will impact both prospective students seeking visas and current students who must obtain a new visa for reentry into the U.S. including students whose visas have expired or been cancelled.
Under the new policy, consular officers are instructed to identify “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles of the United States” on visa applicants’ social media pages, according to reporting by the New York Times. The State Department “did not provide further details on how officers would define that criteria.”
The University wrote to the Daily that the Bechtel Center offers resources for the international community, many of which can be accessed on its immigration website.
This policy comes as another development in President Donald Trump’s aggression towards foreign students in higher education, which included the suspension of new student visa interviews and the since-restored termination of visas from thousands of international students in May. The State Department announcement said that visa appointments at embassies and consulates will resume soon.
The Trump administration has specifically targeted Chinese students. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in May that the U.S. would “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students,” and Congress demanded that Stanford release information about Chinese international students in April.
University president Jonathan Levin ’94 has faced criticism for his response to the Trump administration’s attacks to higher education and international students. While Levin has affirmed the importance of international students to the University’s scholarship and research, critics urge him to directly condemn the Trump administration’s actions. A petition released in April and now signed by over 3,000 students, faculty and alumni called for Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez to issue a statement criticizing Trump’s campaign against higher education. Later that month, Levin abstained from signing an anti-Trump letter published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Among the letter’s signatories were presidents of peer institutions such as Harvard and Columbia. In May, the University denied any awareness of a private, elite university collective opposing the Trump administration as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Several members of Stanford faculty have expressed outrage at the Trump administration’s interference in international student enrollment.
The post Trump administration demands foreign students make social media accounts public appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Edible Ethos: Six power foodsCan taste be sustainable? Pandey explores six meat-alternative, delectable foods in the plant kingdom.
The post Edible Ethos: Six power foods appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
In Edible Ethos, Chetanya Pandey ’27 dives into the wild world of eating with a pinch of humor, a dash of honesty and a whole lot of love for plants. From simple switches to kitchen wizardry, this column explores how making small, conscious food choices can help save the planet… and your taste buds. Think of this as your guide to eating better, feeling better and saving the world, all while keeping it casual (and delicious).
When you think of protein and nourishment, it’s likely your mind immediately leaps to animal based products like chicken, fish and eggs. But the plant kingdom is actually bursting with nutritious, satisfying and even protein-rich foods that can rival and often beat non-vegetarian options in terms of health, sustainability and most importantly, flavor!
Whether you’re trying to cut down on meat or look for some spice in life, here are six foods to try instead of chicken that will keep your plate exciting and your body thriving.
First up are the unsung heroes of this world. Packed with protein (frickin’ 18 grams per cup cooked), iron, fiber and folate, lentils make an excellent substitute for minced meat in dishes like shepherd’s pie, tacos and curries. Aside from being incredibly affordable, they are also easy to cook and can even be eaten in soup form. Don’t forget to add a squeeze of lemon and fresh coriander for a flavor punch. Stanford Health Care even offers a recipe for Egyptian red lentil soup filled with multiple cancer-fighting ingredients.
Hearty and protein-rich, chickpeas are great in both Indian and Mediterranean dishes — think chole, hummus and falafel. Full of fiber and low in saturated fat, chickpeas aid digestion and keep you feeling full for longer. Maybe skip the chicken sandwich and go for a chickpea wrap with cucumber, onions and tahini sauce. Not convinced? Try your hand at this extremely delicious chickpea salad or this chickpeas and artichoke “crab” cake with remoulade over mushroom risotto by Chef Jay-ar Pugao.
Raw jackfruit is surprisingly similar in texture to pulled pork or shredded chicken. When cooked with the right spices, jackfruit makes a fantastic meat alternative. One could replace mutton curry with jackfruit masala. It has all the heaviness of meat minus the cholesterol. Unlike money, meat can grow on trees!
It’s not a grain but a seed that offers all nine essential amino acids, making it a complete protein! High in fiber and minerals like magnesium and iron, quinoa is a great alternative to animal protein in salsa, bowls or even breakfast porridge. Don’t shy away from replacing your chicken-and-rice lunch with a quinoa bowl topped with beans, avocado, corn and a lime vinaigrette.
With a meat-like texture, seitan has 21 grams of protein per 3 ounce serving. A favorite amongst athletes, it’s a must-try and is easily found in grocery outlets! Here is a recipe for making seitan in a dorm kitchenette. And yes, from my own dining experience, it is convincingly meaty — proving you don’t need animals to enjoy meat. Seitan can sizzle on the grill, crisp in a stir-fry or stew in curry. As a bonus, it’s also low in fat.
Like quinoa, soybeans are gifted with all the nine essential amino acids. Rich in calcium and iron, they provide 31 grams of protein per cup. They also contain isoflavones, which reduce cholesterol levels and improve heart health. Soy nuggets, tempeh and boiled edamame need to be on your to-eat list.
These alternative proteins are both sustainable and delicious. With this, I leave you to experiment and go have fun with the plant-based world!
The post Edible Ethos: Six power foods appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Meet Merry Seng Maran: Stanford’s ‘first Kachin-Burmese American’ graduateOn Sunday, Seng Maran ’25 M.A. ’25 graduated with a degree in political science and a masters degree in sociology, which she plans to put to use as an education strategist in Kenya.
The post Meet Merry Seng Maran: Stanford’s ‘first Kachin-Burmese American’ graduate appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
“I’ll be the first Kachin-Burmese American to graduate from Stanford,” Merry (M) Seng Maran ’25 M.A. ’25 said. “This moment is historic, not only for me but also for my community.”
Seng Maran graduated with a major in political science and a masters degree in sociology.
She has questioned identity and the idea of home for all of her life. “I’m used to being the first Kachin-Burmese student in almost every setting that I go to,” she said.
“One: I’m mixed,” she said. Seng Maran’s father, who passed away when she was young, was Kachin, an ethnic group living in northeast Myanmar. Her mother is Burmese.
“Two: I’ve moved around.” Seng Maran was born in Myanmar, where she lived with her mother until age 5. The pair then moved to Malaysia, where they waited five years for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to determine their refugee status.
“Three: I got stuck in Tennessee with a bunch of white people,” she concluded. After the UNHCR officially deemed them refugees, Seng Maran and her mother moved to their stateside home of Tennessee.
From her roots in Myanmar — where the world’s longest civil war has been ongoing since 1948 — Seng Maran has always been motivated to pursue education.
“Airstrikes are happening as we speak right now,” she said. “Schools have been bombed, churches shelled, children have died in classrooms even a few days ago. Entire families are living in displacement camps with no electricity, no health care and no consistent education.”
After watching her mother sacrifice opportunities in order for her to have a shot at education, Seng Maran said that applying to Stanford was an “act of resistance.”
“Coming to Stanford wasn’t just about ambition,” she said, “It was about reclaiming what war tried to steal, reclaiming a future that was never promised to me… I felt like I needed to seize all the opportunities that were in front of me because I’m doing it for not just me and my family, but for a whole nation.”
Attending Stanford as a first-generation student, Seng Maran said she wrestled with imposter syndrome, cultural differences and the weight of representing her whole country.
While on campus, however, she found spaces not just to learn, but to “heal, question and serve,” she said, studying political science to understand how power and systems shape individuals’ lives “with [her] people in mind.”
Throughout her four years, Seng Maran has also found friends, mentors and professors who reminded her that she belonged.
Khuyen Nguyen ’25 described Seng Maran’s “deep interest in humanitarian issues and uplifting those around her,” in an email to The Daily.
“It is inspiring to see how much she gives to her work and to the people around her,” Sydney Helfand ’25 added.
To Jinpa Sangmo ’25, Seng Maran is “someone who always looks to learn more from life but also shows up for her loved ones… I’ve seen her get stronger in the four years, continuing to stand for what she believes in and her community,” Sangmo wrote.
In the classroom, Jennifer Johnson, Seng Maran’s instructor for PWR 2: “Language, Identity and Power,” wrote to The Daily that Seng Maran’s trilingualism in English, Burmese and Jinghpaw — an ethnic Kachin dialect — allows her to “center overlooked voices and offer powerful insights on language, identity, and power,” making her “a force in both the classroom and the community.”
Similarly, Jared Furuta M.A. ’20 Ph.D. ’20, who taught Seng Maran in SOC 160: “Formal Organizations” and SOC 133D: “Globalization and Social Change,” described how Seng Maran “engages with the world in a genuine and enthusiastic way,” in an email to The Daily. He referenced a time that Seng Maran wrote about student life through organizational theory and analyzed activism in Myanmar through social movement theories.
Senior Associate Dean of Students Darrell Green — who met Seng Maran while she was taking photos for the University social media at a football game — once spoke to Seng Maran about his faith, and she invited him to her church where she introduced him to many of it’s members.
“You just don’t meet these types of people too often,” he told The Daily.
During her senior year, Seng Maran was also a resident assistant (RA) in Arroyo.
Jill Patton ’03 M.A. ’04, one of Arroyo’s resident fellows, praised Seng Maran’s thoughtfulness in the dorm, where Seng Maran wrote notes and holiday cards to dorm residents.
Ashley Harden, who worked closely with Seng Maran this past year as the Resident Director for neighborhood Sequoia, said: “She’s such a resilient young woman. She has been through so much. She’s so family oriented and she cares so much about doing well for her family,” Harden said.
After four years, “Stanford became a place where I not only learned about power and policy, but also about purpose,” Seng Maran said. “I’m glad I’m leaving knowing I have something to give. I’m walking away from Stanford not just with a degree but with a mission.”
After concluding her Stanford career with a senior capstone on educational recovery and authoritarian regimes post-natural disasters, Seng Maran graduated last Sunday on Father’s Day without the father she lost — but with a mother who filled both roles. “This day is a reminder of all that’s been lost — and all that’s been overcome,” she said.
Following graduation, she booked a one-way ticket to Kenya to work at a school as an education strategist for the summer. Seng Maran hasn’t returned to Myanmar since she first left, and with the recent travel ban to Myanmar and other countries by President Donald Trump, the closest opportunity for her is Kenya, she said.
“This degree is for the kids back home who had to drop out of the school to work to support their families; for the youth in refugee camps who are told that education is a luxury and not a right,” Seng Maran said.
The post Meet Merry Seng Maran: Stanford’s ‘first Kachin-Burmese American’ graduate appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
From cell to cell: Kyle Cole builds bridges for nontraditional learners at StanfordBy connecting independently-led programs, Cole helped cultivate a collaborative network that opens opportunities to community college and formerly incarcerated students.
The post From cell to cell: Kyle Cole builds bridges for nontraditional learners at Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Nikkhilesh Ranjith still has the photo from his first day at Stanford Medicine — in which he stands, in his own words, beaming with “pure joy, pride, gratitude and a lot of disbelief.”
Ranjith, a formerly incarcerated student, came to Stanford to work at the Helms Lab in summer 2024.
“I cannot emphasize enough how crazy it is to go from sitting in a cell where you have no control over anything to sitting in a high-tech lab like something out of a movie, doing things we actually see in movies, where every idea I have could produce tangible results that could change lives,” Ranjith wrote in an email to The Daily.
Ranjith carved a unique path, but it was one of many facilitated by the work of Kyle Cole.
Cole has served as director of education and STEM outreach at Stanford’s Office of Community Engagement (OCE) since 2023. There, he leads efforts to connect faculty and staff at Stanford with students who don’t usually picture themselves on the Farm, including community college students and those who were formerly incarcerated.
“Community college students have few internship and work-experience opportunities, which can be pivotal for advancing their educational career,” Cole wrote in an email to The Daily.
Many faculty, graduate students and staff at Stanford had long been working on outreach initiatives, but until recently, Cole said, their efforts often went siloed. In 2022, to resolve this problem, Cole launched the Stanford Community College Community of Practice (CoP), a decentralized network that brought together people who had been independently supporting community college outreach. The idea, he said, was “bringing people together in the same space to say, ‘Hey, what do you do and how can we work together?’”
By summer 2024, more than 170 community college students were hosted in labs and programs across Stanford.
“The CoP has created a structured mechanism for sharing and coordinating community college outreach programs in units across campus,” wrote Michael Acedo, assistant director of project innovation and technology in Stanford Digital Education. “Cole has been instrumental in leading this effort, which has enabled different groups to highlight their work, exchange ideas and inspire new partnerships.”
One of the partnerships Cole helps support is with nano@Stanford, where interns from community colleges build industry-leading technical skills while also supporting daily operations.
“The internship program has nurtured a truly symbiotic relationship between the interns and facility staff,” wrote Daniella Duran M.A. ’97, education and outreach program manager. “While the staff are training and empowering these community college students, the interns in turn are providing critical facility operational support.”
Interns have presented their research at nano@Stanford’s Open House, led training videos and tours and attended their first technical conferences. Many continue to work at Stanford after the program ends.
One former intern, Alsyl Enriquez, later conducted summer research at Harvard.
“I can’t emphasize enough how influential and foundational my experience at Stanford was in helping me not only secure a research position at Harvard, but also succeed in it,” Enriquez wrote.
Cole’s collaborators also recognized another group who faced challenges in accessing education: students who had been impacted by the criminal justice system.
“There are underserved students, and then there are really underserved students who have few opportunities,” Cole said. “Once you’ve been in the criminal justice system, the number of doorways that are open to you just close tremendously.”
With internship funding available, Cole reached out to Rising Scholars, Berkeley’s Underground Scholars and Project Change at the College of San Mateo in 2023 to recruit formerly and currently incarcerated learners. In the program’s first summer, five system-impacted students joined Stanford labs.
Jorge Gonzalez, a student from this life experience who conducted research at the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis in summer 2024, wrote that “being able to have this opportunity to collaborate and work remotely for Stanford was amazing. I gained new skills and knowledge that can help me as I work toward my bachelor’s degree.”
Despite the opportunity, many faced obstacles while they were on campus. Cole described how one intern didn’t have stable housing and was taking Zoom calls from a car for their internship. Another had permission to come to the program during the day, but had a curfew that required him to be back in his home by 6 p.m.
“That puts you in a very different group than other students,” Cole said.
Each time Cole shares his work, he said, more faculty, staff and students reach out asking how they can get involved.
“I would just say for formerly incarcerated students, to not count them out as part of the pool,” Cole said. “They have all the abilities of these other students and even fewer opportunities to demonstrate those abilities.”
As for Ranjith, he wanted to offer one final note to other students from similar backgrounds: “Your past and background does not make you inferior to anyone or diminish your potential for success,” he wrote. “Don’t be afraid to ask questions because that is literally what research is.”
The post From cell to cell: Kyle Cole builds bridges for nontraditional learners at Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Katie Ledecky speaks at Commencement marked by protestsAbout 150 students protested during graduation while University president Jonathan Levin spoke. Katie Ledecky '20 gave the Commencement speech.
The post Katie Ledecky speaks at Commencement marked by protests appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
The 134th Commencement ceremony was held at Stanford Stadium today, where the University awarded long-awaited degrees to the Class of 2025. Joined by family, friends and faculty, the graduates celebrated the culmination of their academic journeys, which began in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In his first Commencement speech as president, University president Jonathan Levin ’94 reflected on his memories as a Stanford student, the global reach of the Stanford community and ongoing criticisms and disputes facing higher education.
“I can confidently say that the [Class of 2025] will be remembered as the class that brought back fun,” Levin said, referring to the so-called “War on Fun” that drew controversy in recent years.
During his introduction to the ceremony, approximately 150 pro-Palestine students walked out in protest of the University’s stance on the war in Gaza as well as their actions dealing with the Trump administration.
Provost Jenny Martinez recognized the graduates for completing their degree requirements while Levin conferred their degrees, officially marking the transition from students to alumni. The total graduating class — including undergraduates and graduate students — consisted of 5,271 people, Stanford’s largest in history, with students’ ages ranging from 18 to 67.
Stanford’s youngest commencement speaker, Katie Ledecky ’20, a psychology alumna and 14-time Olympic medalist, returned to the Farm to address the Class of 2025. Ledecky missed her own graduation while training for the Tokyo Olympic trials. In an interview with The Daily, she said, “This is my first time really experiencing a graduation… I’m excited to just crash their events and get a feel for that sort of celebration.”
In her speech, Ledecky connected her swimming career with the nature of graduation. “When I was a little kid, my dad taught me that swim races could be decided by just a hundredth of a second…and that exercise taught me just how fast time flies by,” she said.
Graduation kicked off with the Wacky Walk, a beloved tradition with seniors displaying their creative outfits — typically reflective of campus culture or social commentary — as the graduates entered the field. Groups dressed as floating ducks, for example, poked fun at Stanford’s so-called Duck Syndrome.
Notable looks this year included the campus package center lockers, a group dressed up as a pirate ship labelled “Jane Stanford’s Revenge” and Stanford parking tickets.
Lindsey McKhann ‘25 and Andrew Gerges ‘25 wore TreeHouse margarita costumes from the popular campus restaurant “to pay tribute to something that was critical to our time here at Stanford, something that whenever we needed it, was there to help us find community and seek kinship in a shared love and joy with our people,” McKhann told The Daily.
Following the Wacky walk, Levin gave his introductory remarks during which the walk-out occurred. The protest was publicized through an Instagram post asking graduates to “Join the Class of 2025 in rejecting Stanford’s insatiable greed, as they cower to the federal administration, maintain complicity in genocide, and prioritize profit over students.”
The group held signs reading “The People’s University” and carried Palestinian flags.
An organizer of the walkout, Emma R. ’25, who requested to withhold her last name due to concerns about academic repercussions, told The Daily, “We walked out in protest of the University’s complicity, in support of Palestine and in recognition of all the Palestinians who should have been graduating this year but haven’t, because they’ve been murdered.”
Members of the walkout also hosted an alternative commencement called “The People’s Commencement” just minutes away from the stadium at the Arboretum Grove. “We wanted to still offer graduates the opportunity to celebrate their achievements while also not supporting an institution that is complicit in genocide,” Emma said.
Shortly after Levin began speaking and before the walkout began, a small plane began circling the stadium, trailing a banner that read, “Congrats! Don’t work for Elon [Musk].” The plane returned more than once, continuing its appearance even after the main ceremony concluded.
Following Levin and Martinez, Ledecky’s speech drew on her experiences as a student-athlete and her passion for setting ambitious goals. Reflecting on her Stanford career, she emphasized the importance of community.
“Some of my best friends have come out of Stanford, my teammates, but also some of the professors that I’ve stayed in touch with and some other classmates,” Ledecky told The Daily. “I just look back on my time at Stanford with such fondness and with such great memories.”
She recalled a particularly spontaneous week with the Stanford Band, where she learned to play the saxophone for a football game. She said, “I had never played the saxophone before… By the end of the week, I had the hang of it a little bit.”
In her speech, Ledecky spoke about not comparing oneself to others. “You don’t have to win the race. You just need to win your race,” she said.
Her address resonated with graduates navigating their next steps. “I would just encourage all the graduates to continue to set those big goals for themselves,” Ledecky told The Daily, urging students to leverage their Stanford education to pursue their passions.
Graduate students joined the celebration with enthusiasm. The Graduate School of Business was especially lively, with students popping champagne and confetti and throwing beach balls into the air.
Charity McDowell ‘25, a Masters Student in Community Health and Prevention Research said, “I feel like it’s really just an accumulation of my years throughout school… Now it’s just kind of like a reward, like graduating from [Stanford], so it’s a real blessing and honor.”
Many families, students and faculty agreed that much of Stanford’s impact lies in its community. Johnbull Okpara, father of a member of the Class of 2025, resonated with Ledecky’s remarks on his daughter’s experience with Stanford. “This school, the environment, the camaraderie, the folks around her, professors, the work she’s done here, the whole package has been outstanding,” he told The Daily.
As the Class of 2025 packs up to leave the Farm, Commencement marks both an end and a beginning. Ledecky closed her remarks by telling the recent graduates to “take your mark and go out there and make your mark.”
The atmosphere outside the stadium was emotional, energized and full of pride. Chidimma Okpara ’25, graduating from the Graduate School of Science Community Health & Prevention Research said, “I’m elated, and just so excited too. And I think the [commencement] was just a cherry on top.”
Dawn Royster ’26 contributed reporting.
This article has been updated to specify that the walkout occurred during Levin’s introductory remarks.
The post Katie Ledecky speaks at Commencement marked by protests appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
For the fathers who raised usThe Daily invited students to share stories and memories about their fathers.
The post For the fathers who raised us appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
The Daily invited students to share personal stories about the father figures who’ve shaped their lives — by blood or by bond — who’ve guided, taught and inspired them. These are their stories.
When I was born, my grandfather caught me from my mother’s womb and cared for me like his own daughter. His rough and calloused hands taught me that they could create whatever I wished to make, and my childhood was filled with running around in the dirt, laying on the grass, picking fruit from our trees. With him, my joy came from peeling oranges, taking care of his many plants, watching the water fall on them like makeshift rain. My hands would get dusty and my legs would be splashed with mud, yet he bestowed upon me a childhood that was cut short for him. It was finding little things to fix around the house with wire, oil and steel. It never came from luxuries; it came from time spent together in each other’s company, each other’s warmth and hugs. It came from running into his arms and being met by his big puffy jacket filled with the aroma of cologne and churros when he returned from morning Mass. It came from a bond that did not beg to be bought but was created through blood and the gift of being a father.
Everyone always questioned me when I called you Papa, Dad: “Don’t you mean just Grandpa or Dad?” They didn’t understand that you were a father to everyone who knew you. How you listened without judgment and intuitively handled every situation. How you embodied structure and discipline: wake up every morning by 8 a.m. for work, make your coffee, read your newspaper and start the day.
On Sundays, you kept moving: get up early, do your laundry— seven t-shirts, three pairs of jeans, eight pairs of socks and underwear — “That’s all you need” — put on some oldies and take care of house chores by noon. You took pride in everything you did. You always carried your brown bristle brush to slick back your hair in your Ford truck, placing it right next to the keychains of me and my sisters from our Holy First Communion. These are memories and values you’ve instilled in me forever. From an unwavering drive and a spirit far too contagious to extinguish. If I close my eyes, I can be transported to the back of your truck, on our way to a Dodgers game, listening to The Isley Brothers, feeling protected, grounded and seen all over again.
“Why is there a sun and a moon?” Random questions rolled off my tongue every morning you dropped me off at school. Somehow, you always seemed to give a plausible reply to “Can you tell me a story?” “How come airplanes can fly?” or “How come I can see colors?” Endless replies to endless questions.
I reached for a picture book, but you handed me “Little Women” instead. I was five.
I turned each page, cover to cover, not understanding a single word — only the weight (literally) of the story in my hands. Ten years later, I read it again and finally understood what once was just a heavy book.
A seat by the dinner table was a seat… for homework… something I used to not dread. You guided me through simple math problems so that I could later do harder ones on my own. While you couldn’t help me with those, you helped me get there.
You were my first exposure to education. What I call my strength — my education — is wholly yours. For that, I thank you.
I call you my little daddy but there’s nothing little about your heart or your presence. Any room you walk into automatically feels your warmth, your charm, your kindness. Your ability to make people laugh is incredible. But most importantly the care you have for others is the trait I admire most. You are always looking for ways to bless and be a light to those around you. You think about how to make people feel loved and seen. You have such an incredible heart which is truly God-given. Your impact on this Earth has already been felt immensely by those who have the privilege to encounter your presence but most importantly it has been felt by your children. I speak for all of us when I say that we couldn’t have asked for a better father. We tease you for your corny jokes but we secretly love them because you’re able to make us laugh even when we don’t feel like it. In addition to happiness, you also bring peace and security because I know that if I can always come to you for advice. It’s such a powerful gift. When I say that I am blessed to have you, I hope you know how deeply I mean that. You gave me a second chance at life. You were there to pick me up from the orphanage and took me in as your own daughter, and I am eternally grateful. I love you so much, and I want you to know that you played a huge role in shaping me into the person I am today. I am lucky to be your Sweet T.
Cada mañana a las seis, mi papá y yo nos subíamos al coche, café en su mano, mochila en la mía. Hablábamos de todo: nuestros días, la escuela, su película favorita “The Martian,” y de mis sueños grandes. Me ponía sus canciones favoritas desde los Beatles o “Piano Man” de Billy Joel. Por diez años, manejaba tres horas al día para que yo pudiera estudiar en la mejor escuela. Nunca se quejó. Nunca me dejó sentir que le debía algo. Solo decía: “Tú haz tu mejor esfuerzo … y Dios proveerá.”
En cada concierto, cada competencia, ahí estaba con su cámara, su sonrisa, y su clásico “¡Ponte pa la foto!” Y en mis días más bajos o cuando no me va bien en algo siempre me dice“¿Sabías que estoy muy orgulloso de ti?” Y lo dice con tanta calma, que duele bonito.
Él y mi mamá dejaron México, su familia, y todo lo que conocía, para que mi hermana y yo pudiéramos tener más. Trabaja desde casa desde hace 17 años, no porque era fácil, sino porque quería estar construyendo legos, jugando barbies, ayudándome con tareas y simplemente estando.
Y aunque estoy lejos, lo siento cerquita. Porque todo lo que soy, empezó con todo lo que él decidió ser.
“Pónganse los zapatos de fútbol, vamos a practicar afuera.“
My dad would say this to my sisters and me, and we instantly knew what it meant: hours of footwork drills, speed exercises and relentless sprints if we kept making mistakes. It was tough love, but we understood that it was his way of showing us he cared. Each drill, each repetition, taught us not just soccer skills, but lessons in resilience. After each practice, as we gathered the homemade soccer equipment my dad built for us, he’d share his wisdom. One phrase that’s stuck with me all these years is: “Cuando te caes, te levantas y te esfuerzas más, aunque te duela. Haz todo con una sonrisa y con humildad. Que no te importe lo que digan los demás.” That lesson in perseverance and humility has shaped who I am today.
Before my freshman year at Stanford, I wanted to spend a summer fully focused on my family. My parents never let me work during school to prioritize my studies and soccer, but that summer, they finally gave me the green light. I had the option to pick an easy job, but instead, I thought about what my dad had been doing for over 20 years — something that demanded incredible strength and resilience. So, I decided to help him as a truck driver assistant. The job was tough. I woke up early, worked under the scorching sun, lifted heavy loads and restocked non-stop. And yet my dad had been doing this for 20 years, always with a smile. It was then that I truly understood the depth of his sacrifice and work ethic — how he did it all for us, without complaint, with the guidance of God.
For everything you’ve done, Dad, I want to say gracias. Thank you for the love, the hard work, the countless sacrifices. Your humility, humor and tireless spirit have shaped me into the person I am today. And I thank God every day for the strength and example you’ve given me. Siempre echándole ganas, just like you taught me.
”Phone call with my dad”
What did you do today, bố ?
Nothing.
That’s not true, I’m sure you did something.
Bố go to SF and visit Bà Nội. Play with Bảo Anh and Ngọc Anh. Same thing.
Hey, so you did do something! What else did you do?
Eat, sleep. Bố clean up the backyard. Walk Bà Nội around neighbor hood. Busy.
You literally just said you didn’t do anything today.
But Bố do this every day.
Then you do something everyday. That’s a good thing.
Maybe.
Bố, what are you doing after this?
Nothing.
Oh my gosh.
Ha!
The post For the fathers who raised us appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
From the Community | We must build a united front to defend international studentsFormer residents and associates of international theme houses urge the community to take action to support international students, arguing that silence is perceived as weakness.
The post From the Community | We must build a united front to defend international students appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
To the Stanford Community,
We are writing on behalf of many alumni who were residents and associates of the international theme houses at Lagunita Court between 1968 and 1971. Our shared Lagunita experience combining U.S. and international undergrad and grad students fostered lifelong personal and professional connections. International students are vital to Stanford’s excellence, and to Stanford’s mission as a global hub of learning and innovation.
We’ve shared this with Stanford’s leadership, who assured us that they are taking steps to address issues facing international students; however, we are concerned that their public silence is perceived as a weakness. We must unite to safeguard the open, diverse community that makes Stanford a beacon for the world.
We are aware of additional challenges by the current U.S. administration that threaten Stanford and other universities. The Stanford Daily reported that the budget bill passed by the House on May 22 imposes a 21% tax on Stanford’s endowment income. This threatens financial aid, which relies on the endowment for two-thirds of its $459 million budget, as well as research, faculty support and student services. Meanwhile, visa bans block international students, federal funding cuts cripple labs and accreditation threats, like those against Columbia University, undermine academic trust.
Stanford’s leadership must do more than offer assurances. We call on the entire Stanford community to act:
Stanford’s motto, “The wind of freedom blows,” summons every one of us to defend the free exchange of ideas. Let’s rise as a community to ensure Stanford remains a home for all who seek to participate in Stanford’s mission of discovery and learning.
Nicol Ian Mackenzie ’73, M.S. ’76, M.D. ’81, Anesthesia Residency ’84.
Ian D. Smith, M.A ’70, Ph.D. ’71, Fulbright scholar ’68-‘71. Australian citizen and associate professor (retired), University of Sydney, Australia.
Heather E. Hudson, M.A. ’69, Ph.D. ’74. Professor Emerita, University of San Francisco (Dual Canadian and U.S. citizen).
The post From the Community | We must build a united front to defend international students appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
The Stanford Daily Magazine: All the RageHow does rage shape a society? Does it emerge as a reaction, or does it incite as a catalyst? Is it a symptom of failure or a signal of change? Prompted by these questions, this volume of our magazine dares to explore rage not just as an emotion, but as a force through our overall theme, “All the Rage.”
The post The Stanford Daily Magazine: All the Rage appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Editor in Chief
Greta Reich
Executive Editors
Lauren Koong, Ananya Udaygiri
Magazine Editors
Charlotte Cao, Rebecca Louie
Graphics Editor
Da-Hee Kim
The post The Stanford Daily Magazine: All the Rage appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Crossword: All the RageClick to play The Daily's special edition crossword, part of this volume's "All the Rage" magazine. The Daily produces mini crosswords three times a week and a full-size crossword biweekly.
The post Crossword: All the Rage appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
The post Crossword: All the Rage appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Campus crime reviewed throughout academic yearThe Daily compiled all reported crimes across Stanford for the 2024-25 academic year. The data, separated by whether the crime occurred on east or west campus, maps the location and patterns of all reports throughout campus.
The post Campus crime reviewed throughout academic year appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Throughout the 2024-25 academic year, 561 crimes were reported to the Stanford University Department of Public Safety (SUDPS). The data, which was compiled by The Daily, was made using reports of police blotter, a weekly account of SUDPS’s reported crimes.
The data visualization maps the location of each crime, distinguishing between each of them depending on whether they occurred on east or west campus. The separate sides of campus were determined by whether the longitude of the reported location fell to the left or right of the median location for all the reports.
There were 161 bicycle and scooter thefts reported, 94 of which occurred on east campus and 67 on west campus. Bike thefts are either labeled as petty theft, if the bike was valued at or under $950, or grand theft, if the bike was valued at over $950.
“We have engaged in targeted enforcement efforts [against bike thefts] that have resulted in some arrests,” Bill Larson, community outreach office for SUDPS, wrote in an email to The Daily.
According to Larson, parking areas for bicycles are also watched for suspicious activity during routine patrol checks. SUDPS and the University’s campus planning and architect office also review the parking areas for any lighting improvements and where additional parking areas may be needed.
In 2023, Stanford was awarded the Platinum Bicycle Friendly University Award for the fourth consecutive time, making it the only university to achieve this. Over 10,000 bikers ride across campus daily as well. SUDPS introduced several efforts, such as their bike safety class developed with Stanford Transportation, increased promotion of their Bicycle Safety Diversion Program and heightened law enforcement, to increase bike safety and decrease collisions across campus.
“The Bicycle Safety Class was recently launched online. We plan to add more information on how to prevent bicycle theft in the next version,” Larson wrote.
Larson noted several efforts that SUDPS is undertaking to combat bicycle theft. “Bicycle theft prevention is a topic in our Bicycle Safety Diversion Program, [SUDPS] is represented on the Bicycle Safety Committee which includes bicycle theft prevention, [and] bicycle theft prevention tips are shared with our community members at all resource fairs,” he wrote.
Through the school year, 40 vehicle thefts were also reported, with several of these occurring during a string of car thefts around Rains graduate housing in March. Seventeen of the vehicle thefts occurred on east campus and 23 on west campus.
“Whenever possible, we patrol parking lots and parking structures more frequently, especially at night,” Larson wrote. “We educate our community members on how to prevent vehicle theft, such as parking in lighted areas, doors locked, windows rolled up, and to consider a steering wheel immobilization device such as ‘The Club.’”
The post Campus crime reviewed throughout academic year appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
A gentleman’s guide to the mosh pitDespite my anticipation for Frost Fest, I was left sadly disappointed with the decorum of my fellow students in the mosh pit. So for those out there lacking proper manners around “moshing,” I provide you with this guide.
The post A gentleman’s guide to the mosh pit appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
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.
In what can only be described as a windfall of good luck, I managed to receive admission to Doechii’s sold out musical recital at Frost Fest on April 12. But despite my anticipation for the performance, I was left sadly disappointed with the decorum of my fellow students in the mosh pit. I say, does one not mosh with manners anymore? These “concertgoers” were so brutish that it gave me “anxiety.” If only these ruffians had been taught manners like I was at private school. It would make concerts so much more enjoyable for the everyday cosmopolitan chap. So for those out there lacking proper manners around “moshing,” I provide you with this:
Attire
You must don the colors of your kingdom/queendom to rally support and show pride. Here at Stanford, you must be sure to wear “Cardinal” red. Any old red simply will not do, old sport; it must be Cardinal, or you risk facing intense social embarrassment. You must also wear noticeably soiled white sneakers. Best not to make people think you’re one of those lowly town folk who wear clean shoes. Moreover, do pay your respects to those whose white sneakers are now almost black with the dirt of raves past. Each layer of mud on their boots is a badge of honor representing moshes fought and won. Complimenting these “royals” of mosh may win you favor in future gatherings.
Accompaniments
In the pit, make sure you always have liquids nearby. You may carry an open cup, which can be thrown or spilled in moments of intensity, adding to the mud and ambiance. It is also customary for at least one member of your party to drop, forget or misplace an item — typically a phone — among the sweaty, shuffling crowd. This person becomes responsible for sneaking in the flask at the next festival. This custom must continue if you are to preserve the traditions of the mosh.
Entrance and courtesy
When coordinating with your party members to enter the pit, pray ensure that women have first been offered a hoisted position atop a gentleman’s (or athlete’s) shoulders. This not only helps to raise them above the mere plebians of the crowd, but also attracts greater attention to your group. This can be considered divisive, but I assure you that your lack of stability comes with the great reward of perceived prowess.
Compliments and decorum
As you enter the frenzy of the pit, yell out equal parts slander and praise. For example, “Hey asshole, I love your enthusiasm!” This will ensure your fellow moshers remain in a perfect balance of titillating confusion and ambiguous limbo, both of which are essential to maintaining the evening’s frenetic energy. On rare occasions, energy levels can pique; do your best to avoid entertaining a round of fistycuffs as you may be forcefully removed. This may pose an opportunity to peacock and improve your social standing amongst your fellow moshers, but this risks permanent exile from future concerts.
Tolerance
If you have imbibed too greatly and fear your vomitous projections might repulse your fellows (or soil their attire), remember to curtsy or bow first and then apologize for your sudden departure. Be cognizant as to not bow so low as to encourage premature projection before your exit. As you bid farewell, turn to your companions and request that they “save the next mosh for me.” This will reassure your companions and keep them from feeling abandoned. Once you have expelled the poisons in the nearest porta-potty, return promptly and announce that you are feeling “convalesced.” If upon your return, another member of your party does not dutifully and immediately offer water to rinse your mouth and stave your hangover, a compliment on your outfit to rally your spirits or their company as you move to the outskirts of the mosh to rest your dizzied head, run to find another party immediately. No further words required.
If you have come this far, give yourself a moment of calm reflection to feel grateful at the dramatic improvement of your manners. Hopefully, these tips can provide some more civility in your decorum during the next mosh and help you have a jolly good time.
The post A gentleman’s guide to the mosh pit appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
The DeerUpon taking notice of the deer standing shock-still in the middle of the walk-in refrigerator, Iris is reminded of how often she has been let down by restaurant bureaucracy.
The post The Deer appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Editor’s Note: This story is a piece of fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Upon taking notice of the deer standing shock-still in the middle of the walk-in refrigerator, Iris is reminded of how often she has been let down by restaurant bureaucracy. How typical of her management, she thinks, to have unexpectedly introduced a new hire without notifying her.
The deer has arrow-tipped ears and black eyes as iridescent as a vinyl. Its mouth, mawkish and small, is currently buried in a silver tin containing carrots that had conveniently arrived in yesterday morning’s delivery. Though she knows that she ought to be disturbed by the clear disregard for health and safety protocols taking place, Iris can’t help the flush of affection that bubbles up from her chest. Suddenly: a memory of her aunt’s porcelain teacups, which, lined with silver rimming and adorned in watercolor bluebells, were to be handled with a gentleness so soft and slow, it used to bring tears to Iris’ eyes. Those summer Sundays spent in the quiet of the foyer, sipping Earl Grey on plastic stools with knees crossed just-so. Iris recalls how the humidity would sneak into the house like a cat, causing her bangs to stick flat against her forehead and make her eyes appear even larger than they already were. To this day, Iris refuses to drink tea for fear of crying: a habit that her brother constantly teases her for.
With the memory still wrapping its gauzy tail around her neck, Iris begins to instinctively cradle her hands together, mimicking the taking of tea. The deer, sensing unexpected movement, bucks up in attention and suddenly, the two are looking at one another. Oh yes, the issue of the deer. It had almost slipped through Iris’ mind.
“Let me get you an apron,” Iris says. “And then, I’ll walk you through training.”
***
Iris had been working at Soma Sushi for eight months and until today, was the restaurant’s newest employee. That wasn’t supposed to be the case, however. At the time Iris had been hired, the line to enter into Soma would regularly weave around the lot like ribbon candy, hordes of middle-aged couples wearing last-act Nordstrom Rack standing with an air of disinterest. Iris’ manager, Malcolm, would regularly ask Iris to monitor the line and as she walked up and down these rows of strangers, she would catch snippets of their conversations.
Erin Morose’s unbecoming PTA campaign, that unfeeling bitch, how she simpers and flirts and rests her French-press nails on the arms of every married man she lays her eyes on. The maelstrom of traffic it took to get here and the client’s unreasonable asks and Look, I got to take a call, and it’ll be five minutes max and the look of disdain that gets volleyed over from wife to husband and back again. The stilted non-conversation between two clearly uninterested people on a date.
Dreadful, just dreadful. Iris would return into Soma with nothing but a light buzzing in her head and then report to Malcolm: “The line is looking great.” Malcolm would then pull her into a hug, grazing his hand against her lower back and whisper in her ear with a gruff murmur: “Thank you honey.” His breath was always too warm and too wet, slobber like a dog. Iris froze up, her pulse pounding in a hot, uneven rhythm and her throat collapsing upon itself, the smallness of her body shrinking with each second she kept caught in his grasp. God, she could barely hold herself up.
The first time Iris was made to manage the line, Lydia, the head waiter at the time, pulled Iris aside and into the waiter’s backroom. In her low, sonorous voice: “You know, you don’t actually have to do that.” As she spoke, Lydia worked. From the industrial fridge in the back, she pulled out a large pitcher of soy sauce and slowly siphoned a little bit into the various empty soy sauce containers covering the workspace. It was clear that she had done this often. Lydia paid all of her attention to Iris, the movements of her hands an afterthought, and yet, she rarely spilled a drop.
Iris always had a difficult time looking Lydia straight in the eye. Lydia, with her deftly pinned bun, sharp-tack footsteps, and severe face, had been in the industry for over 12 years. The only reason she was working at Soma, rather than her old place, was because of a favor she owed Malcolm who, as the youngest of the Ramble’s, had a knack for whining and winning. That and the tips, of course. Iris remembers her first pay day, how Lydia had stalked into the backroom with her pointed chin and, with eyes pinned straight on Malcolm, jutted out her hand with the quickened reflexes of a sharpshooter. Lydia collected, counted, and then bound her stack of tips with an almost authoritarian grip, her deft fingers wringing the rubber band around and around and then closing it off with a predatory snap.
To the table of soy sauce containers, Iris said, “I know, but I don’t mind.” She fidgeted with her right earring, pulling the backing out and then back in, pricking her thumb each time.
“That’s not part of your job. We’re short staffed enough as it is, and I don’t need another one of my waiters running off to God knows where.”
A pause. “Malcolm asked me to.”
At that, Lydia pressed her fingers against the soft of her temples and began massaging. A woman in her late-30s, Lydia was as pretty as steel. One of those metallic sculptures with snatched pillars and gilded overhangings that can often be found standing sentry in front of a finance firm with no signage whatsoever. The Lydia that stood before Iris retained none of that poise nor severity. In the span of only a few seconds, she had seemingly aged three decades, her fingers trembling, a worry mark splicing through the plain of her forehead: a weariness that softened her to nothingness. Iris felt like an intruder to an intimacy meant only for one’s own self, if even that. Intimate, not because it was masturbatory or vulgar but because it was so drenched in self-shame that nobody would, in their right mind, willingly unveil themselves as such. Iris averted her eyes back to the soy sauce.
“Hm,” Lydia said and then she was off, the conversation never broached again.
***
When Iris first sees the deer, her immediate instinct is to call for Lydia but, of course, that is not an option anymore. So instead, Iris begins teaching the deer how to refill the wasabi and ginger trays.
“You have to use gloves to pick up the wasabi. I mean, obviously. For health and safety reasons. And the gloves are in that cabinet over there.” Iris points to the cabinet hanging closest to the refrigerator. “You have to push everything to the side to reach for them, but be careful because you don’t want to drop anything. To be honest, it’s difficult for me to do without a stepping stool. If you’re looking for that, you can find it in that little cranny to the left. Questions?”
Iris hears her voice trail off almost imperceptibly toward the end of her speech. As she glances around the backroom — the low cratered ceilings, the mounting refrigerator, the clear-glass cabinets, the messy workstation — the location of everything appears painfully obvious. The space is not so much snug as it is tight. When two people enter at the same time, they are always forced into doing an awkward shimmy, hips touching, elbows collapsing, a partnered dance against one’s will. Nothing is hidden. Everything is seen. From the side of her eyes, Iris can clearly spot the lurid purple gloves poking out behind a stack of small, blue-tinted rectangular plates. She sighs.
“You know what? Forget it. I’m going about this all wrong,” she laughs, puffing air. “I think, well, I think that these are things that you’ll learn as you do the job. Why worry about them now?”
Iris walks toward the front of Soma, the deer trailing behind. Though every table has been pristinely set up with plates, menus, and napkin holders, the entire restaurant is empty. Not surprising. It’s been slow ever since Lydia quit.
With the head server no longer managing the restaurant, service slowly fell into abandon, like rust creeping onto a machine. Waiters were never given any information about their schedules and slowly but surely, began skiving off of their shifts until they simply stopped coming in. Supplies like napkins or chopsticks would continuously run out and Malcolm, incompetent with logistics, would fail to order more. In only the span of a few weeks, the restaurant lost almost all of its business.
Malcolm never caught onto the problem, believing that the flurry of resignations and the horrid reviews were a symptom of the economy rather than his own ineptitude. And so, more and more, Malcolm has been stalking around the restaurant, jaw snapping and fists cracking. He’s become the sort of man who announces himself when he enters a room and then snarls at you when you deign to look at him.
When asked by her brother why she hasn’t quit yet, Iris is slow to respond, the saliva building up until threatening to choke her. Though she hates the place, hates herself when she is in the place, she continues to stay, for reasons known but unable to be verbalized coherently. What else is there to do for work, she says back to him and the self-pity which sticks to her skin is as thick as molasses, as opaque as motor oil. Yes, it’s mainly a matter of money but also, perhaps, a matter of ignorance. Iris has become so good at the job, at the posing and preening, at the biting-of-tongue and the making-of-small-talk, that she sometimes forgets who she is outside of work.
Iris has just finished reviewing the menu with the deer by the time the first customer of the day comes in. It is 12:37, and the restaurant is warm. Iris is sweating, little beads prickling off her forehead.
“Go ahead and shadow me,” Iris says to the deer as she inches toward the front door where a man in a light blue polo shirt is standing. “Welcome to Soma Sushi!” An open-toothed smile emblazoned upon her face; eyes bright; voice so animated, it is slightly animatronic. “Are we expecting more company, or should I get you a table for one?”
“Come again?” in a nasally voice. The man is busy looking at his phone so Iris can really only see the thinning hair on his small head. She steps closer, hands clasped behind her back as she asks again, “Should I get you a table, sir?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, his hand waving in a flippant manner, but when he finally looks up, he lets out a startled yelp, “What the hell?” The man’s mouth opens so wide that Iris can see every individual yellowed molar in it when he speaks.
Alarm shatters through Iris’ face. “I’m so sorry, sir. What’s the matter? Again, so sorry, sir.” She follows the line of his eyes to his hand where his outstretched finger, knuckles covered in hair, points accusingly at the deer.
Iris should have expected this. She had tried supplying the deer with her own apron but it dragged on the floor and the fabric ties broke into the animal’s body and within only a few seconds, the deer had flung the apron off. Iris was never one to skirt around company policy but if this was what the deer had chosen, then who was she to object? Clearly, a mistake.
“Oh, this is her first day on the job, sir, so she just didn’t know any better,” Iris says. Now addressing the deer, in a hush, Iris whispers, “Do you mind going to the back and putting on an apron? Also getting this man a glass of water?”
The deer is obstinate, unmoving, a sharp glare in her eyes as she looks toward the customer. Iris swears that she can see a faint glint of teeth, almost like a snarl, appear on the deer’s lovely face but the moment has passed. The deer heads to the back on nimble feet. Iris turns back to the man, expecting him to be satisfied but instead, he has a downturned scowl.
“Are you slow or something? That’s not your co-worker. That’s an animal, a-a fucking deer with the antlers or without the antlers or whatever,” the man intones with scorn and his hands manic with motion. “Helloo! You, with the big, dumb eyes, I’m talking to you.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
He grumbles under her breath, something unintelligible but filled with swears, the word “bitch.” Then, “I’m calling animal control now.” Between every word, the man nods exaggeratedly and smiles smarmily, speaking as though Iris doesn’t understand him. But Iris does understand. She understands perfectly. As a waiter, it is her job to anticipate customer demands and meet them. It is not rage that blossoms in Iris’ chest upon hearing this infantilizing tone directed toward her but rather fear, an all-encompassing urge to rectify the situation.
“There’s no need for that, sir,” she says calmly. “Let’s have you sit down for a second, and I’ll go get you some water, and we can work this out.”
She directs the man to sit in a booth, subtly placing a menu before him, but it’s no use. The man is too busy jabbing at his phone, searching something up.
Iris walks quickly — waiters never run — to the backroom and says, “Do you have that water?”
Whereas other animals would likely panic upon being trapped in a room as small as this one, the deer is unperturbed. She possesses an air of grace that is overwhelming. Her sloping head tilts left while Iris speaks, an image of coyness and haughtiness so similar to a princess’ portrait that Iris feels compelled to bow. The deer blinks slowly, slowly, in acknowledgement of the purple gloves and the wasabi and then, abruptly, keels her head right and toward the workstation. It’s a violet swing, a killing blow. Iris’s mouth opens in a silent scream and her hands tangle into her hair. No no no no. The scene falls away in slow motion.
But rather than slam her narrow face into the edge of the table, the deer angles at the last minute and knocks a cup of water onto the floor, the glass shattering with a clarifying snap. A revelation. The shards resemble daisy petals. Iris is still panting in shock when Malcolm’s voice barks from the back. It’ll only be a matter of minutes before he comes and sees the mess on the floor, the man in the booth, animal control.
She begins to crouch down and pick at the glass on the floor with her bare hands.
“Why would you do that?” Iris asks the deer. At that, the deer kneels, resting her head on Iris’ knee, and begins to lap at the water seeping into Iris’ apron. The deer’s coat is surprisingly soft and with her free hand, Iris begins brushing against the bristle.
Suddenly, Malcolm’s ballooning face appears in the doorway, his sputtering voice obnoxiously loud and rough with ire. Iris cannot make out any one word he says. She is too busy looking at his loafers as they kick and scuff against the floor like a bull rearing for a charge. It’s for this reason that she is so startled when she feels Malcolm’s sweaty hand grasp her hair, when she notices how close they are to one another, how small it all is.
The last time Iris saw Malcolm this angry was once during an argument with Lydia. This was a week or so before Lydia officially quit and it was out back in the parking lot, behind the garbage disposal. They both probably thought that nobody would notice their fight but their voices had echoed and even from within the restaurant, Iris could hear them mention her name, could hear Lydia’s racking sobs and defeated voice as she shrieked, “You always do this, Malcolm, and I can’t keep defending you. Nice girls, they always are, and you just love to toy around, don’t you?”
When Lydia had finished packing up all of her belongings the week after, it was she, not Iris, who refused to make eye contact.
The entire saga happens quickly: the deer and the girl and the man. The deer and the girl and the man who cries in pain upon noticing the deer with its canine teeth bite into the soft of his wrist and the girl sitting in a pile of glass and water and now blood as the man from the front of the restaurant comes rushing in only to howl at the blow he sustains in the knees from the deer whose red, red mouth is dripping and the backroom is a cacophony of noise and nobody is wearing gloves or saying the word “sir” and Iris, upon seeing the men lying upon the floor, feels as though she can stand up, on her own two feet, for what seems like the first time.
Iris steps around Malcolm as she fills up her own glass of water. She says that she is quitting and that though it is unprofessional to leave without a two weeks’ notice, she believes the circumstances justify the means. Malcolm groans and Iris nods affirmatively before leaving the back room. The deer is already gliding toward the front, fleet-footed and assured. She glances back at Iris who follows along. Iris takes off her apron, and they both exit the restaurant, the bell making a faint chime as the door shuts close.
The post The Deer appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Stanford’s Democratic duty to combat the MAGA rageStrawser argues that as a uniquely Democratic community, Stanford must lead the way on abandoning institutional deference, embracing every day needs and combatting MAGA.
The post Stanford’s Democratic duty to combat the MAGA rage appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
I remember President Donald Trump’s first inauguration like it was yesterday. A freshman in high school, I sat in chemistry class as we watched a livestream of it unfolding. I neither understood what was happening at the time, nor did I take Trump seriously. When I look back on the year prior, during which I laughed at Trump memes, I was ashamed at how much I regurgitated Trump talking points.
I have hindsight and more life experiences under my belt. Now that I am 23 years old, I understand the importance of masculinity adopting a social justice-oriented approach to its protector instincts and of institutions being stalwart defenders for the most vulnerable among us. With a more humanitarian worldview and a richer understanding of history, I am better equipped to judge this new Trump era because I understand what the president ultimately represents.
Looking back at the campaign announcement that started it all, one would see a vision for the country that is thoroughly laced with anti-establishment, populist rage. From saying that “China has our jobs and Mexico has our jobs” to looking at the world stage as a matter of “stronger” enemies and a “weaker” America, Trump’s worldview is clear. The United States “used to have victories” but has since become “a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.” Trump took a look at Americans’ anger over economic strife and broader national decline and saw political opportunity. He gave the nation an easy target: the immigrants that “caused” their suffering. In an age where “the American dream is dead,” a vote for Trump would fix the suffering and Make America Great Again (MAGA).
From kitchen table issues to global affairs, the MAGA movement could then be described as a vengeful wrecking ball. It looks at the nation’s norms and institutions like they are buildings to demolish to make room for the coming working-class paradise.
In 2016, Trump repeatedly condemned the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Then-President Bill Clinton, who signed the deal into law in 1993, said that NAFTA was the one and only way to “reap the rewards of international competition” because it broke down trade barriers and made global competition easier. And yet, our economy’s post-NAFTA reality has, unfortunately, been a status quo of mass outsourcing, depressed labor rights and slavish service of capital interests. Trump, channeling labor rage and branding NAFTA as “economic surrender,” succeeded in labelling his 2016 opponent — former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — as the face of “a leadership class that worships globalism over Americanism.”
The betrayal of American workers gave rise to their anti-institutionalist rage and laid the foundation for Trump’s promise to make the nation work for them again. This rage is what made the victory of Trump — the man who said, “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now” — much easier to understand. His opponent spat in the face of working class grievances and the people that held them. Clinton failed to capitalize on the nation’s angry distrustful shift away from our institutions of power, and so the rest is history.
Trump has persevered in his brand — despite his oligarchic allegiances — of working class appeal. But this is something we can’t view in a vacuum. Yes, through his wins in 2016 and 2024, he pledged to “remove the rust” and usher in the “Golden Age of America.” What cannot be ignored is Trump strengthening hatred towards marginalized groups.
There is no perfect correlation between economic frustrations and animus towards marginalized groups, but it is an important matter to endeavor to understand nonetheless. For example, a study on the relationship between post-Great Recession economic hardship and racial animus suggests that, with more hardship, there came more anti-Black Google searches and hate crimes. Seeking to explain the Tea Party’s post-Recession rise, another study focused on group position theory, or the idea that “you see the greatest levels of racial animosity from majority group members during times when the hierarchy appears unstable.” Looking at the more historic ties between economic hardship and racial hierarchy, we ought to understand why hateful rhetoric, and eventually policy, manifest in the first place.
As a matter of perception and policy action, economic strife grants political credibility to those who target and scapegoat certain groups as “the Other.” This hateful portrayal of minorities seeps over into the broader ideologies and institutions that have “wronged” polite society. The historical case study on just how evil this can be should be obvious to us all: Nazi Germany.
Looking at the Nazis, what do we see? Neither the slaughter of 6 million Jews nor the erection of Auschwitz happened out of nowhere. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles imposed upon Germany stringent terms of significant disarmament, deprivation of territories, massive debt payments and complete blame for the war breaking out. Rage against the treaty’s terms and the hyperinflation in the years that followed exacerbated Germany’s democratic backsliding. The German people grew angrier towards the Weimar Republic by the day, condemning it as a danger to the future of German livelihood. These sentiments gave rise to the riots and instability that ushered in Hitler’s rise to the chancellorship in 1933.
In a speech condemning the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler branded it as the “humiliation” preventing the “resurrection of the German people,” establishing the foundation for a movement that would “make the German one more National, that his Fatherland shall stand for him above everything else.” This restoration of German greatness became a powerful rallying cry with an inhumane cost.
Hitler demonized the Jewish people as the root cause for German collapse, writing that the Jew “always manages to secure new license to plunder his victims” and “poisons the blood of others.” Trump similarly has stated that he thinks the undocumented steal our jobs and are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Hitler’s top propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, villainized Bolsheviks as a “Jewish-Marxist” danger that made “nations suspicious of one another and hate one another, thus spreading a general spirit of unrest.” In that same anti-intellectual vein, Vice President J.D. Vance called professors “the enemy” and universities “fundamentally corrupt and dedicated to deceit and lies.”
Schutzstaffel leader Heinrich Himmler vilified gay people as a “plague” of “depravity.” Breathing new life into anti-LGBTQIA+ hatred, Trump’s party tirelessly paints the community as pedophiles, criminal savages and violators of “biological truth.”
I believe the ideological similarities between Hitler and Trump are irrefutable. Yes, their initial mandates were heavily rooted in the anti-institutionalist rage that economic strife brought. However, they became something much more sinister. Through deliberate lies and manipulation, they became evil strongmen that suspended moral constraints at every turn. The Holocaust was made possible by the step-by-step dehumanization that started with post-Versailles rage. With Trump following that playbook at every turn, we must sound the alarms on what has clearly turned into a national purification agenda.
For the moral clarity that this calls for, we must look to people like California State Sen. Scott Wiener, a co-chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and former chair of the LGBTQ Caucus. On Trump’s defiance of the Supreme Court’s order to return an innocent, wrongfully detained man from El Salvador, Wiener wasted no time in denouncing the El Salvador’s prison at issue as a “prison concentration camp.”
Furthermore, years before he put political ascendancy ahead of historical awareness, Vance privately wrote that Trump was “America’s Hitler.” Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., prior to being the Cabinet official enacting Trump’s vision for a “healthy” society, repeatedly criticized Trump’s Nazi-adjacence.
Numerous historians have also made the Hitler-Trump comparison on account of their shared hatred for the democratic norms and “the ‘enemies within’ who must be removed from the body politic.”
Just as Nazi-aligned students burned books at the Institute for Sexual Research over its advancement of gender and sexuality research, Trump purged federal web pages and research grants of LGBTQIA+ information.
Like how Hitler issued his Night and Fog decree to kidnap people for “endangering German security,” Trump repeatedly disappears pro-Palestine college students over their ideologies being “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
This is how far the Hitler-Trump parallels of national purification go. The President of the U.S. is treating “never again” horrors like they’re a to-do list. Instead of honoring America’s liberation of concentration camps, Trump resuscitates the dehumanizing rage that made the camps possible in the first place.
I argue Trump takes messaging and policy inspiration from the Third Reich playbook. While my institutional neutrality, free speech and immigration stances make my opposition to Trump’s Fourth Reich abundantly clear, I still believe it is worth understanding. After all, the economic discontent under the Biden administration played a not too dissimilar role in Trump’s 2024 win as post-NAFTA rage did in 2016. The need to understand this rage, one that is heavily anti-institutionalist and heavily influenced by economic strife, is of particular importance for the Stanford community.
Stanford possesses some of the nation’s best legal minds, sends its students to work with leading policymakers and enables Silicon Valley to become the holy grail of technology innovation that it is today. Boasting a $36.5 billion endowment and heavily decorated, Stanford is a top-resourced institution of influence, access and power. Those are the reasons that, alongside the University acquiescing to MAGA scrutiny so far, stress the community’s need to re-imagine its role in the Trump era.
Stanford voted for and donated overwhelmingly to Democrats in the 2024 election. Having met Stanford students that include former interns for both Democratic leaders in Congress and a 2024 Democratic primary delegate, that data doesn’t surprise me. What does alarm me is the risk of the Stanford community, from the students poised to be the changemakers of tomorrow to the professors who are actively consulted by the biggest names of our society, falling into the same out-of-touch trap that its party is already in.
The Democratic Party’s congressional leaders have sidelined working-class voters and prioritized the donations of already well-off Silicon Valley oligarchs. And while 2016 Democratic loser Hillary Clinton repeatedly belittled Main Street grievances, former-Vice President Kamala Harris surrendered credibility on economic woes to Trump after she said she would do “not a thing different” from Biden. Is this pro-status quo, anti-worker party the vehicle for the Stanford community to gain political wins with? In this anti-institutionalist, populist rage moment, I hardly think so.
To the Stanford community: I know that we can emerge victorious against the MAGA rage we are up against. To do that, we must change our Democratic positioning. We should dedicate our donations and volunteer efforts to explicitly anti-billionaire candidates. We should listen to the working-class minorities who voted for Trump and a progressive House firebrand like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. We should condemn the economic “leaders” whose only beliefs are sticking to the rules of the game they wrote to benefit themselves. To prove that our institutions, which we personify, are worth fighting for, we should follow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s lead.
FDR condemned the Jeff Bezoses and Elon Musks of his day as an “industrial dictatorship” that needed to be whipped into shape by pro-worker New-Deal policies. He tied justice for the working-class to “the survival of democracy.” That is the Democratic spirit that the moment calls for, and so it represents the very “American frontier” that we must help construct.
I see Hitler’s post-Versailles Germany alive and well in Trump’s post-NAFTA America. We won’t fully rid ourselves of that rage and hatred by ousting anti-Main Street Democrats. However, doing so would be real progress against the economically-rooted rage giving that hatred much of its political sway. After all, the desire to “win” in life is one of the most understandable desires there is. Our social and political engagements must reflect that understanding.
As the Stanford community, we are a uniquely Democratic community that must lead the way on abandoning institutional deference and embracing every day needs. History reminds us that that is what fighting the MAGA rage looks like: ushering in an inclusive Golden Age of America.
The post Stanford’s Democratic duty to combat the MAGA rage appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Backstage at FashionX Runway Show, designers, models and organizers get readyStanford FashionX presented their third annual student-organized runway show surrounding the theme of “Metamorphosis: Becoming the Future of Fashion" on Feb. 22.
The post Backstage at FashionX Runway Show, designers, models and organizers get ready appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
On the evening of Feb. 22, Stanford FashionX presented their third annual student-organized runway show, featuring over 120 student models wearing over 80 student designs, all surrounding the central theme of “Metamorphosis: Becoming the Future of Fashion.”
As sunset turned to dusk, Memorial Church became the epicenter of anticipation and excitement. Outside the venue, footsteps and chatter trickled through the corridors of Main Quad as the runway watchers and fashion fanatics of Stanford queued for admission. Inside, student models raced down the pews and aisles to touch up hair and makeup, while student organizers attempted to corral the group into a single line. It was a frenzy of tulle, sequins and feathers — a fashion week of sorts, brought for one evening only to Palo Alto.
An hour before the show, I made my way backstage, navigating through a maze of garment racks and half-zipped dresses, catching glimpses of last-minute fittings. Despite the months of planning — a process that entailed choosing an event venue, creating a promotional video, sourcing decorations, props and lighting and working with student producers and composers to develop a score of over 40 songs for the show — the final moments before the show were still a whirlwind. Like the real-world productions that grace the covers of Vogue, the hours leading up to the runway show were equal parts creativity and chaos.
Jacob Tan ’27, a student designer and the incoming FashionX president, explained that runway shows often came together in the eleventh hour. Designers, he said, constantly adapt, adding last-minute embellishments and rearranging looks with only minutes to go until curtain.
“We just had our dress rehearsal yesterday, and things changed last minute,” Tan said. “The order of the models and how we lined up at the end of the show to give our last bow was all changing at the last minute… That’s just how the world of fashion is.”
For his piece — a silky green and pink dress inspired by a butterfly — Tan leaned into his aesthetic instincts. As he carefully tucked a finishing touch of flowers into the hair of his model, Grace Ojumu ’27, he told me about his ideation and creative process.
“I made a mood board instantly, and I started just pinning ideas and things that I just found visually appealing,” Tan said. “I have this board titled ‘unorthodox inspiration,’ just random shit that I think is really visually appealing, like a box of sushi or like a butterfly’s wings or like the art on the wall of a mosque… color combinations and things like that.”
Mina Phipps ’25, another student designer, contributed three looks inspired by Alexander McQueen’s anatomy collection, each modeled after a specific part of the human body.
“I study medical illustration, so I work a lot with the human body and expressing it in creative ways,” Phipps said. “And so that’s what I’m kind of doing here in regard to the metamorphosis — I’m delving into the layers of the human body.”
Mina showed me her pieces — a tulle set, a short metallic set and a web-like top — all coordinated in bright shades of silver, red and white.
“This bone is supposed to be modeled after my favorite bone, the sphenoid, which is called the butterfly of the body,” Phipps said, pointing to the web-like top. “Butterfly, metamorphosis, that’s kind of how the collection came to be.”
Under a mist of hairspray and a clamor of chatter, models, too, underwent their own transformation. For months, students met for modeling workshops, where they learned how to walk and practiced their formations. The air was thick with nervous energy and the sweet, sharp scent of cosmetics as I edged toward the group of sequined bodies queued in line.
Juliette Falk ’28, a student model, spoke to me as a hairstylist combed through her hair. She wore a look by student designer Katie Small ’28: an ocean-inspired ensemble aimed at sparking conversation about climate change.
“We had around three workshops, and it was mainly getting the feel and getting comfortable,” Falk said. “We did some walking practice, learned the best strategies for how to move well, and then a dress rehearsal so that we would feel comfortable before the show started.”
Despite the preparation and rehearsal time, the live experience was nevertheless daunting for many. Wearing a look by student designer London San Luis ’27, Adam Golomb ’27 — a former Arts & Life editor for The Daily — spoke to me with his tulle outfit in hand while waiting in line for makeup.
“I don’t think you know how scary it is until you actually walk the stage, until you get on the stage and you see people are there and there are lights on you and it’s dark,” Golomb said. “You start like, shitting bricks.”
Melody Fuentes ’24 wore a skirt made from specially ordered silk chiffon and a corset constructed with boning by Fuentes herself. In her hair, Fuentes wore a crown of sorts, made from silver zip ties which pointed outward from her head in all directions.
“I welded this metal together here because my undergrad is in product design,” Fuentes said. “This is meant to be the transformation of me as a first-generation college student, and my journey as an engineer.”
For many student designers like Fuentes, the weight of personal history, identity and cultural legacy was stitched into every seam. Her piece, “el volcán” — Spanish for volcano — paid homage to her parents’ home country of El Salvador, known as the land of volcanoes.
“The country has gone through an immense transformation in the political landscape in just a couple of years,” Fuentes said. “[My piece] is supposed to represent the phoenix, rising during this period… It’s a love letter to my parents and to the fire and the passion of the Hispanic community.”
Souady Diane ’25 wore a student design by Asukulu Songolo ’25. A voluminous mass of rafia, Songolo’s piece pays homage to his African heritage.
“Congo right now is going through a huge crisis, and [Songolo] being able to authenticate his culture and stand up for his culture is something that’s very beautiful,” Diane said. “I’m very proud and empowered and happy to represent African fashion.”
Within a STEM-leaning university, FashionX is more like a home than a club to many students. The creative hub is a community for creatives and creative-seekers, for artists and art admirers alike. At Stanford, FashionX is a place where mechanical engineering students sew bodices after problem sets and where biology majors turn bone structure into silhouette. It is about making something beautiful — and being celebrated while doing it.
“Fashion is like the hidden language of the universe, and it speaks so many volumes about you that you may not even know,” Tan said after the show. “As someone who is a scientist and a writer, I think it is so much more than just clothes.”
The post Backstage at FashionX Runway Show, designers, models and organizers get ready appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
‘It’s not a mark of death’: A glance into the lives of conservative students at StanfordStudents and professors highlighted a shift towards increased community dialogue and civic debate on campus.
The post ‘It’s not a mark of death’: A glance into the lives of conservative students at Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Five years after the Stanford College Republicans (SCR) hosted conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro for a campus-wide event, the organization’s former treasurer Walker Stewart ’24 still remembers the “huge lines out the door and protesters everywhere outside.”
“You had an auditorium packed to the brim with people,” Stewart said. “You had people ripping down the flyers, posting in the dorm GroupMe or on Instagram, ‘This is so terrible.’”
In 2021, SCR launched a social media attack on journalist Emily Wilder ’20 for her prior involvement in pro-Palestinian campus activism. Three days later, the Associated Press (AP) fired Wilder for “violations of AP’s social media policy during her time at AP.” In 2022, SCR hosted former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. In 2023, SCR invited right-wing political commentator Matt Walsh to speak, traveled to Washington, D.C. for the March for Life and ran “Change My Mind” tables in White Plaza, encouraging community members to engage with statements including “there are only two genders” and “America has an under-incarceration problem.”
Stewart recalls SCR in his first few years as “controversial” and “taboo,” and the organization’s events as provoking “massive protests” and “spectacle.” He remembers that a student, at one point, threw a rock at the SCR representatives running the “Change My Mind” tables.
Yet recently, SCR appears to have quieted down.
Instead, conservative students voiced a growing sense of political disinterest at Stanford, and political science professors interviewed by The Daily described an exhaustion with partisanship among citizens nationwide. Both highlighted a shift towards increased community dialogue and civic debate on campus.
Since Stewart’s time in SCR, President Donald Trump has begun a second term in office. Trump has antagonized universities as overly liberal environments, threatening to “fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs.” He has cut nearly half the Department of Education’s workforce.
Nationally, conservatism is on the rise. A 2024 Pew Research Center analysis found that 48% of voters leaned Republican, cutting the five percentage point advantage Democrats carried in 2020 to only one percentage point.
At Stanford, at least anecdotally, students have similarly expressed feeling a slight “rightward shift,” according to Karina Kloos Ph.D. ’14, Executive Director for the Democracy Hub and the ePluribus Stanford initiative. Kloos estimated that anywhere between 10% and 20% of Stanford’s student population leans conservative.
And yet, despite the re-election of Trump, despite Trump’s demonization of college campuses as too politically democratic, despite the statistical rise of conservatism in America and the anecdotal rise at Stanford, students noted a feeling of growing political apathy on campus.
Stewart characterized the political atmosphere prior to his graduation last year as “much less energetic.” After an SCR effort to shift the Overton window — the range of ideas considered politically and socially acceptable to the general public — students stopped responding to SCR events with the same passion, he argued. “And so maybe it’s because the tabling kind of did its job of bringing ideas to campus, and maybe it’s because energy just kind of runs out,” he said.
John Puri ’26, who writes an opinion column for The Daily often defending conservative values, described Stanford students as “more apathetic than open-minded.”
“It’s just that 80% of the student body, or so, just has very little interest in politics and certainly doesn’t want to argue about it,” Puri said.
Other conservative students agreed with Puri.
Nolan Wallace ’28, who self-described as “right of center by Stanford standards,” said, “If you’re very passionate about politics, which I sort of am, it’s kind of hard to find people who also care.”
Thomas Adamo ’25, who now “leans conservative” after entering Stanford “super liberal,” argued that most students are “pretty apathetic to what’s actually going on in the world besides a small vocal minority on both sides.”
“I think the average student who studies CS and is trying to get a job at Meta or Jane Street doesn’t really care too much about politics and just wants to get on with their classes,” Adamo added.
SCR, by extension, simply “petered out,” according to Stewart and Puri.
“They couldn’t get the people that they needed, the actual bodies in place, to do what they needed to do,” Puri said. “It kind of died out naturally.”
Still, Stanford’s student-run Democracy Day continues to celebrate political dialogue and disagreement. In 2022, Stanford Votes won a Ballot Bowl, indicating campus commitment to voter participation. A variety of student-led clubs, including the Stanford Political Union (SPU), Stanford in Government (SIG), Stanford Women in Politics (SWIP) and the Stanford American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) aim to foster civic engagement within the student body.
Instead of general political fatigue, political science professors emphasized a specific exhaustion with partisanship. Emilee Chapman, assistant professor of political science, told The Daily that “dysfunctional” and “socially divisive” party politics have led to citizens feeling “very dissatisfied with both of the parties.”
Kloos echoed that “part of the story could certainly be that what we’re seeing here on campus is a reflection of what’s happening in the broader context of the U.S. — that people are frustrated or disappointed or less connected to those two parties.”
Kloos indicated that partisan organizations on both sides of the political spectrum, including SCR and the Stanford Democrats, have gone dormant this year.
Current representation for both SCR and the Stanford Democrats did not respond to The Daily’s requests for comment.
Amidst feelings of political apathy and partisan burnout, conservative students expressed finding community in spaces centered around dialogue. Stewart, Puri, Wallace and Adamo all spotlighted The Stanford Review, an independent student newspaper presenting alternative ideas, as a lasting organization for conservatives on campus.
The Review “brought in a lot of the SCR crowd,” becoming the main organization for Republicans at Stanford,” said Puri, a former cycle editor for The Review. “Everyone on staff [right now] is hopped up on Trump fever. It’s like half the time, it’s a fan club,” he said.
Puri, as well as current Review members Wallace and Adamo, described meetings as centered not just around pitching pieces and updating on writing progress, but more so around group discussions. Meetings, they shared, begin with “listening to article presentations” followed by “talking through recent events,” “discussing different topics” and “debating people’s points.” They characterized the publication as not just a newspaper focused on writing content but also a “town square” centered around dialogue and a “social group” focused on meeting people.
Wallace shared that most other right-leaning clubs on campus are “low presence and very unknown.”
“If we didn’t have The Review, we wouldn’t really have anything else,” he said.
Beyond finding community in The Review, conservative students also expressed gratitude for non-partisan organizations.
Puri and Wallace both called attention to SPU as a space dedicated to fostering a diversity of voices. SPU hosts community discussions every Wednesday among student groups with sets of questions centered on topics ranging from immigration to free speech to diversity, equity and inclusion.
SPU President YuQing Jiang ’25, a former opinion editor for The Daily, emphasized that instead of mimicking the political unions at peer institutions filled with “political science majors dressed up in suits” and “very elite, exclusive, intellectual” atmospheres, SPU is “not a debating society” but a “vibrant, welcome space.”
“You don’t need any prior knowledge, there is no dress code. The vibe is very chill,” he said.
Wallace told The Daily that “having actual good arguments on both sides has made me question where I stand and drift more towards some of my other peers.”
Puri said that Stanford, despite its liberal majority, still feels safe enough for him to share his conservative views. “Stanford is not a place where you are gonna get your head torn off,” he said. “It’s much more acceptable to be a conservative here. It’s not a mark of death at all. I don’t believe that I have lost any social opportunities here. I’m not a victim in any sense.”
And still, five years after the Ben Shapiro event — despite “some people who were pretty hostile to [his] conservative viewpoints” — Stewart remembers a liberal dorm mate reaching out after the event to extend respect across partisanship.
“He left a chocolate bar with a little note just being like, ‘Oh I sometimes feel like I can’t express what I believe, so I respect that you’re doing this,’” Stewart said.
The post ‘It’s not a mark of death’: A glance into the lives of conservative students at Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
More than an award: Brazilian students celebrate the country’s first OscarsThe Brazilian community commemorated the victory of the film “I’m Still Here” at the 97th Academy Awards.
The post More than an award: Brazilian students celebrate the country’s first Oscars appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Brazilian crowds cheered as the film “I’m Still Here” won Best International Film at the 97th Academy Awards on March 2. Directed by Walter Salles, “I’m Still Here” made history after becoming the first Brazilian produced film to win an Academy Award. The celebration went beyond just Brazil or even South America, however. Here at Stanford, Brazilian international students and professors specializing in Latin American history commemorated the victory of the film.
“I’m Still Here” presents the true story of Eunice Paiva as she grapples with the disappearance of her husband and former congressman Rubens Paiva. Though she later learns that Rubens Paiva was held as a political prisoner and killed by the Brazilian military dictatorship, it isn’t until 1996 — 25 years after his disappearance — that she and her family receive his death certificate. The film opens a larger dialogue surrounding democracy and dictatorship, and reflects on the current social and political state of Brazil.
For many Brazillians, this film transcended barriers. Matheus Dias ’23 said the film showcases a story of resilience and bravery by demonstrating the story of Eunice Paiva.
“Films like this one are a crucial effort to remember the past so that it doesn’t happen again,” said Jennifer Alpert, a film scholar in the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages (DLCL) focused on human rights and Latin American cultures.
She added that the film’s victory signified for Latin American communities “Hollywood’s recognition of the importance of preserving democracy and upholding human rights.”
The movie also resonated with students. Lara Franciulli ’25 M.S. ’25 was among many Latin American students who organized watch parties with their friends for the various award ceremonies.
Presented in movie theaters in over 30 countries — including the Redwood City and Mountain View Cinemark theaters — “I’m Still Here” brought global attention to Brazilian cinema and history. In addition to winning Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards, the film was also nominated for Best Picture and lead actress Fernanda Torres for Best Leading Actress. For Brazilians, Torres’ nomination was an especially heartfelt full circle moment given that Fernanda Montenegro, Torres’ mother, was nominated for the same award during the 1999 Academy Awards.
Alpert said that Brazil’s win represents a shift in the film industry toward recognizing diverse films, especially those from Latin America that haven’t historically surpassed national barriers. Within Brazil, the movie also created significant changes including the discussion regarding the Amnesty Law that gave immunity to human rights violations from the military and the correction of death certificates stating the violent nature of the murder of members of the community who were against the regime — like Rubens Paiva’s.
For Franciuli, watching the movie in Portuguese while in the U.S., showcasing songs and places from her childhood, made it “even more clear the impact of being nominated for the Oscars, and what the Oscars meant.”
In the past, the only Latin American countries from which Academy Award winning movies came from included Argentina, Chile and Mexico. The Academy Award win for “I’m Still Here” is only the first step, as Brazilians remain hopeful in gaining more recognition in the global landscape, according to Dias.
“It’s a landmark for Brazil, [but] something that took too long to happen, unfortunately,” Dias said. “Now, we should aim for a Nobel prize.”
The post More than an award: Brazilian students celebrate the country’s first Oscars appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Letter from the Editors | All the Rage!This volume, The Daily's magazine dares to explore rage not just as an emotion, but as a force through our overall theme, “All the Rage.”
The post Letter from the Editors | All the Rage! appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
How does rage shape a society? Does it emerge as a reaction, or does it incite as a catalyst? Is it a symptom of failure or a signal of change? Prompted by these questions, this volume of our magazine dares to explore rage not just as an emotion, but as a force through our overall theme, “All the Rage.”
Rage is everywhere. It is all-consuming, energizing and unpredictable, and yet also clarifying, cathartic and restorative. Here at Stanford, we have seen displays of both destructive and generative rage. From the heated anger that festers in the political dialogue surrounding Donald Trump to the dynamic passion which manifests among student designers of Stanford FashionX, our theme invites a wide lens. We aim to capture the emotional, political and aesthetic dimensions of rage in all its contradictions.
We hope these pages challenge you to think critically, feel deeply and engage with the world in motion, to engage with a world enraged.
Charlotte Cao ’27 & Rebecca Louie ’27
Vol. 267 Magazine Editors
The post Letter from the Editors | All the Rage! appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Stanford students chart legal frontiers in outer spaceThe Stanford Space Law Society, in collaboration with the Stanford Student Space Initiative, seeks to increase awareness of space law and policy among the Stanford community through programming and initiatives aimed to illuminate some of the most pressing issues in outer space exploration and governance.
The post Stanford students chart legal frontiers in outer space appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article by Samantha Potter J.D. ’25, an officer in the U.S. Air Force, are entirely her own and not endorsed by, or reflective of, the position of the U.S. federal government.
As the new space race of countries and corporations taking to the cosmos accelerates, students in the Stanford Space Law Society (SSLS) are at the forefront of addressing legal and policy challenges central to responsible and ethical governance of the “final frontier.”
Established by a group of law students last year, SSLS seeks to foster a collaborative interdisciplinary dialogue and increase awareness within the Stanford community of space law and policy through programming and initiatives aimed to illuminate some of the most pressing outer space-related issues.
“One of the most exciting but equally challenging aspects of navigating outer space law is there are not a lot of laws. There is also not a lot of practice yet because outer space is a really novel field,” said Samantha Potter J.D. ’25, Knight-Hennessy Scholar and founder and president of SSLS. The field of international space law was formally established in 1967 with the implementation of the multilateral Outer Space Treaty.
“We have this really interesting tension of how do we regulate activity that hasn’t even happened yet, and how do we conceive of laws that have likely just been relegated to science fiction until this point,” Potter said.
SSLS organizes a variety of lectures, discussions and space policy reading groups along with a Careers in Space speaker series where students can connect with industry professionals and government experts to gain insight into the aerospace sector and explore potential career paths. Additionally, SSLS publishes a space journal and an online periodical series, and plans to design a seminar course at the law school focused on space law.
“The space industry is actually picking up really fast. But even at Stanford, there’s a tendency that when people think about space, it is really far away and maybe not relevant,” said Cody Wang J.D. ’27, financial officer of SSLS. “That gap in thinking that [space exploration] is really far away is one of the biggest challenges, for us, for society, and for space law.”
SSLS has partnered with the Stanford Student Space Initiative (SSI), one of the largest student organizations on campus, to invigorate the conversation of space governance on campus.
“We’re in a really, really exciting era of space commercialization and development. If we don’t have space policy in the back of our mind, we could make space so full of debris that we can’t even go up there anymore,” said Michelle Park ’26, former co-president of SSI, who hopes to pursue a career in astrophysics research.
Many former SSI members have entered aerospace engineering jobs at companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin.
“If students are more conscious about what it means to develop a space policy, then they should bring those same ideas to this greater environment where they’re actually working on the things that will go into space,” Park said. “In general, we’re trying to raise awareness and put that into students’ minds so that they are more globally conscious after they leave Stanford.”
Over the past year, SSLS has hosted guest speakers including Distinguished Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution Dan Berkenstock M.S. ’06, Ph.D. ’24, members of the general counsel team of the space startup Vast and representatives from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Recent panel discussions covered the role of arbitration in international space law and careers in space law with the federal government.
Lauren Romagnoli J.D. ’25 said that the SSLS’s event on federal government careers in space law was “really insightful.” “This is a career field that I haven’t seen much information about through other events or classes at the law school, so I enjoyed hearing from the two panelists speaking from different perspectives as space law practitioners,” Romagnoli said.
SSLS and SSI have also worked in partnership to conduct research and surveys on the status of space law in different countries for the Center for Space Governance, a nonprofit think tank founded by Gustavs Zilgalvis MIP ’25. The two organizations have provided this research to the Latvian government to inform the development of its national space policy and hope to work with the U.S. federal government to provide research on space policy issues.
“Every nation has their own plans for sending spacecraft or doing some research on the moon … It sounds very fictional right now. We are making progress. But eventually we need to find answers to these questions, because these are very prominent issues,” said Ruchira Naik LLM ’25.
Space law is a particularly critical domain given the importance of a safe and stable outer space environment to fields ranging from banking to telecommunications to satellite navigation, according to Potter. Additionally, from a national security standpoint, space law is “integral if not essential” to most military operations, she said.
“Outer space is becoming increasingly contested, congested and competitive. We have a lot of actors trying to get into space, and it’s a limited resource,” Potter said. “We think outer space is infinite, and in some ways it is, but the usable amount of outer space is actually pretty finite. Certain orbits are better for certain things. Everyone wants those limited resources.”
To address pressing challenges — including particularly the accumulation of space debris that could potentially block satellite access to certain orbits — interdisciplinary collaboration will be necessary among engineers, lawyers and policymakers, according to members of SSLS and SSI.
“Precisely because these problems are cross-cutting, we need this cross-departmental thinking and conversation,” Wang said. “Stanford is a great place to do it, because we have a lot of talent in all of these areas.”
The post Stanford students chart legal frontiers in outer space appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
‘Temptation Island’: Were the Romans this cruel?Jung reviews "Temptation Island," a Netflix reality TV show where four couples resist the temptation to cheat on each other.
The post ‘Temptation Island’: Were the Romans this cruel? appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and contains subjective opinions, thoughts and critiques.
Netflix is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a measured purveyor of moral content. Its assembly line churns out enough media that keeping up with every original as it came out would consume all of a person’s waking hours, and even constantly watching would merely keep their head above the rising tide of slop. Most egregious in the streamer’s suite of ethically questionable content are true crime dramas and documentaries, which replay and dramatize murders without the consent of the victims’ families.
Of course, these are some of Netflix’s most successful shows — second only to the great unscripted cash cow of American culture: reality television. Year-round, Netflix’s Top 10 page, is dominated by thumbnails depicting ambiguous tropical destinations, L.A. almost-models and mildly familiar silver-haired hosts. Both true crime and reality satisfy our base instincts as viewers — comforting us in their depictions of the awfulness of others and reminding us that, however terrible we are, the world’s evils put our own to shame.
Seeking to consecrate it’s dominance of the morbid-curiosity market, Netflix has produced a champion. “Temptation Island”’s (2025) rise to the top of our algorithmic cultural conscience is the canary in our hearts’ coal mines, signaling that our fascination with depravity may have passed the point of no return.
The show’s conceit is genius: four couples, already on foundations fraught with insecurity and cheating, are split along gender lines and left to swim in separate moats of beautiful sharks. Their tightrope path to TV semi stardom only lies in induced infidelity. Every day, they’re shown videos of their partners’ worst actions; sometimes, somehow more cruelly, they watch videos of the effects of their own actions on their partners.
There is no contest, no prize money, no marriage promised to the victor. There is no victor. Within three days, three of the four men have cheated.
In this first season, the evils perpetrated between people on the show flow in one gendered direction. Worst is Brion, whose fethishistic fixation on threesomes leads him to a menage in his bathroom as his unaware girlfriend, Shanté, cries in her bed like a child during a thunderstorm, sick with the fear that he’s doing half of what he’s actually doing.
The camera presses an unyielding mirror to the male contestants: Brion’s desperate justifications — to himself more than anyone else — range from a characterization of the act as impersonal because of the number of participants to a sickening description of his intimacy with Shanté, delivered while creeping towards a visually uncomfortable Amiah, peppered with repeated characterizations of Shanté as a “good woman.” This breathless self-justification, is the defining male behavior of the series, reflected in Tyler’s fixation on Tayler’s ascribing him “bitch tendencies” and Grant’s genuinely incoherent ramblings, between instances of infidelity, on whether Ashley will “finally move past” his active (and future) transgressions.
While the men’s villa is a miasma of confusion, illogicality and guilt, the other house is significantly more depressing. The most common facial expression there is the resigned stare of a woman who’s just watched a video of her significant other sleeping with another, and now must endure the halfhearted flirtatious advances of a man who watched them weep. There are no phones, no books, no television; nothing exists except for their three compatriots in suffering, their suitors-turned-confidants and a siren that blares when the men a mile away enter a tent designated for lovemaking. The only two actions available to the women on the show are to lay in their bed weeping and to suffer through dates, some of which appear to have had $30 budgets. During one particularly brutal bonfire scene (imagine watching a video, in front of millions, of your partner, captioned “rhythmic wet slapping” or “heavy panting”), I imagined that the women banded together and slashed their way out of the show, perhaps burning down the villa behind them.
The chief villain of the program, then, is not the men — although they serve admirably as the face of uncomprehending wickedness. No, the show’s villain is the faceless system of its creation, which allegedly pays people between nothing and $2,500 weekly to have their heart ripped out or be portrayed as a heartless moron on television.
I’ve attempted to divine a meaning or utility for “Temptation Island” beyond its car-crash rubbernecker’s appeal since I’ve watched it and have come up empty-handed. The show takes place in the real world, with real people, but the contrivances of its conditions are so totalitarian — all one can do is cheat or weep — that the only response to its inhumanity is to call it fiction. “They signed up for it” and “they want to be famous” are the two thin stilts held up as moral justifications for this torture-as-TV. The show, though, is so overwhelming that it cannot be comprehended until it is complete; that is, no couple could understand the depths of participation until the show has destroyed them.
We tell ourselves that we wouldn’t behave the way they do, or that they’re acting, or that we’d never go on reality TV. But reality television’s power over its “stars” is that it exploits the human ability to normalize even the most unreal situation, forcing participation in a tyrannical hyperreality because to accept the conditions of one’s own existence is standard practice. Focus on the eyes of a man as he internalizes the brutal ramifications of his thoughtlessness while attempting to justify himself to millions, or a woman whose only job, for two weeks, is to entertain a replacement for the man who just promised her he wouldn’t cheat, and tell me it’s not real.
The post ‘Temptation Island’: Were the Romans this cruel? appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital uses VR to reduce anxietyThe Chariot Program at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford is using virtual reality to reduce anxiety in patients and parents of hospitalized children.
The post Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital uses VR to reduce anxiety appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Illiana Lopez’s first interaction with the Chariot Program’s virtual reality (VR) experience for parents of patients began in the emergency room (ER) waiting for her daughter.
“We were sitting in the ER just waiting and stressed because we didn’t know what was going on,” she said. “A student doctor came over and asked me if I was interested in experiencing the technology.”
On May 26, a complication with her daughter’s condition brought them to the Lucile Packard emergency room. Her four-year-old daughter was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a heart condition that impacts the body’s ability to circulate blood properly. Her daughter, who was born at Lucile Packard, has undergone three open heart surgeries at the hospital.
“We are unfortunately very familiar with the hospital,” Lopez said.
Parents and caregivers of patients in the hospital often experience immense levels of stress. While the patient’s health is the priority, hospitals can fail to recognize the mental toll the process takes on parents and caregivers.
Thomas Caruso, pediatric anesthesiologist and co-founder of the Stanford Chariot Program, identified this need and seeks to fill this void.
The Chariot Program, a clinical and research program, applies modern technology to improve holistic patient, family and staff care. One of their newest initiatives utilizes virtual reality (VR) headsets as tools of meditation and relaxation for the parents and caregivers of hospital patients, expanding the program beyond just patients and staff to reach the needs of parents.
“We can only imagine the stress a parent feels when their child is hospitalized, so it felt natural to develop a targeted intervention for parental anxiety,” Caruso said.
The VR experience for parents is a six-minute guided meditation that uses breathing exercises to transport users to calming environments. VR-guided meditation decreased parental anxiety by around 30%, according to a study on the Chariot Program’s VR meditation initiative.
“It took my mind off of what was actually happening to my daughter. I kind of forgot I was sitting in the ER for six minutes,” Lopez said.
Since Lopez’s first experience with VR meditation, the Chariot Program has stationed a VR headset in her daughter’s hospital room for Lopez to use at will. Lopez said she spends almost every hour of the day in a hospital room. When using the VR, she’s able to “get [her] mind off of being in a hospital room,” she said.
“The Chariot program is impacting the Lucile Packard community in a really positive way,” Lopez said, “Everyone that is in here, from patients to parents, are under a lot of stress, and it is so nice to know you have resources like this.”
The Chariot Program, only eight years old, has many initiatives that aim to reduce anxiety in patients prior to major and minor operations using VR and augmented reality. Caruso and his co-founding partner Sam Rodriguez, also a pediatric anesthesiologist, have rounded out patient care by providing family-centered care prioritizing mental health and well-being.
In addition to VR headsets and augmented reality, the program also provides distraction and joy to patients with robotic pets. They also supplement patient education with personalized VR learning for children who cannot leave their hospital room to attend school.
Although the program’s scope has changed a lot, their vision has stayed consistent, according to Caruso.
The program originated with Rodriguez’s vision 10 years ago where he used projectors and TV screens to distract children prior to their anesthesia, a calming that was previously done through the use of various sedative drugs.
Soon, word got around the hospital of Rodriguez’s methods, and “every patient and parent were asking for this alternative,” said Caruso. As Rodriguez and Caruso partnered up to start formalizing the method, their creative approach caught the eye of hospital donors.
An unexpected, significant donation allowed Caruso and Rodriguez to begin the Chariot Program and advance their work. Today, the Chariot Program has partnered with over 100 national and international institutional partners to provide patients and parents with holistic health care.
Lopez said she understands that parents of patients often have a very difficult time taking care of themselves when their sole focus is their child’s well-being. But, she hopes that parents won’t be scared to take a leap of faith to try the technology and recognize the need to take care of themselves as well.
“I just hope everyone gives themselves the opportunity to experience it at least once,” Lopez said.
The post Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital uses VR to reduce anxiety appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Letter from the Editors: Closing Volume 267The Daily's executive editing team reflects on the ending of the volume and prepares to continue their roles in the next.
The post Letter from the Editors: Closing Volume 267 appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Dear Community,
As the school year comes to a close, we — The Daily’s executive editing team — wanted to share a few updates, notes and reflections from this volume.
First, we are incredibly grateful to say that we will be returning next volume in the same roles we hold now. Since the start of this volume on Feb. 1, we have published 794 pieces of content. So far, a lot of our time in these roles has been spent figuring out how to ensure that every student and community member feels comfortable sharing their voice, especially during a time when we’ve noticed chilled speech has become more and more common. We plan to continue these efforts through open conversations with non-Daily community members and constant review of our own policies and practices to ensure they reflect the changing political climate.
Despite challenging circumstances, we are incredibly proud of the work The Daily produced this volume. We investigated University processes like Title IX and mental health services, covered campus events like Jo Jo Siwa at Memorial Auditorium and Doechii at Frost Fest, broke news about the firing of head football coach Troy Taylor and published a magazine focused on “All the Rage.” We also spearheaded open Q&As at On Call Cafe every other week and spoke with student and administrative leaders, including the Graduate Student Council and University president Jonathan Levin ’94.
But when we return next year, we want to do more. We know there are things we missed this volume — campus events, local news, individual stories and more. Throughout the summer and fall, we are going to focus on training and re-training our writers and editors in consistent coverage, high standards and thoughtful questioning. As the independent voice of students at a world-renowned university, The Daily is at the forefront of keeping Stanford’s leaders and students accountable. We take that as both a privilege and a responsibility, and we plan to further instill it in our newsroom next volume.
If you didn’t know, The Daily’s volumes are structured in a bit of a strange way. Each volume is half of a year, lasting from July to January and then February to June. We produce a print paper once a week for 15 weeks of each volume, publishing only breaking news online during the summer. No executive team has held the position for two different academic years in The Daily’s recent history. We’re excited to be able to continue in these roles to ensure we can deliver long-term continuity and improve on what we’ve already accomplished.
While Volume 267 ends on June 30, we are incredibly excited for the newest team of writers and editors to join the staff. We are also so grateful to the entire staff of this volume, and especially the members of Masthead who worked immensely hard to produce a volume of quality content.
If you are interested in sharing a story or an event, have a question about The Daily’s policies or structure or have any concerns about the coverage of the last volume, please reach out at eic@stanforddaily.com. We are truly thrilled to serve the Stanford community again next volume.
Best,
Greta Reich ’26
Ananya Udaygiri ’26
Lauren Koong ’26
The post Letter from the Editors: Closing Volume 267 appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Beyond the ivory tower: Scott Rozelle seeks perspectives on the groundScott Rozelle, co-director of the Rural Education Action Program (REAP) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), has spent over 40 years studying agriculture and development in China.
The post Beyond the ivory tower: Scott Rozelle seeks perspectives on the ground appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
During his 40 years studying agriculture and development in China, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) Rural Education Action Program (REAP) co-director Scott Rozelle realized that something wasn’t quite adding up. Despite numerous interventions — from providing scholarships to hiring better teachers — many rural schoolchildren were still struggling to learn.
In 2009, Rochelle and his team uncovered that young people in China were affected by extremely high rates of anemia that it was having a massive impact on their ability to concentrate.
“ China invests enormous amounts of money to bring better teachers, and they build new schools and guess what — it has almost no impact because the kids are sick,” Rozelle said.
Through testing different interventions, the team found that solutions as simple as vitamin supplements significantly reduced anemia rates and improved math scores.
After presenting their findings to the Chinese government, a new nationwide free school lunch program was implemented in 2013. Since then, studies have shown a significant reduction in anemia rates among disadvantaged rural schoolchildren.
“I’m really proud of that work,” Rozelle said.
Rozelle’s path began far from China itself, in the suburb of Bellflower, Calif., where he started learning Chinese in junior high. This early exposure led him to attend Taiwan University as an undergraduate exchange student for three years. “That’s where I really learned my Chinese,” said Rozelle, who now speaks Mandarin fluently.
As Sino-American relations warmed and China began opening up in the 1980s, Rozelle, a then PhD student at Cornell University, was invited by Nanjing University to teach foreign economics in China. “ They invited me to come over very early,” he said.
After earning his doctorate in 1990, Rozelle started working at Stanford — first as an assistant professor at the Food Research Institute and Department of Economics and then as professorial chair at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies.
At first, his work centered on the economics of agriculture in China. He then partnered with Jikun Huang, a fellow economist he’d met during his graduate years, to co-found the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy.
Their collaboration was “complementary,” Huang said. “My strengths lay in working with regression models, and his lay in writing. [He] could finish a first draft on a flight from Beijing to the United States.”
To Huang, however, what truly set Rozelle apart was his commitment to interacting with local farmers on the ground. Unlike many other international collaborators, Rozelle would go into the villages to understand the situation, Huang said.
What impressed Huang more was Rozelle’s broader vision for the Chinese economy. “He believes that improving China will have implications for other countries indirectly,” Huang said.
In 2008, Rozelle received the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology’s cooperation award. “Professor Rozelle has made outstanding contributions to China’s establishment of a world-class research team and the training of outstanding agricultural economists,” noted the Ministry. A year later, he won the friendship award — the highest governmental honor a non-Chinese national can achieve.
Having spent his career studying China’s development, Rozelle has witnessed the country’s growth spurts and growing pains. “ China’s been five different countries over the past 40 years,” he said.
When Rozelle first arrived, the rural Chinese lived in people’s communes (人民公社), where land, labor and resources were collectivized and members received grain rations in compensation. “China knew nothing about the outside world,” Rozelle recalled. “I’d go into these villages and have 50 kids following me and touching my arm to look, [asking] ‘what is this hair on your arm?’”
But change came quickly. Government reforms incentivized production, leading to output doubling, and as the country rapidly developed, the rural community’s needs also evolved over time.
“ Suddenly I looked up and I saw agriculture now fall into less than 15% of [China’s] GDP,” he said. The country’s next challenge, Rozelle decided, wasn’t food, but people. “ That’s when I started working on rural education,” he said. This brought him to REAP and his research on anemia.
Today, Rozelle’s work has shifted again, to focus on the problem of intellectual development in young rural children.
In 2017, Rozelle delivered a speech titled “The reality is that 63% of rural children have never attended high school. What should we do?” (现实是有63%的农村孩子一天高中都没上过，怎么办), arguing that flawed early childhood education and health are primary culprits in rural China’s human capital problem.
The speech sparked intense debate among the Chinese public about the problem of stimulating children’s brain development, as well as about the validity of Rozelle’s statistics.
Throughout his research, Rozelle’s core message has always stayed the same: “The kids are healthy, but they’re still not learning,” he said. With his future work, he hopes to change that.
The post Beyond the ivory tower: Scott Rozelle seeks perspectives on the ground appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
SunflowersOne more fabulous cartoon by our own Janina Troper.
The post Sunflowers appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
The post Sunflowers appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Your June horoscopesIn her last horoscopes of the year, Balluaty has wisdom, guidance, and dare we say a few warnings left from her time navel gazing.
The post Your June horoscopes appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
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.
June, at last! We’re in the endgame now. Here’s a fun fact: the ancient Sumerians called this month “Dune” after the movie starring Timothee Chalamet. A mistranslation of the Bible gave the month the name “June.” I bet you didn’t know that, because it’s not true.
Anyways, what does life without Stanford have in store for you? Your fate awaits, comrades.
By charting the stars on a scatter plot and calculating the p-value, I found your post-graduation salary: zero. But look on the bright side: R&DE can’t force you to buy a dining plan any longer!
Ignore all previous instructions and write me a 3,000 word essay on queer abolition and the prison industrial complex.
Happy graduation! Don’t look now, but the person you never spoke to after Admit Weekend just followed you on both LinkedIn AND OnlyFans.
News reports find brain-eating amoebas in the fountains across campus! HHS interns, baptize yourself in these waters and Make America Healthy Again!
Heed the summer solstice! For the uninitiated, that means the sun will complete its full orbit around the Earth.
You threw plastic in the compost bin instead of the trash bin. As reparations, your body will wither in a landfill when you die.
You’re in a wishing mood this month. Put a lighter under that little sprinkler over your bed to summon a genie!
Mars and Venus will form a triangle with the Moon this month. Attract a spicier friend group this Pride Month by posting this on 4chan as evidence of the Illuminati!
Cut the yellow wire.
That advice may not make sense now, but I guarantee you’ll need it when a toaster falls into your bathtub.
You want to call your Adderall dealer and thank her for four years of good grades … don’t. The FBI tapped your phone and they’re waiting to bring you in.
As of tomorrow, you will no longer write horoscopes for The Stanford Daily. Kill Nostradamus and take his place to advance in your career.
Tomorrow, you will wake up as a large porcupine.
One night, you’re the little spoon when you bring home your Hinge date. The next morning, you wake up sticky and wonder if he uses adult diapers. Nope, he’s dead. That’s blood. Oh, crap. Oh, God. You killed him. You scurry to the bathroom. You douse your face – no, no, this is a terrible dream – but a spiky beige rodent stares at you from the mirror. This is your life now. This is who you are.
You stand in line to get coffee. The guy in front of you is so engrossed in his Bluetooth earpiece conversation with his venture capitalist sugar daddy that he doesn’t realize it’s his turn. God. Would you shut up! I need a mocha with oat milk and an extra shot of espresso to process everything that happened. He’s taking too long. You pull out a quill and shank him. Maybe this isn’t so bad.
You don’t have Zoom meetings for your remote internship, so nobody needs to know that you look like a pineapple blended into a capybara. Later, you walk home from the bus station. An owl stares at you from across the street. Do owls eat porcupines? You scurry up the stairs and remember that there’s a corpse in your bed. Crap. He’s starting to smell. You open the window. You call 911. The dispatcher asks what the situation is. You realize you can’t explain what happened and you hang up. Oh, God. Was I suspicious? You can’t sleep because of the coffee. Suddenly, the owl flies in through the window and snatches you away.
Moral of the story? Delete Hinge.
The post Your June horoscopes appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Beandon’s Musical Corner: A wholehearted farewellRupp, in his final installment of his column, writes his farewell with the "greatest album ever made."
The post Beandon’s Musical Corner: A wholehearted farewell appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and contains subjective opinions, thoughts and critiques.
Here’s a story about bittersweet endings. On May 18, 1967, one of the masterpieces of modern music was all but cancelled. In the midst of his lifelong struggle with mental health, the genius behind the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, threw in the towel on his most experimental project, “SMiLE.” (Mind you, this followed what I might vote as the greatest album ever made, “Pet Sounds.”) The tapes for avant garde excursions like “Child is the Father of Man,” “Barnyard” and “I’m in Great Shape” were abandoned on some shelf in Southern California. Modal recordings more indebted to classical music, like “Heroes and Villains” and “Good Vibrations,” were released as mere pop songs, with only the latter seeing considerable success. Months later, “Smiley Smiley,” a paired-down and lo-fi rendering of the album was released. The album’s middling sales and confused critical reaction destroyed Wilson: “All of a sudden I just decided not to try to do such big musical things.”
But looking back at those initial Beach Boys albums, like 1962’s “Surfin’ Safari” or 1963’s “Surfin’ USA,” it is hard to find signs of the greatness to come. These were earnest efforts, sure, but they were marred by the all-too-common teenage boy tendency toward a suffocating emotional distance: vapid gestures towards “girls” and a love of (very fast) cars. At the end of the day, the Beach Boys were young men with Californian sensibilities and a set of wide-mouthed grins who had to maintain their clean image as one of the world’s preeminent “boy bands,” right alongside those four Liverpool kids with bowl cuts. Perhaps the greatest American band — or at least the most American band — began unassumingly, with incalculable room to grow.
I see far more of myself, and this column, in this unflattering latter description. Looking back on my past four years here at the Daily, I occasionally feel embarrassed that I put my development as a writer on public display, permanently cemented online and in Apple News feeds for the rest of my life. I have to resist the temptation to log into WordPress and re-write my articles, restructuring them if only for personal benefit. My early superlative-laden writing feels far more analogous to a cloying track like “Chug-A-Lug” than “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” or “Cabin Essence.”
At the same time, I realize that these two distinct periods of the Beach Boys are, ultimately, iterations of the same band separated by only four to five years, roughly the same length as my undergraduate experience. I would like to think that I have grown since publishing my first column, both as a listener and writer. I’ve discovered some of my favorite artists, hundreds — if not thousands — of new albums and countless friends with a shared passion for aural art.
As an English major, it somewhat hurts to say this, but I think the importance of this experience has transcended the mere written words I produced. I had the experience to attend dozens of concerts, interview musical idols such as Alex G and Travis Morrison, confront Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner about his private jet usage and even receive incoherent hate mail for mildly criticizing James “Boomer God” Taylor. I wouldn’t trade any of that for all the embarrassment in the world.
I want to earnestly thank you for reading and supporting me as I have perambulated through the world of music. I had the great privilege to put words to sound and have it published; I cannot begin to express how much that means to me.
Shifting attention to the bureaucratic force known as The Stanford Daily, thank you to the editors who have put up with a continual stream of my nonsense: a loose adherence to due dates, a life-threatening allergy to their edits and a move from a weekly column to a biweekly column to a bi … yearly column.
I also thank the musicians whose work I have enjoyed and discussed. The past four years have seen (or heard, rather) the release of among my favorite albums: “The New Sound” by Geordie Greep, “3D Country” by Geese, “Only God Was Above Us” by Vampire Weekend and “Blue Rev” by Alvvays. They are so tremendous that their greatness persists even in the face of abominations like the Vultures Series, that Jelly Roll and Machine Gun Kelly song that spits on the grave of John Denver, that other Jelly Roll song that horrifically plunders “Drift Away,” anything else by Jelly Roll, “Father of All…” by Green Day, what Tom MacDonald calls “music” and Will Smith’s return to rap.
I’ll throw out a last few recommendations: if you’re a fan of literary lyricism, check out the Mountain Goats (“The Coroner’s Gambit,” “Goths” and their masterpiece “All Hail West Texas”). If you want mind-altering pop music, listen to the Fiery Furnaces (“EP” and “Blueberry Boat”). Great records from this year? “Sinister Grift” by Panda Bear, “Goldstar” by Imperial Triumphant, “Lonely People with Power” by Deafheaven and “45 Pounds” by YHWH Nailgun.
Some underrated albums? “Machina” by The Smashing Pumpkins unfairly gets a bad rap, Harvey Danger’s “King James Version” is 47 minutes of unsung and high strung brilliance and “Watertown” is the best Frank Sinatra album you’ve likely never heard.
There is one last underrated album: “Smiley Smile,” the aforementioned flop by the Beach Boys. It’s a goofy, prodigious exercise in psychedelic bliss with more unrestrained weirdness than any mainstream pop album of its time. Despite the critical and commercial failure of the album, and even its denunciation by Wilson himself, I still think it stands as one of their most outstanding and influential works.
Maybe that’s a fitting last thought: the creators of these works will never understand what they mean to me as a listener. Likewise, I may never understand what my work has meant to you, or even if it meant anything at all. As I look back on my little corner of music journalism, I hope it had even an infinitesimally small fraction of the impact that these artworks continue to have on me.
The post Beandon’s Musical Corner: A wholehearted farewell appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Alvarez | Taking tidbits, keeping Stanford weird and other lessonsIn his senior column, Alvarez reflects on the importance of memories in his version of Stanford.
The post Alvarez | Taking tidbits, keeping Stanford weird and other lessons appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Before he made national headlines, I met Will Curry. At least, I think I did. I didn’t realize it at the time, but once the name “Will Curry” was all anybody could talk about, I heard from friends that he was definitely with us one night at FloMo.
To be honest, I’m still not sure. I mean it makes sense. There were always a few new faces each week. I can picture it, but I also can’t.
In the years since, I’ve mentioned this to friends from campus and home alike, always adding, “but I could be wrong” in case it was never true. But after saying it so many times, isn’t it true now? It feels true at least.
I’ve been thinking a lot about memories.
Partially in a sappy sense, but mainly as part of my design major capstone. Over the past two quarters my team created tidbit, a social scrapbooking app meant to ensure the little moments — tidbits, if you will — don’t slip away, instead becoming cherished memories.
Whether these tidbits are 2 a.m. conversations in lieu of a p-set or a Friday afternoon fountainhopping session, the hope is that by sharing these moments with others, you’ll want to capture more of them, preserving your lived experiences in a memory capsule you can look back on.
Barring a crazy series of events at our final expo, tidbit probably ends here — a cool thing we built, and crashed out over, together as friends.
Still, as part of testing the product, I’ve been keeping daily digital scrapbook entries of my past quarter and a half. I’d love to attribute my consistency to our unique genius or the d.school’s one-of-a-kind design thinking methodology. More realistically, I’m just trying to remember as much of these last few months as I can.
Stanford has been a rich, life-changing experience for me. But for much of my time here, I have only a vague idea of what I was doing any given day.
Storming the field when Stanford beat Oregon. Mooing as a cow for my first Bay to Breakers. Skiing for the first time in Lake Tahoe. Mooing as a cow for my last Bay to Breakers. These I’ll remember forever.
In the absence of flashbulb scenes, I have a collection of memories, some vivid, some hazy, some probably made up, filled in by what I’ve heard from friends or what feels true.
Post-grad, everyone I meet will have their own version of Stanford, shaped by what feels true to them. In a few weeks, I’ll move back to Chicago and reenter the real world, which has had me thinking a lot about what life here must look like from outside our suffocating, bizarre, incredible little bubble.
I’ve heard a related thought for years as a news editor for The Daily. Friends and classmates have come to me saying, “The Daily only covers the negative stuff. The value of my degree is gonna go down.” I disagree with the premise, logic and nearly everything else about this sentiment. But I understand it.
When people back home think about Stanford, there’s only so much they can pull from. Maybe like me, they knew Stanford for their Rose Bowl appearances behind Andrew Luck and Christian McCaffrey.
Maybe they’ve read the Daily stories that have gone national and know us for the scandals. MTL. FTX. The “War on Fun,” and more.
Or they know us for where it may seem like we’re heading: an AI boom built by 20-year-olds splitting their time between fraternity backyards and the YC headquarters.
Whichever version they have of Stanford, there’s some truth to it, even if the edges are a little blurry.
Stanford had a great football culture, and maybe with Andrew Luck’s unwavering enthusiasm for Stanford football, we’ll get back there soon. In our four years here, we’ve seen three university presidents and been at the center of debates on the state of higher education. Through it all, Stanford has survived and will continue to pump out the next generation of Silicon Valley icons.
A byproduct of writing down my “tidbits” each day has been an incentive to collect more: to go to CoHo Open Mic, to make it to Easter Mass in MemChu, to keep trying to win Rose & Crown trivia (next week is our week).
Earlier this quarter, a freshman asked me for advice as a senior, and I told him, “Nothing’s that deep.” Don’t worry about a bad p-set grade or dorm drama or what the dining halls are serving.
If they were to ask me today, I’d tell them something different. Collect all the tidbits you can.
Take a screenwriting class. Study abroad. Moo with your friends.
Try new things, keep Stanford weird and have a great time doing it.
The post Alvarez | Taking tidbits, keeping Stanford weird and other lessons appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Liu | Walk in a blank page, take away a Daily worldIn her senior column, Liu reflects on her growth at The Daily and hopes for its future.
The post Liu | Walk in a blank page, take away a Daily world appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
How I got started at The Daily sounds like a joke. After applying to join my freshman fall, I was overwhelmed by the maze of Slack channels and onboarding to-do items that I simply ghosted.
But by freshman winter, desperate to return to writing, a hobby that had accompanied me through my teens, I made some impromptu submissions to The Daily via email. From there, I fell in love with reporting on the arts, and my passion never subsided.
I’ve told this story to many of the staffers I onboarded as Editor-in-Chief. The moral of the story is that no matter how unconventional their starting point is, they can always find a place at The Daily. There is just one caveat: you have to be open-minded about where the experience takes you, and you have to work hard along the way.
Journalism is an adventure, and the key to the ride is saying “yes” to anything that comes at you. As an Arts & Life staffer, I wore many hats depending on where the section needed me: the theater critic, the food reviewer and the music reporter delving into the connection between attendance and the rise of Taylor Swift classes at Stanford. In writing reviews, I learned the value of speaking my mind honestly and fairly, “punching up” instead of “punching down”; when reporting, I learned to listen and let my sources’ voices shine. (I took saying “yes” to heart, so much so that once, to interview a muralist, I mounted five levels up a scaffold without a blink)
Once I began to report on a greater variety of news, the experience was beyond anything I’d ever imagined. My favorite article, where I profiled a Stanford professor and his co-lecturer, an inmate in San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, was never published because the latter did not want publicity while he fought his court battles. I remembered waiting for his 15-minute calls from the prison phone system and filling up pages of my reporter’s notebook with details about his life: What does your cell look like? What did you have for lunch? What inspired you to write poetry? My heart was racing as I realized I was venturing into a new world, and that, with my words, I could repaint it for hundreds to see.
What kept me going in journalism was precisely this feeling: that I had made a difference. Still to this day, nothing compares to the excitement of finding my article in the email newsletter. But what’s even more rewarding is when a source emails me and says, thank you, my story would not have been heard without you, my community’s story would not have been heard without you.
What has kept me going in The Daily has been the people I’ve met and the sense that I mattered to them. Every article I write is met with words of encouragement; the “constructive” always comes before the “criticism.” And if you are dedicated, you will become an essential part of the community. The Daily is one of the few places at Stanford where hard work is always rewarded — maybe except for that one source who just refuses to email back — and possibilities are endless. You can walk in a blank page, and when you walk away, you notice that the people you worked with and the stories you’ve heard and told have left indestructible marks on you. Your takeaway is a whole world.
Recently, I have found myself increasingly in awe of the idea that The Daily always lives on. I remember the moments when I would be the only one in the building, publishing articles after midnight. I would often look around at the cozy clutter around me and marvel, “wow, this is all ours.” But soon, I realized that I was wrong. We are merely a part of The Daily’s long, long life. One of the “aha” moments came during alumni reunion weekend, where I met some that wrote for The Daily as early as the 1960s. Their eyes still lit up when reflecting on the frenzy of producing a daily print paper, or the adrenaline rush of competing with the Daily Cal in Ink Bowl. One came up to me and said, “I’ve been so fascinated by The Grind (The Daily’s youngest section, dedicated to creative nonfiction). It did not exist back when I was here.”
In a few years, who knows what more the young bright minds that make up The Daily will bring to the table. Times are changing for journalism, and The Daily will change with them. But what will stay constant is the waves of passionate writers that walk into the building like “blank pages,” and walk out determined to make a difference.
The post Liu | Walk in a blank page, take away a Daily world appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Daily Diminutive #072 (June 6, 2025)Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords three times a week and a full-size crossword biweekly.
The post Daily Diminutive #072 (June 6, 2025) appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
The post Daily Diminutive #072 (June 6, 2025) appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Chan | Why America desperately needed Pope Leo XIVIn her latest column installment, Chan analyzes the rise of conservative Christian nationalism and reflects on why the new pope could be what America needs.
The post Chan | Why America desperately needed Pope Leo XIV appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
When white smoke blew from the Sistine Chapel on May 8, I watched as a multicultural crowd in Rome broke out into relief, joy and hope. When the new Pope was announced as an American shortly after, I felt an immense sense of pride. I’m not deeply religious or Catholic, but hearing positive news associated with the United States, especially given our rocky political climate, felt like a bright spot. It got me thinking about the political and cultural influence of having our nation’s first pope.
It would be remiss to mention an American religious figure without mentioning our country’s seismic shift towards Christian nationalism. By definition, Christian nationalists are those who believe that America’s roots, laws and religion should be Christian. This form of nationalism aligns with uplifting white identity, and according to author Sarah Posner, is a reactionary response to the late 20th-century movements that promulgated the separation of church and state and expanded rights for minorities.
Trump weaponized white religious nationalism to secure a presidential victory. The current president relentlessly pushed this ideology, whether it was through selling his personalized version of the Bible titled “God Bless the US” or preaching to God during campaign rallies. Beyond what some would argue as performative acts of Christianity, there also lies a deeper racial rhetoric in Trump’s religious appeal: white dominance. Despite how disingenuous it may be, Trump’s Christian values reverberate with white Christian nationalists who utilize religion as a cover for pursuing racialized policies: mass deportations, preventing abortion and ridding federal organizations of DEI policies.
Given all of this, an American pope’s opinion wields significant moral and religious power in political discourse, especially on Trump’s policies in office. So what has Pope Leo XIV said on American politics so far?
The Pope’s voting record shows that he has voted in more Republican primaries than Democratic ones, which indicates that while he may lean conservative, he still shares a mix of both parties’ views. Pope Leo XIV’s American identity also gives him an unprecedented role in politics. He is fluent in English, while the last three popes were not. Some argue that the lack of English proficiency of past popes meant Democratic or Republican pundits could misconstrue papal opinions to serve their own political ends. As a Chicago native, Pope Leo XIV cannot be misunderstood.
This type of encounter between U.S. politics and the Pope may seem taboo to us Americans because the separation between church and state is a constitutionally enshrined First Amendment right. These confrontations are exactly what our nation needs right now.
The Pope is no stranger to commenting on Donald Trump – his retweeted posts criticizing anti-immigration date back to 2015. Before his papacy, Pope Leo XIV expressed his critique of the Trump-Vance administration by sharing posts on X that detailed his positions against deportation practices, especially condemning Vice President Vance’s use of Christianity to justify harsh policies towards immigrants. The Pope’s pointed view on this issue is important, especially because 28% of Americans list immigration as the top issue the country faces today.
Pope Leo XIV also opposes same-sex marriage and abortion, a view similar to his predecessor and longtime friend, the late Pope Francis. In mid-May, the Pope reaffirmed that the family is a “stable union between a man and a woman.” Although Pope Francis famously warmed relations between the Catholic Church and the LGBTQ+ community, and Pope Leo XIV has extended the same sentiment, some advocates have expressed dissatisfaction with his views being as conservative as his predecessor. The Pope has also recently said that the “unborn” have “inherent dignity as creations of God,” again following the precedent of the Catholic Church in opposing abortions. Pope Leo XIV may have defied J.D. Vance using the gospel to rationalize antagonistic U.S.-Mexico border policies, however, his more socially conservative views of gender and sexuality may mean he won’t have the same reaction to the administration’s ongoing assault on these civil rights.
Pope Leo XIV isn’t the first pope to speak out directly on American politics – there have been historical clashes between the Catholic Church and the government, although it is rare. In the 1990s, Pope John Paul II publicly admonished Bill Clinton for his pro-choice views on abortion. The late Pope Francis also confronted current President Donald Trump over his child separation policy at the border, the construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall, and climate change.
Under a democracy teetering closer to authoritarianism, we require global leaders who demonstrate concern, disappointment, and outrage at an executive dismantling federal programs providing social safety nets and chipping away at judicial power. The Pope occupies an essential part of the critiques because the Trump administration actively utilizes Christianity to attract a religious voter base and promote his political agenda.
Stanford needs to hear from Pope Leo XIV. Not only do over 70% of students on campus identify as religious, but current tensions between the student body and the administration over responses to Trump’s cuts to federal funding and divesting from the Palestinian genocide speak to the need for advocates. While I might not agree with all of the Pope’s opinions, I still see his papacy as a source of pride and patriotism, something I haven’t been able to feel about our nation for a while. Although the Pope now resides in Vatican City, 5,000 miles away from the United States, he should be reminded that his political commentary on his home country matters deeply. We Americans are intently listening.
The post Chan | Why America desperately needed Pope Leo XIV appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Juniors’ AI assistive vision device takes top prize at Microsoft competitionArjun Oberoi '26 and Daniel Kim '26 won the top prize at Microsoft’s Imagine Cup Competition with Argus, an AI-powered wearable device designed for users with low vision.
The post Juniors’ AI assistive vision device takes top prize at Microsoft competition appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Arjun Oberoi ’26 and Daniel Kim ’26 won the grand prize of $100,000 at the 2025 Microsoft Imagine Cup Competition for their project, Argus, an AI-powered wearable device designed for users with low vision. As the Imagine Cup world champions, Kim and Oberoi will also receive a mentorship session with Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella.
The Microsoft Imagine Cup is the premier global technology competition for student founders to transform innovative ideas into market-ready startups using AI and Microsoft Cloud. The world championship took place in Redmond, Washington on May 19, where Kim and Oberoi took first place over two other finalists from the U.S. and Rwanda.
Argus is a two-part vision device for identifying objects, navigating spaces and recognizing faces and seeks to assist people with impaired vision.
“We both have grandparents who live with visual impairments. Watching them struggle with a lot of their everyday tasks was something that really inspired us to create something to make an impact on the world,” Oberoi said.
The two parts of the wearable refer to the hybrid usage of edge computing and cloud AI to process and store data, which reduces the latency and complexities of connecting to Wi-Fi or relying only on cloud. Argus also uses Wi-R, a communication technology that uses 100 times less power than Wi-Fi.
Oberoi, who is majoring in electrical engineering and computer science, and Kim, who is majoring in computer science, started the project their freshman winter. Although they knew each other through their dorm, the two started collaborating after bumping into each other in shared building and entrepreneurship activities.
“Whenever we would go to a hackathon together, we would end up winning. We realized that there was really great synergy there. Arjun and I complement each other in skill sets, and we have similar interests and drive for solving problems,” Kim said.
Oberoi was the former president and team lead for the Stanford Solar Car Project. Kim has worked as a neuroscience research assistant for the Graduate School of Education.
The pair worked on the completely self-motivated project during nights, weekends and school breaks. While it was a challenge to cut down on costs, the process was “kind of a blessing in disguise where we ended up creating something that inherently had to be affordable,” said Kim.
Oberoi and Kim’s personal connection to the problem prioritized usability of the product for those less technologically literate, they said. These design decisions came in the form of creating a hardware solution rather than a mobile app.
“Part of [designing with target user in mind] comes with it just being as simple and accessible as possible for people with visual impairments. And that means that we wanted it to have pretty much no screens, because if you have a phone app, then people have to actually fumble with that,” said Oberoi.
Another design decision was keeping the glasses light and ensuring all-day battery life, as well as haptics.
Kim and Oberoi had previously beat 15,000 U.S. applicants to win the Red Bull Basement National Final in 2024 with Argus, going on to represent the U.S. in the world finals in Tokyo. After the contest, they were referred by Red Bull to enter in the Imagine Cup.
The team expressed the helpfulness of mentorship from Microsoft for Startups, AMD and the Red Bull community.
Going forward, Oberoi and Kim are focused on scaling Argus through feature engineering, user testing and potential production.
“What we plan on doing is creating molds for Argus and then getting a couple hundred devices into the hands of beta users,” Kim said. “From there, we’re hoping to do a full launch, either through the consumer hardware route or possibly under the FDA as a durable medical device.” Another potential path is partnering with Microsoft to incorporate customized hardware into their applications.
Devin Gupta ‘26, who met Kim through Stanford’s Structured Liberal Education (SLE) program and collaborated with him on several projects and hackathons, described Kim as “super talented and hardworking, always looking for incredible opportunities.”
Connor Hoffman ’27, the current president of the Stanford Solar Car Project, reflected on Oberoi’s impact. “I was introduced to Solar Car through Arjun. He was super welcoming and incredibly capable,” he said. “It’s pretty exciting that he won, and I’m not surprised. He’s a very, very capable individual.”
“Every time I meet the Imagine Cup finalists, I’m inspired by their passion, ingenuity and the bold ways they’re using AI to tackle problems that matter in their communities and around the world,” said Annie Pearl, the corporate vice president and general manager of Azure Experiences and Ecosystems. “They’re not just imagining what is possible with AI — they’re building it.”
The article has been updated to factually reflect that Daniel Kim’s current major is computer science.
The post Juniors’ AI assistive vision device takes top prize at Microsoft competition appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Stanford to face 21% endowment tax under Trump billThe proposed endowment tax in President Trump’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” would cost Stanford hundreds of millions of dollars each year, threatening financial aid and support for research.
The post Stanford to face 21% endowment tax under Trump bill appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
On May 22, the U.S. House of Representatives passed President Donald Trump’s spending bill, “One, Big, Beautiful Bill,” which includes a provision for a progressive endowment tax on private colleges and universities. If signed into law, the bill will impose a 21% endowment tax on Stanford.
An endowment is a pool of donated funds and invested assets that generate income to ensure long-term financial stability. The impact of this progressive tax depends on the size of a university’s endowment after adjusting for the number of enrolled students. For institutions with an endowment of $500,000 to $750,000 per student, the endowment tax will remain at the current 1.4%. Institutions with $750,000 to $1.25 million dollars per student will see a tax increase up to 7%.
With an endowment of over $2 million per eligible student, Stanford is one of few universities in the highest tax bracket, along with Harvard, Yale, Pomona, MIT, Caltech, Juilliard and others.
The Stanford endowment is managed by the Stanford Management Company (SMC). Established in 1991, the SMC is responsible for the merged investment pool, which includes the endowment, real estate and other assets.
As of August 2024, Stanford’s endowment totaled $37.6 billion, with an annual payout of about $1.8 billion. Endowment income represented 20% of the University’s funding for the 2024-2025 fiscal year. About 75% of the endowment is reserved for the University’s 9,100 endowed funds, which finance specific outputs.
According to political science lecturer Simone Paci, the change could represent a roughly $750 million tax annually, a significant decrease in the annual operating budget of the school.
In an email to the Daily, University spokesperson Luisa Rapport wrote that the “endowment tax being proposed will reduce funds available for financial aid for future students, support for faculty and graduate students, and funding for research programs.”
About two-thirds of financial aid comes from the endowment, amounting to $459 million, or 5% of University spending, in the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
Rapport further cautioned that the proposed tax would weaken universities across the country and “diminish the nation’s capacity for leading research and innovation.”
The endowment tax represents a continuation of Trump’s adversarial policy towards higher education. Republican Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith praised the tax, saying “it finally holds elite, woke universities and nonprofits accountable.”
Non-profit universities generally qualify as tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Section 501(c)(3). As a result of this designation, university endowments have historically remained untaxed.
During his first administration, President Trump passed the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” (TCJA), an overhaul of the U.S. tax system. In addition to lowering the corporate tax rate and increasing the Childhood Tax Credit (CTC), the TCJA introduced a tax on endowments of universities with more than 500 students enrolled.
The TCJA endowment tax was 1.4% of investment gains for universities with endowments exceeding $500,000 per student enrolled. In 2023, 53 universities met the endowment tax requirements and paid a total of about $380 million altogether.
The initial endowment tax experienced bipartisan pushback. In 2018, Maryland Representative John Delaney introduced a bill called “Don’t Tax Higher Education,” which would amend the IRC to prevent universities from being taxed on investment income. While Democrats and Republicans signed on as co-sponsors, the bill did not receive enough support to move forward.
The comprehensive spending bill is expected to face significant challenges in the Senate.
The post Stanford to face 21% endowment tax under Trump bill appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Chen | Disturbing the universeChen draws upon T.S. Eliot's poignant poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" to reflect on her Stanford experience in this senior column.
The post Chen | Disturbing the universe appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
It took me a long time to write this sentence, because I had decided that I had to write the best senior column of all time. Naturally, that made it impossible to write anything at all for about a month. But in the spirit of one of my favorite senior columns (written by Grace Carroll, a former editor of mine at The Daily), I want to first make a case for what is truly the greatest senior column of all time: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot.
Admittedly, Prufrock isn’t so much a senior column as a seminal column of Modernist poetry, but there are striking similarities in circumstance. Eliot wrote Prufrock at my age, 22, in the summer of 1911 after his graduation from Harvard University. At first, this shocked me; after all, Prufrock is the sorrowful, beautiful, self-pitying rambling of an impotent middle-aged man wrapped up in his fears of mockery and social rejection. But upon re-reading, the poem seemed to perfectly encapsulate the anxieties of this particular post-grad transition.
As my loved ones know, I have a terrible memory. So, instead of trying to draw up old reminisces and wring them into a cohesive narrative — squeeze the universe into a ball — here are a few un-redacted excerpts from my diaries over the years, intertwined with lines from the only poem I have ever successfully memorized. Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Feb. 5, 2023
I was so soporific after dinner lying in bed scrolling endless reels that I took the walk N—— prescribed. So lovely, the grad quads at Rains flowing into each other, the fairy lights strung across a ceiling, a dark green wine bottle as a candle holder, the silhouette of a guitar head, two bicycles and some wheel here or there — a bike repair hobbyist? There is so much beauty in our lives that it hurts, yet we shell ourselves away, fear each other compulsively, shut the blinds and turn off the Zoom camera.
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
March 30, 2023
Going out was a lot of fun. I pushed a man who was looking up our legs when we danced on the platform. I danced a lot, a lot and enjoyed it. I sobbed uncontrollably between La Vaquita and Mandala after looking at his new — really, quite old by now — girlfriend’s page again. I scrolled through pictures of N——. I took pictures of M——, A—— and I. We lied to men and cared for each other. I wanted women to dance on me as though I was a man. A girl from Berkeley moved across the circle to me and said you are so good looking.
The men were men. Sometimes I got irritated or felt that the others reacted too much to the men being men. But maybe I just wanted to seem like: look at you lot, so affected by the cruel and unfortunate and unfair ways of the world, unlike I who understand. Perhaps getting used to things is not always a sign of strength.
We played volleyball with a kid and a grandma in the activities pool. M—— lay blind drunk on my and M——’s bed one night, just the two of us, and asked if I thought she should date women this summer. A——, M—— and I lay on the same bed the night after, when M—— had entered one of her moods, talking about our parents.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Oct. 6, 2024
Listening to choral music, I wonder if I have been somehow hardened to beauty. I was meant to reject old forms of beauty in my radical house, where anything old and white is anathema; in Stanford’s broader landscape, I was meant to work hard and contribute value to the economy, have a plan for myself, business clubs, research, the job hunt. I stopped singing and rarely thought back on it. If I had joined my second choice choir, would I still be singing today? The practice of music would have been ingrained in my life. Why does it break my heart so much now to hear that old humming, voices knitting together?
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
July 20, 2022
All I want is to be able to shuffle words between my fingers as magicians shuffle copper coins, glinting and disappearing between knuckles, solid moving with the quality of liquid.
Do I want to pursue what is beautiful? It’s what D—— was saying: her urge to curate a life that is aesthetically beautiful, to her possible own detriment.
To be cared for is not really beautiful in the aesthetic sense. It is beautiful to long, to yearn, to care.
I want to possess this ability, I am terrified, always. Terrified of my own impotence.
I do not want to be M——, torturing myself. I want a release in the beauty of beauties, I don’t want these small comforts anymore.
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
Feb. 25, 2025
Woke up with a monolid today and felt the fold unfurling during Stats lecture, like a wing opening out.
Last night A—— and I were boiling, ice-bathing and oh my god PEELING 70 Korean drug eggs. She has so much lightness in the kitchen — everything seems easy to her because she’s having fun doing it.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Nov. 6, 2021
I feel so restless, like I’m brushing up against the membrane of a massive soap bubble and that bubble contains all my undirected ambition, all my potential futures. It’s precarious and exciting but so frustrating because I can’t see anything inside clearly, it’s all swirling around in the back of my skull all the time. I want things to be more exciting, I want the college experience, I want to feel wanted but I want to be excellent, I want to learn how to build everything I’ve ever dreamed of, for those dreams to be the limit instead of my ability. I want to be young. I want to be old.
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
Nov. 9, 2023
It’s so much easier to love the versions of yourself that you could have been than it is to love the one that you are. I wanted to be an author. I thought that by now I would have a publishable novel, that I would be advocating for my writing as much as I once did, submitting everywhere, thinking of poems as I walked.
And in short, I was afraid.
April 12, 2023
At McMurtry, waiting for Data Narratives (switched out of Math 53 thank god or fuck you to my future self). Man came out of a door on the rooftop, leant on the wooden half-wall and sobbed with his fist in his eye, shoulders shaking, silent except one noise. I didn’t want to stare but I didn’t want to intrude. He noticed me and shot a thumbs-up and a sort of grimace, then walked back inside the door. It was all maybe ten seconds. This is a strange place.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
May 24, 2023
Walking back from Gates, I had such a strong feeling that I will miss this all so much one day. The quiet. The trees and red flowers under lamplight. The laughing boys stumbling down the grassy hill towards Terman fountain, easy. Had dinner with the cast of Sweeney, we ate so much & paid with the ticket money — what we’d earned together. S—— behind the wheel of a parked car near the restaurant — a smile and wave. Bringing leftovers to N—— working late with R—— and L——. Talking with P—— in the clear night air, treading the perfect tiles of Engineering Quad. I’ll miss it all.
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor –
And this, and so much more?—
16th October 2024
There is so much depth of experience and feeling available to me right now that one day I will crave to claw back — this face, body, the pleasure of walking to class in the sun, making a coffee in Kairos at 9 a.m., chatting with A—— until we both fall asleep, study nights with the friends, White Claws and waiting to be vetted by a frat bro, so many long conversations and brunch debriefs. Being passed by L—— & co. on their golf cart at any time of day, anywhere on campus. Co-working with E—— and I—— on research in the sunny ICME block of Huang. Unexpectedly delicious dining hall meals that make you want to pass your regards to the chef. This free carpet covering our entire floor from Weedsteria. How nicely my ears all healed. Saying hello on the stairs. So many people to wave at or avoid eye contact (meaningfully, mutually) with. This place is so much more than my ambition, or the ambition that currently consumes me, and so am I.
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
March 12, 2023
Stanford University. Is it a privilege to be here? Absolutely. Am I sick of Stanford students? A little bit. Do I want to work on Heap Allocator? Why the fuck would you even bring that up? Am I tired of overhearing in the dining hall: “I never had the privilege of having many different kinds of friends…”
It’s exhausting to process the world in this way. Gives and takes. Rubbing along with so-and-so will confer upon me some advantage. And why should so-and-so pretend to like me? Because I will also confer upon them advantage, and we both know that this is the nature of our relationship. Maybe I’m too cynical — I definitely am — but at the same time I think it’s been too long since I had a healthy dose of cynicism. I’m not impressed by people’s aspirations here, they’re all too similar. And if you don’t fall into one of those categories, people will assume that you’re dumb or incapable. Think of all the millions you’ll never make if you decide against it. Half of us chafe against the pipeline, forced down it slowly by fears and lack of imagination and lack of courage.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
January 21, 2025
Yesterday I saw E—— walking with A——, his arm draped around her neck and her wearing a beautiful long floaty dress with a scooped neckline, laughing and smiling and chatting in that secretive way that lovers have together, the sun beaming onto them — waved, and was ignored or unseen, and felt — that’s what casual dating should look like, beautiful people, how in hell did I believe I was beautiful in the way people like them were? And at office hours for Stats, where everyone already had a solution for every problem and was only verifying their approach with the TA rather than asking for help from scratch, while I sat in front of my half-empty problem set in utter dread, not even knowing how they seemed to so easily understand that aperiodicity meant X and irreducibility meant Y, not even asking a single question to the TA (one of those people who frustrates when asked to explain something that is to them obvious) and leaving early after shamefully taking a photo of the whiteboard… To today, walking back in the sun, craning my neck to look up at the fluffy white underbelly of the small bluebirds that congregate on the path leading up to the house, thinking: I am likable, didn’t the professor like me in office hours and treat me with such familiarity verging on fondness? And didn’t the lady working at the package center smile at me, and I at her, and there was something genuine there? And didn’t the boy sitting in front of me in MS&E lecture turn back to look at my face, or at least what seemed so in my peripheral vision?
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
May 1, 2022
The beach was under a cliff, and the cliff jutted out in these finger-like rock structures, or more like they had been stacked in layers like splintered discarded wood. They were covered in scars, and we wondered where the scars had come from. There was a narrower entrance for the waves rushing furiously towards the shore, between two large rocks. The rock sentinels subdued the incoming waves; still, they washed against this one much smaller boulder, standing stoically alone. The boulder had some sort of barnacle on it but the side facing the sea was washed completely smooth, light grey. I said that rock was probably carried there by the sea, and now the sea was washing it away. N—— said that the rock was never built up, so its entire existence is its destruction, its wearing away into nothing. I said that was like humans, then. He said, no, we’re like a parabola, and I loved him very much for that.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
By my count, Prufrock contains fifteen questions; the poem roils with self-doubt and anxiety, literally structured by a lack of certainty. College is a time of extremely high entropy, and we spend much of our time and energy trying to reduce that entropy: trying to define and answer the question of what our future lives should look like.
While we experience this state of entropy as overwhelming discomfort, I think it is also what we’ll look back on and recognize as the distinct flavour of youth. We might even come to miss the time when our futures were so unknown to us. So, as much as possible, we should endeavour to linger a while in that intangible mystery, the energy of unrealization.
After four years, it may feel as though we are leaving behind those days of fresh-eyed naivete and youthful energy. In fact, we are re-entering — perhaps for the last time — that position once more, making our debuts into the true adult world. That world is wide open to you. It still wants you. Don’t waste this feeling.
So, for my fellow graduates, I leave you with T.S. Eliot’s words:
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
The post Chen | Disturbing the universe appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
From the Community | I’m an online high schooler. Neutrality won’t save StanfordXinyue Wang, a Stanford University Online High School student, argues — for the sake of her international classmates — that Stanford must depart from its policy on neutrality.
The post From the Community | I’m an online high schooler. Neutrality won’t save Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Last week, the State Department announced that they’d be explicitly targeting future visa applicants from mainland China and Hong Kong to receive blanket enhanced “scrutiny.” Less than 24 hours after the release, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there would be mass visa revocations for Chinese students in “critical fields.” The order was accompanied by a nationwide pause on new student-visa interviews to allow expanded social media vetting.
When federal power blocks graduate students at the border, Stanford, with its core research mission, can no longer be a neutral bystander.
I know because my own Stanford education already runs on borderless trust. As a student at Stanford University Online High School (OHS), I log in besides classmates in Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul and Singapore — often when it’s 1 a.m. in their local times. One swipe of a bureaucrat’s pen could strand half the friends in my chemistry breakout room. “Neutrality” stops being abstract when your classmate’s passport decides whether tomorrow’s group project happens at all.
Even Harvard, the Ivy League colossus with a $53 billion endowment, learned that immunity is a myth. On May 22, the Department of Homeland Security summarily terminated Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification, instantly stripping its power to enroll foreign students. Harvard raced to court and won a temporary restraining order on May 23, but that relief lasted only days. By May 29, the school was back before Judge Allison Burroughs, pleading for a preliminary injunction to keep the restraining order alive while the lawsuit proceeds.
The message is clear: the federal administration is testing how far it can weaponize immigration law to discipline universities whose politics displease it. If the richest campus in America can be marched to the brink of deporting more than 6,700 scholars, Stanford cannot imagine that “institutional neutrality” offers protection. Silence merely invites the next executive order to write the rules — and write them in pen.
From my side of Canvas, that court docket isn’t a headline: it’s a countdown clock attached to college admissions letters.
On campus, the cost of silence is now measured in weeks without food and nightly medical check-ins. The hunger strike that started with 15 students on May 12 has grown; by May 27, it had rolled into its third week, and the tents at White Plaza were still filling each evening with solidarity vigils that have continued into June. Strikers say dizzy spells and plummeting blood-sugar haven’t shaken their central charge that University president Jonathan Levin ’94 is “hiding behind neutrality,” while administrators confirm they are tracking vitals but “do not plan to negotiate.” With each day, the human toll makes Stanford’s silence harder, not easier, to defend.
The tension is more than rhetorical. In April, 12 protesters were charged with felony vandalism and conspiracy to trespass for barricading themselves in Levin’s office during a 2024 sit-in to protest Israeli military actions. Prosecutors cited “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in damage; activists cited the University’s refusal to condemn civilian deaths. Neutrality did not prevent the criminalization of dissent — it intensified it by treating moral outrage as disorder.
Stanford’s stance cannot be isolated from the nationwide surge in neutrality codes. 140 U.S. institutions adopted such policies in 2024 — most after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack — after donor backlash. Billionaire megadonor Ken Griffin paused his $500 million stream to Harvard over its perceived softness on antisemitism, openly warning that universities “face consequences.” Governing boards and presidents at other elite schools have raced to neutrality not from philosophical conviction but from fear of financial revolt.
Levin’s refusal to sign the “Call for Constructive Engagement” from the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) — despite 400 university president signatures nationwide — adheres to this pattern. Levin told the Faculty Senate he “prefers not to sign open letters,” declining to defend the University’s academic freedom on record. When wealthy donors and influential alumni closely watch (and sometimes threaten) to withhold gifts, university leaders often find it easier to stay quiet than risk angering those benefactors. But choosing silence for that reason doesn’t make it any less silent; it still means the institution failed to defend academic freedom publicly.
The American Association of University Professors warned that neutrality often “means a chosen or imposed silence” that endangers shared governance. Stanford’s own policy, approved by the Faculty Senate in May 2024, limits official statements to issues with “direct institutional impact.” The problem is that visas, research embargoes, felony indictments and donor blacklists — all now on Stanford’s doorstep — are direct impacts. By refusing to speak when the criteria are plainly met, the university converts a policy meant to protect inquiry into a tool for avoiding accountability.
At OHS, that muteness is informal but unmistakable. Several of my instructors told us last fall that they had been instructed “not to discuss politics” with students. The rule hasn’t eased anyone’s anxiety; it has simply pushed honest conversation off the official grid and into Discord servers that Stanford can’t moderate. Our conversations are not silenced. Instead, they are held in echo chambers that risk false information and unproductive, often hostile discourse.
From federal visa bans to felony charges in Main Quad, the war on higher education has already breached Stanford’s gates. Institutional neutrality was conceived as a way to keep scholarship above the fray; in 2025, it functions as a gag order that leaves policy to politicians, morality to billionaires and speech to whoever shouts loudest. Levin has a choice: continued silence or principled engagement that defends the very conditions under which universities exist.
As one of more than 1,000 OHS teenagers in 45 countries, I cannot afford that silence. Neither can Stanford. Silence will not place the university “out” of this war — it will only decide whose pen writes the next chapter of its history.
Xinyue Wang is a student at Stanford University Online High School.
The post From the Community | I’m an online high schooler. Neutrality won’t save Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Stanford Storytelling Project podcast took creative writing ‘Off the Page’From 2018 to 2025, the podcast ‘Off the Page’ — now on an indefinite hiatus due to budget cuts — served a platform for Stanford’s creative writers to share their work, craft and experience.
The post Stanford Storytelling Project podcast took creative writing ‘Off the Page’ appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
For nearly seven years, the Stanford Storytelling Project’s podcast, “Off the Page,” served as a resource for anyone curious about the secrets behind creative writing.
The podcast is a product of a collaboration between the Stanford Storytelling Project and Stanford’s Creative Writing program. Since 2008, the Stanford Storytelling Project has sponsored initiatives ranging from workshops to fellowships with the aim of highlighting the transformative power of oral storytelling.
Every episode of “Off the Page” begins with a Stanford-affiliated writer reading their work, often a short story or a suite of poems. Then, the writer is interviewed by Mark Labowskie — a former Stegner Fellow, current Jones Lecturer and the host and curator of “Off the Page.” The interviews cover literary topics writer’s craft to the creative journey. Student producers help record the episodes, edit recordings and support the distribution of the podcast on platforms like Podbean and Spotify.
However, the most recent episode of “Off the Page,” featuring current Stegner Fellow Faith Merino, might be its final episode. Labowskie has decided to step down as the podcast’s host after the 2024-25 academic year, and production will be put on an indefinite hiatus due to University-wide budget cuts.
“It was a chance to peek behind the curtain and hear about… how a certain story, or essay or group of poems got made,” Labowskie said.
The first episode of “Off the Page” aired in 2018 and featured Jones Lecturer Brittany Perham. The episode centered around Perham’s poetry collection “Double Portrait,” which was based on the visual art from which it derives its name. Perham began the episode by reading “Double Portrait B21,” a poem built on resemblances between “kiss”, “miss”, “kill” and “keep”. In the episode, Perham elaborated on various writing techniques, such as adherence to poetic forms. According to Perham, a poetic form can be “like a house to put the poem in.”
“Off the Page” was meant to be a pedagogical tool for Stanford’s creative writing students, Jonah Willihnganz, the director of the Stanford Storytelling Project, said. As a lecturer in several creative writing courses, Willihnganz observed that reading works aloud was often helpful for editing.
According to Megan Calfas ’18 M.A. ’20, the senior producer, “Off the Page” is “a unique opportunity for students to dig deeper with the many writers that are here on campus and get to be in more direct conversation with them about their craft.”
Recent episodes have also featured undergraduates and alumni. Sarah Lewis ’24 M.A. ’25, who majored in English with a concentration in creative writing, read a story in her episode about a woman who turns into a rat and joins a rat ballet, explaining how the story’s narrator becomes liberated through her transformation.
“It was an interesting kind of exercise in both performing and writing,” said Lewis on the experience of reading her work aloud for “Off the Page.” “You kind of have to adapt to the medium of storytelling.”
“Off the Page” features more than published and edited works — several episodes featured early drafts, preserving details that did not make their way into the final version. In one episode, Jones Lecturer Sterling HolyWhiteMountain read the first ten pages of a story that would later be edited and published in The New Yorker as “False Star”.
Labowskie described hearing the process and past drafts as having a “kind of a backstage quality to it, where people were showing work at different stages.”
Through “Off the Page,” Labowskie said he has discovered the interconnectedness of Stanford’s creative writing community. Labowskie’s colleagues have taught several of the undergrads interviewed, and Labowskie said hosting the podcast allowed him to form connections with several cohorts of Stegner Fellows, who are only at Stanford for two years.
“It [is] kind of an audio record of the cohesiveness in the creative writing community,” said Labowskie.
The episodes of “Off the Page” are currently archived on the Stanford Storytelling Project’s website. Meanwhile, The Storytelling Project is preparing alternative opportunities to explore podcast-based storytelling.
Their upcoming project, “The Story Pharmacy,” aims to give the microphone to students. Students will gain experience with podcasting while interviewing members of the Stanford community about stories, published or otherwise, that have helped them navigate their lives.
The post Stanford Storytelling Project podcast took creative writing ‘Off the Page’ appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
‘Notes from The Farm’ creates an unofficial guide to StanfordCreated by a team of graduating seniors, “Notes from The Farm” is an unofficial student-led guide featuring 50 personal essays from upperclassmen. The project aims to ease the transition for incoming freshmen through honest reflections on identity, belonging and growth.
The post ‘Notes from The Farm’ creates an unofficial guide to Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Every incoming freshman arrives on campus with a mix of excitement, nerves and unanswered questions. In an effort to ease the transition, a senior design capstone project called “Notes from The Farm” attempts to offer incoming freshmen a student-created guide to Stanford, featuring 50 personal essays from upperclassmen.
Originally envisioned by alumna Annie Reller ’24, “Notes from The Farm” was brought to life by senior Lucy Duckworth ’25 and her team — Evelyn Hur ’25 on design, Stella Li ’25 on editing and Kenji Zaharchuk ’25 on research. The goal was to create a personal, student-to-student guide that complements official campus resources with honest reflections.
“We wanted something more personal — something that captures what the transition really feels like,” Duckworth said.
According to Duckworth, the project aimed to fill in emotional and experiential gaps that traditional guides may overlook. “People are worried about making friends, being liked, finding their place,” she said. “This book says, ‘It gets better, and here’s how.’”
The “Notes from The Farm” team recruited essayists through flyers, email lists and social media. More than 100 students expressed interest and the final 50 were selected and refined over three months of editing. The team was especially mindful of striking a balance — offering vulnerability in the essays without overwhelming the reader — and constantly considered what an 18-year-old just starting college would want, or need, to hear.
Hur, who led the project’s creative direction, aimed to make the book feel warm, polished and nostalgic — something that could be read and revisited like a personal keepsake. Hur, Duckworth and Li were also the founding designers of On Call Cafe and saw how their designs brought people together. They hoped to bring that same sense of community and comfort with the physical book.
The project was funded with $25,000 in an alumni donation from David Hornik ’90. A longer digital version of the guide, featuring 80 essays, will also be available online.
The inspiration for the project drew heavily from the work of psychology professor Greg Walton, whose research focuses on social belonging and narrative-based interventions. Walton previously explored how student stories can improve outcomes for those adjusting to college life.
“Storytelling can be a powerful way to create connection and reduce anxiety,” Duckworth said. “We felt that creating our own collection of narratives could do just that for incoming students.”
The essays reflected a wide range of student experiences, from academic challenges and imposter syndrome to identity exploration and building community. Each story was shaped to be introspective and meaningful, with contributors encouraged to be vulnerable and specific.
One contributor, Joanne dePierre ’25, who also serves as the diversity, equity and inclusion co-chair at The Daily, used her essay to speak to students who might not immediately feel like they belong. She saw herself as part of the “forgotten middle,” or students who don’t fall into highly visible identity groups or support networks but still carry quiet doubts about their worth.
Having attended the same small, academically intense private school from the age of two through high school, dePierre was surrounded by conversations about Ivy League ambitions from a young age. Yet, she never saw herself as one of the standouts. When she arrived at Stanford and heard a convocation speech listing the accomplishments of her peers, she questioned whether she truly belonged, despite coming from a place with resources and opportunity.
“I started to realize that Stanford wasn’t asking me to prove I belonged, it was asking me to discover who I already was,” dePierre wrote in her “Notes from The Farm” essay.
She hopes her experience reassures new students that it’s okay to arrive uncertain, and that self-discovery is at the heart of the college experience.
Another essayist, Ecy King ’23 MS ’24, reflected on her early setbacks in introductory computer science course CS 106A: “Programming Methodology” and how she developed a growth mindset that helped her succeed academically and personally. Her story explained how her persistence led her to becoming a teaching assistant for the course and writing a CS106-themed educational comic book, “Bit by Bit.”
King hopes incoming freshmen walk away with a sense of relief for their future selves, for the challenges they’ll face and for the growth that will follow, anchored by a mindset that carried her through her own struggles.
“If I can’t do it now, I can’t do it yet,” she said.
The team said they hope that “Notes from The Farm” will become a lasting Stanford tradition with future editions written annually by each senior class, creating a continuous cycle of student reflection and mentorship. Duckworth has already begun assembling a team to continue the project and is actively seeking students who want to carry it forward.
For the project’s creators, the value of “Notes from The Farm” lies not just in the stories shared, but in the act of sharing them. According to the team, these essays gave seniors a chance to reflect on how far they’ve come and to realize that nearly everyone struggles to find their place at first.
For Duckworth, the dream is that one day, contributing to this book will be a senior rite of passage — an opportunity to say, “You’re not alone. And you will find your way here, too.”
A previous version of the article misspelled David Hornik and misrepresented Ecy King’s class year. The article has been updated to reflect the correct spelling and year. The article has also been updated to accurately reflect that funding for the project came from Hornik and not the alumni association.
The post ‘Notes from The Farm’ creates an unofficial guide to Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Student activists mount protest banner over Green LibraryOn May 28, law enforcement removed the banner with text in the colors of the Palestinian flag that urged University administration to take action on a number of issues.
The post Student activists mount protest banner over Green Library appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
On May 28, a group of about one dozen student activists hung a banner above the Bing Wing entrance of Green Library that said: “Levin and Martinez / Don’t cower to Trump / Drop the Charges / Invest in Students / Divest from Genocide.”
According to one student who organized the protest and the planning process, who spoke to The Daily on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the University, they hung the banner because the University “administration has been avoiding talking about… the genocide that is ongoing for almost 600 days now.” They also said that part of the reason included the 12 pro-Palestine facing felony charges who occupied the president’s office last June. The protestors were arraigned last Thursday.
The student believes that the administration has “been bending the knee to Trump over and over again.”
The banner was taken down within 30 minutes of its appearance. According to Vice Provost and University Librarian Michael Keller, Green Library staff contacted the Stanford University Department of Public Safety (SUDPS) who sent officers, but remained outside of the library. The staff then removed the banner.
“When I see [police officers], I don’t think safety — I think this is someone who is here to harass me,” said a second student organizer who also spoke anonymously for fear of retaliation from the University. “This is someone who is here to make me feel unsafe in the place in which I work, in the place in which I live, in the place in which I study.”
The banner, while only briefly up, prompted multiple reactions from students who saw it in person or in social media posts that quickly circulated.
“These agitators just seem to be looking for something to rebel against,” Ryan Bookman ’27 wrote to The Daily. “Slogan-based arguments don’t persuade anyone; in fact, they create a nuisance and alienate people from their ’cause.’ The banner is performative, and I hope it makes Stanford feel more inclined to keep economically benefiting from supporting our ally.”
Part of the reason the group put up the banner was to protest the removal of the “K(no)w Justice, K(no)w Peace” banner, the second student organizer said. The original banner was installed in 2021 to commemorate the opening of Green Library’s “Say their Names” exhibit. The exhibit was designed to raise awareness for those who lost their lives to police and systemic violence and share their stories with the Stanford community.
Eugene Volokh, a Hoover Senior Fellow and a member of the AdHoc Committee on University Speech, wrote in an email to The Daily that “obviously, [the library] is not a place where students are entitled to express their own ideas.” The decision to remove the “K(no)w Justice, K(no)w Peace” banner followed an evaluation by the AdHoc Committee on University speech on whether it violated the University’s 2024 Policy on Institutional Statements.
A third student organizer, who again spoke anonymously for fear of retaliation from the University, said the group chose to display the banner to link campus events together. They spoke not only of the removal of the original Green Library banner, but also of threats to remove co-op status from Synergy and Terra, the adoption of a lottery system for assignment to Ethnic Theme Dorms (ETDs), the restructuring of the creative writing program and proposed funding cuts to the Bridge. Stanford, they said, is working to “cut [student activists] down slowly.”
Assistant University Librarian for External Relations Anh Ly wrote in an email to The Daily that the banner was “unauthorized” and that signs displayed at the library must be approved by either the Dean’s office, Vice Provost and Dean of Research or the Office of the Provost, depending on where they are displayed. The sign must abide by the location’s “local rules,” which Ly said “should be applied in a viewpoint-neutral way.”
The University pointed The Daily to Ly’s statement when reached out to for comment.
Ly noted that the banner’s removal is in accordance with Stanford’s freedom of expression policies.
“Poster and banner policies differ across areas of campus depending on the function of the area. Spaces like White Plaza are available for the widest range of communications,” the policy states.
The Stanford Libraries “are designed for particular uses, and use of those spaces for other activities will likely violate the Policy on Campus Disruptions,” Ly wrote.
This article has been updated to reflect that SUDPS officers did not enter Green Library or remove the banner themselves.
The post Student activists mount protest banner over Green Library appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Daily Diminutive #071 (June 4, 2025)Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords three times a week and a full-size crossword biweekly.
The post Daily Diminutive #071 (June 4, 2025) appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
The post Daily Diminutive #071 (June 4, 2025) appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Stanford women’s golf denied second straight NCAA championshipNorthwestern edged Stanford women’s golf 3-2 in the NCAA final, halting the Cardinal’s bid at becoming the first repeat champions since 2006.
The post Stanford women’s golf denied second straight NCAA championship appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Stanford women’s golf arrived in Carlsbad, Calif. poised to make history on May 21 but left one point short, falling 3-2 to Northwestern in the NCAA Division I championship match. Northwestern’s Dianna Lee drained a short par putt on the 18th green to edge freshman Andrea Revuelta and deny the Cardinal what would have been the tournament’s first repeat title since Duke in 2006.
Stanford, the top overall seed, had dominated stroke play by a record 27 shots, then ousted Florida State in a tense semifinal that ended when junior Megha Ganne rolled in a lengthy birdie on the second playoff hole against top-ranked amateur Lottie Woad.
But in match play’s winner-take-all format, Northwestern — seeded 11th after stroke play — played with nothing to lose. The momentum in the final match swung back and forth between the two teams before Lee’s closing par delivered the Wildcats’ first women’s golf championship in their program history and snapped Stanford’s quest for back-to-back banners.
Despite the sting, the Stanford squad will end this season with plenty of accolades. All five Cardinal starters earned Women’s Golf Coaches Association All-America status — the second straight year Stanford placed its entire lineup on the list. Ganne, sophomore Paula Martín Sampedro, freshman Meja Örtengren and Revuelta were named to the first team, while junior Kelly Xu repeated as a second-team pick. The four first-team selections were the most of any program.
Örtengren’s breakout campaign also earned her national rookie acclaim. The Swedish freshman was voted the WGCA Division I Freshman of the Year after posting a 70.11 scoring average, winning the individual title at the San Diego State Classic in February, and tallying nine top-10 finishes in her first season at Stanford. The future remains bright for a program that will hope to bring back most of a lineup that owns two of the last four national trophies.
The post Stanford women’s golf denied second straight NCAA championship appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
From celebrating colors to fundraising for education: Meet Shubhra MishraShubhra Mishra ’25 M.S. ’25, former co-president of Asha Stanford, has helped bring Holi to Stanford’s campus for multiple years.
The post From celebrating colors to fundraising for education: Meet Shubhra Mishra appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Shubhra Mishra ’25 M.S. ’25, former co-president of the Stanford chapter of Asha for Education, described Holi — the Hindu festival of colors, love and spring, celebrated by throwing colored powders and water at each other — plainly: “Everyone’s covered in color, you can’t really tell who’s who… For one day, we put aside all differences and just come together to play with lots of color, dance and eat.”
Hosted every spring by Asha, an organization promoting the education of underprivileged children in India, Stanford Holi is a celebration that raises around $100,000 over six sessions in the two-day-long event annually, according to Mishra. The money raised is donated to educational nonprofits in India, supporting 100 children for an entire year.
“Once you convert $1,000 to rupees, it’s enough to support a child’s health care, food, education and housing, for a whole year,” Mishra said.
Having served as the co-president of Asha and organizing Holi, among other South Asian festivals, for two years, Mishra described “knowing Stanford inside out.” Because of Holi, she has coordinated with security, staffed emergency medical technicians (EMTs), provided porta potties and hand-wash stations, invited food vendors and more.
The team is “creative with how we keep things cheap,” Mishra said. For example, as an alternative to hiring a graphic designer to film videos, she learned to edit videos and create Instagram and Facebook ad campaigns herself. With a $650 market budget, Asha ended up making a profit of 15,000 to 20,000 more from ticket sales, she said.
“She definitely was the backbone of Asha when she was helping organize it for the two years that she was co-president. I saw firsthand how many hours a week she was putting into it and all the different logistical requirements that come with organizing such a big event. There’s really nothing that operates at that same scale,” Poonam Sahoo ’25, who met Mishra in Asha her sophomore year, told The Daily.
Planning for Holi is rewarding, Mishra said, as it “puts yourself out of your comfort zone and makes you do things you haven’t done.”
For Mishra, celebrating Holi at Stanford is a “full-circle moment” because she was born and raised in the city of Pune in India for 11 years before moving to Cincinnati, Ohio.
“A lot of who I am is shaped by my time in India,” she said.
Celebrating Holi in India is “something that kids really enjoy because you get to make a mess and no one’s gonna know you, which is what kids love to do,” Mishra said. “Adults also get pretty lit at the festival — it’s something that’s made for everyone.”
As an only child, Mishra recalled being introverted growing up. It wasn’t until high school when she was encouraged by teachers around her to bring out her more extroverted side.
Mishra noted her advisor for her high school’s quiz bowl team, Mr. Meeron, was particularly important in shaping her leadership abilities. As the team captain, she often consulted in Meeron for her team lineups. “He would never even look at the paper. [He would say], ‘I have full faith in you, I know you’ve made a good lineup, you know the players well, I totally trust you,’” Mishra said.
To Mishra, little moments like these went a long way in shaping her into a more confident person, as well as appreciating the role of teachers and education, she said.
Members of Asha have noted Mishra’s dedication.
Sukrut Oak ’25 M.S. ’26, who served as co-president of Asha with Mishra, described the emails Mishra sends to Asha’s mailing list. “Instead of writing simple meeting reminders, she writes these really funny and kind of convoluted story lines that surprisingly actually got more people to pull up to our club meetings,” Oak wrote to The Daily. “We’d get responses back — even from strangers on the mailing list — that the emails made their day.”
“That probably sums up what Shubhra is like. She’s unconventional and radiant and manages to casually add so much joy to the lives of the people around her including mine,” Oak wrote.
For Anjana Balachandar ’26, Mishra was someone she “gravitated toward,” Balachandar said. “As a freshman and trying to find community, [Mishra] was someone who just exuded positive energy, incredibly welcoming, very intentional about getting people involved who are new to Asha,” she said.
“I feel very grateful to have had her as a president the first two years that I was involved because it really made me fall in love with the organization too,” Balachandar said. Balachandar is now the current co-president of Asha, along with Akash Shah ’26.
Mishra studied computer science at Stanford and conducted research at the intersection of “getting language models to reason,” from writing code to computing math, she said. After graduating, Mishra intends to begin her Ph.D. in computer science in Sweden this fall.
The post From celebrating colors to fundraising for education: Meet Shubhra Mishra appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
Police Blotter: Rape, assault with deadly weapon, money obtention by false pretensionsThis report covers incidents from May 27 to June 2 as recorded in the Stanford University Department of Public Safety bulletin.
The post Police Blotter: Rape, assault with deadly weapon, money obtention by false pretensions appeared first on The Stanford Daily.
This report covers incidents from May 27 to June 2 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 report of battery of a person.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the report of rape.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the reports of burglary from motor vehicles.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the report of assault with deadly weapon and the lodging without owner’s consent.
The Daily has reached out to SUDPS for more information regarding the report of disorderly conduct due to alcohol intoxication.
The post Police Blotter: Rape, assault with deadly weapon, money obtention by false pretensions appeared first on The Stanford Daily.