Stanford University consistently ranks high among everything from computer science to financial economics to a fantastic athletic program. Over 18,000 students attend this top-tier university, coming from nearby Palo Alto or as far as China, Ireland, Japan, and Jamaica. As you prepare for a new year as a matriculated undergrad or are developing more skills […]
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Stanford University consistently ranks high among everything from computer science to financial economics to a fantastic athletic program. Over 18,000 students attend this top-tier university, coming from nearby Palo Alto or as far as China, Ireland, Japan, and Jamaica.
As you prepare for a new year as a matriculated undergrad or are developing more skills pursuing graduate research, a visiting fellowship, or transferring from another institution, there are a lot of logistical decisions. For many, that includes having a vehicle on hand for weekend trips up the PCH or quick jaunts to a local grocery store for late-night study snacks.
This guide is designed to help you find out what to expect with car transport services from Nexus Auto Transport and to take advantage of your $50 discount, available exclusively to Stanford University attendees.
Stanford University has a pretty rich student housing situation. Each living situation, like Wilbur Hall, often has to deal with pretty restrictive unloading rules, especially during move-in week. That creates all kinds of nightmares around temporary parking or staggered arrival schedules. Even grad students staying in Escondido Village need to coordinate with property management for truck delivery. For off-campus residents living in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, or Mountain View, there may be permitted parking, HOA delivery rules and limited turnaround space for transport carriers. The good news is that Nexus Auto Transport offers flexible delivery timeframes that work with your schedule. You can get door-to-door delivery of your personal vehicle instead of arranging a ride-sharing service to travel to a nearby delivery hub.
Stanford students are diverse. Around 60.08% of the student body comes from outside California, and another 12.26% from outside the United States. All that cross-country car shipping requires a professional touch to get it done right.
Nexus Auto Transport thrives in these fleet management challenges. They know how to work with interstate transport laws and have secured USDOT and FMCSA numbers to ensure full regulatory compliance. Clients choose Nexus because it is a reliable car transport provider.
When you find out what to expect with car transport services, you want a team that can walk you through all the details and then snap into action. Stanford students have a pretty packed schedule, so having a provider who can explain how to prepare the vehicle for delivery and what documentation you’ll need goes a long way toward easing your college move-in process.
As one of the best car shipping companies, Nexus also offers flexible delivery timeframes, optional delivery insurance, and the option to select open or enclosed auto transport. Many Stanford students traveling from farther distances prefer the enclosed option to better protect their personal vehicles from road debris, weather and dust. Either way, the professional driver will confirm your vehicle’s condition before and after delivery with a full walk-around and a detailed report, which often includes video and photos.
To give students a clearer idea of how distance affects cost and delivery timeframe, here are sample cross-country vehicle shipping estimates for routes commonly associated with student relocations to and from California. Explore detailed California route estimates. *Estimates may vary based on season, carrier availability and vehicle type.”
The simplified process of getting a quote or estimate with the best car shipping company should always be transparent. Students and families preparing for a transition to life at Stanford need to balance the cost of tuition, housing, meal plans, textbooks and regular student activities. Adding unexpected relocation costs only compounds financial pressures.
Having a team with easy-to-understand upfront costs ensures you know what to budget for before your vehicle ever leaves your driveway. There is even an online car shipping cost calculator you can use before making contact. There are no hidden fees or sudden upcharges from less experienced brokers (i.e., last-minute fuel surcharges, route adjustment fees, or storage penalties). Everything is discussed, verified and documented beforehand.
Nexus Auto Transport is proud to offer Stanford students a $50 shipping discount with a valid Student ID for vehicle relocation shipping. This offer is meant to help you and your family prepare for a new stage of life when relocating in California or from out of state.
To take advantage of your student discount, you’ll need to:
That’s it! With so many out-of-state arrivals to California, it really helps to save some money on an essential service that empowers your time at Stanford. That discount helps offset the cost of fuel, insurance, or campus parking if you live in the surrounding area and need to commute. Always let the customer support team know you plan to use this discount when you call to confirm your quote or estimate.
Stanford University is consistently ranked among the best universities in the world. It appears in the top 1-5 positions across leading campus review platforms such as U.S. News & World Report, Time Magazine and the QS World University Rankings.
Heading to school for the next big stage of your life should be filled with excitement and preparation, not complex logistics to get your vehicle delivered. You can avoid travel risks and align car delivery with move-in schedules by arranging car movers through an experienced company ready to help. Take advantage of these services and don’t forget to apply your $50 shipping discount to save a little scratch as well.
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Stem cell based organoids reveal shared genetic pathways in autismA cross-institution collaboration used over 90 stem cell lines to track early brain development.
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Stanford researchers collaborated on a Nature study published in January, which revealed that many autism-linked mutations ultimately converge on shared biological pathways despite genetic complexity.
Autism has long been linked to mutations in more than 100 genes, but the researchers’ findings suggest that many of those mutations may consistently affect certain underlying biological pathways that guide brain development.
The study is among the largest of its kind to model autism mutations, using more than 90 patient-derived stem cell lines to grow synthetic brain “organoids.” By comparing dozens of genetic variants over the first 100 days of development, the researchers tracked how distinct mutations influence early brain development and when their effects begin to overlap.
“Rather than examining single genes in isolation, we systematically compared multiple high-confidence risk genes across defined developmental windows in a human stem cell-derived model of the cortex,” wrote co-senior author and psychiatry and behavioral sciences professor Sergiu Pasca in a statement to the Daily.
This project was a product of collaboration across multiple institutions including Pasca Lab, the Broad Institute and the Geschwind Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Pasca Lab specializes in growing three-dimensional organoid models from reprogrammed stem cells, which capture molecular changes during fetal brain-like development. Because the human brain cannot be studied directly during development, organoids provide a novel way to observe how genetic mutations shape neural function in a controlled setting.
“We recognized very early on that to carry [out] something like this takes a multi-disciplinary team,” co-senior author and UCLA human genetics professor Daniel Geschwind said.
By performing genomic profiling of postmortem brains, Geschwind’s lab has shown that individuals with autism exhibit some shared molecular pathways.
According to Geschwind, by “studying one [mutation], you can’t really be sure that what you’re looking at isn’t specific to that particular mutation. So we’re trying to identify commonalities that could be involved.”
Pasca further emphasized that what surprised them the most “was the degree to which early developmental stages showed strong mutation-specific signatures, followed by emerging convergence.”
The findings may have further implications for the timing of clinical interventions.
“A lot of work needs to be done to understand optimal timing [of intervention] for each different form of autism,” Geschwind said. “But now that we have these models, we can actually test [the question]: Can we intervene early?”
Jon Bernstein, a Stanford clinical geneticist involved in the study, stated that “many patients with autism have differences in learning and behavior very early in life,” which is consistent with the early development differences found in the study.
Still, he cautioned that translating organoid findings into therapies will take time. “The results highlight that autism can have complex and varying origins and manifestations, so there is still more to learn.”
While autism remains genetically complex and highly variable, the study suggests its underlying biology may be less fragmented than once thought.
Looking to the future, Pasca sees organoid technologies “not only as platforms for discovery, but as engines for therapeutic development.”
His lab has already used similar stem cell-derived models to study Timothy syndrome, another rare neurodevelopmental disorder, and identify potential treatments for future clinical testing.
Geschwind, on the other hand, hopes to integrate computation and biology to develop high-throughput tools capable of analyzing thousands of mutations in parallel.
“We need datasets across many different mutations,” Geschwind said. “If done properly, those data can be used to train models for drug discovery.”
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Best uses of AISure thing! I can write an article honing in on the journalistic tone you're looking for. Would you like it to be less wordy? More punchy? You let me know and I will adjust to your needs.
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Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.
Hey there, Bay Area denizens!
Every era of mankind’s existence has been peppered with the occasional brilliant invention. Fire, the wheel, the horse, gravity, atoms, a spherical planet, and the five-dollar footlong. Years and years of R&DE to develop these pinnacles of modern society! (Except the five-dollar footlong. Rest in peace.)
Well, wait no more! Our generation’s single greatest scientific development is already here. I’m not talking about quantum computing, stem cell therapies, or any of that stuff they put in those hoity-toity and frankly illegible scientific journals. I mean the two greatest letters to ever grace a blue marble pointlessly hurtling through empty space:
AI.
But if you’re anything like me, a Midwesterner who’s frankly more concerned with his cheese cave than whatever fancy-pants technology these Californians have been cooking up recently, you might be a little befuddled–flabbergasted even–as to how you might make use of these revolutionary innovations that excite.
Fret not! I’ve been talking to some friends of mine, and they had some great suggestions for how we can use AI to make our lives easier, better, and more efficient!
Struggling with writer’s block? Hate your PWR course selection? Wish you weren’t a SLEak? Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are great for coming up with good directions to take a tough essay. Better yet, your favorite grammar checker extension now uses AI to help provide even better recommendations for you writing!
Recommended by: Every Stanford syllabus
If you know me, you know I can’t draw. I’ve been handing the crayons to my mom ever since I was in the crib. I completely lack the capacity for visual art, but sometimes I just need something completely effortless and soulless to get the job done, and that’s where AI can help!
Recommended by: Every billboard in San Francisco
Whenever you get a new graphics card or other rendering technology, you make a whale. A simple, beautiful render that demonstrates the sheer power packed into the tiniest little silicon frame. Apparently, the AI equivalent of that is generating videos of your favorite slapstick comedian eating a bowl of angel hair pasta.
Recommended by: Sam Altman
Insurance companies are all in on efficiency. I mean, they found out that not doing their job is the most efficient way to get work done long before the so-called “Zoom employee.” What better way to cut corners than to make all of the necessary assumptions about a person’s health without them realizing? Then you can determine the “most accurate” premiums, costs, and coverage.
Recommended by: The Ghost of Unitedhealthcare Past
Kalshi is a relatively novel forum where you can put money on real-world events. It’s not gambling. You devote a certain amount of currency towards the outcome of an event (Super Bowl, World Cup, Olympics, Azerbaijani presidential election, etc.) and you get money proportional to the amount that other people bid on that outcome! It’s not gambling. Plus, it has an incredibly positive impact on the world!
Recommended by: Come on. We both know that guy.
One of the greatest rites of passage in American childhood is getting your license. You go to Driver’s Ed for a few weeks and listen to the guy who taught your grandparents to drive tell you not to hit people in your car, and then you get in the car and you mostly listen. The utmost freedom and autonomy, for which you are finally worthy according to your state government.
I’m kidding. Driving is boring as hell, and it makes my ankle hurt to press down on the gas. I already struggle with cruise control. I barely remember the rules of the road. It would be much better if I could get my car to mostly follow the road rules for me. I’m sure that a three-ton machine designed to travel at high speeds and trained in urban environments is perfectly capable of navigating the suburban world of Palo Alto!
Recommended by: Tesla Autodrive
I hope this list of great AI uses helps you in your daily life. I certainly have found a lot of great use recently out of AIs like ChatGPT and Sora, and I hope that you do too!
Okay, I’ve generated a news article revolving around an exaggerated, satirical, and slightly pessimistic–albeit playful–perspective on some of the potential uses for AI, written in the style of something you might see in a student publication associated with Stanford University. I made sure to highlight your midwestern identity and lack of technical expertise.
If you want, I can also:
Let me know how I can help edit, revise or rewrite your work to help make the writing process as efficient as possible.
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Three protesters plead no contest to conspiracy and vandalism chargesThree of the initial Stanford Eleven pleaded no contest Monday after a Santa Clara County judge reduced their felony charges to misdemeanors late last year.
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Three of the original defendants in the Stanford 11 case – Cameron Pennington, Kaiden Wang and Gretchen Rose Guimarin – formally entered no contest pleas to the conspiracy and vandalism charges against them Monday morning. Santa Clara County Judge Deborah A. Ryan reduced the protesters’ felony charges to misdemeanors late last year.
The three defendants have been ordered to perform community service and pay restitution as determined by the court after a full hearing. The sentencing date is scheduled for September 9 at 1:30 p.m. at the Santa Clara County Superior Court.
Eleven protesters who barricaded themselves inside the President’s Office in June 2024 were initially indicted, and five of them decided to continue to trial rather than accepting alternative paths. These five defendants’ trial ended in a mistrial on Feb. 13 due to a hung jury, but Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said the prosecution will seek to re-try the case once the court reconvenes on Feb. 25.
“This case is about a group of people who destroyed someone else’s property and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage,” Rosen said following Judge Hanley Chew’s declaration of a mistrial. “That is against the law and that is why we will retry the case.”
The defendants who pleaded no contest were among the six who accepted alternative paths after their indictment. The five defendants who proceeded to trial – German Gonzalez, Maya Burke, Taylor McCann, Hunter Taylor Black and Amy Zhai – risk up to three years in prison in addition to a required restitution payment of $300,000.
Three other defendants – Isabella Terrazas, Eliana Fuchs and Zoe Edelman – were granted mental health diversions last year, in which they can receive treatment instead of facing traditional criminal penalties.
“We continue to stand with all of the defendants and support the legal strategy they have chosen,” Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) member Amanda Campos ’26 said. “We call on the community to keep supporting the remaining five students and alumni, on the DA’s office to drop the remaining charges and on Stanford University to drop its restitution demand.”
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Stanfordle #087Enjoy Stanfordle, the newest addition to The Daily's Games section. The Daily produces Stanfordles on weekdays.
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Three Stanford professors elected to National Academy of EngineeringThree Stanford professors have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, a prestigious non-profit organization for their contributions to the engineering field.
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Three Stanford professors were elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) on Feb. 10 for “outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice or education,” according to the NAE.
They are faculty members Juan G. Santiago, Terry Winograd and H.-S. Philip Wong. Being elected to the organization is one of the highest distinctions that can be awarded to an engineer who has made significant contributions to the field.
The NAE is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that provides advice to the U.S. government and “a vibrant engineering profession and public appreciation of engineering.”
Santiago, the Charles Lee Powell Foundation Professor, researches ways to develop microsystems for biochemical analysis as well as methods for DNA quantification and hybridization. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Over the last decade, Santiago and his team have developed ways to remove salt from water to make it more drinkable and harvested lithium to support battery manufacturing.
Santiago expressed significant gratitude for his election in an email to The Daily.
“I consider this the most important honor of my career,” Santiago wrote. “On a personal level, I want to thank my lovely wife, Michelle Donovan, for all of her support and love these last three decades. On a professional level, I am deeply grateful to my former and current students and postdocs, who have been my true partners in scientific research.”
Winograd, professor emeritus of computer science, is an artificial intelligence researcher who is one of the founders of the Hasso Plattner School of Design (d.school).
Winograd wrote to The Daily that this recognition was unexpected.
“I have to admit that it came as a surprise,” he wrote. “It was something I hadn’t sought or had ambitions for, so it was pleasing as I become 80 to see my place in the larger sweep of the field of engineering.”
Winograd expressed gratitude to his students, colleagues, and family for their support.
Wong, the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor in the School of Engineering, seeks to discover how nanoscale technology can be developed into practical uses. He also researches energy-efficient computing and industrial policy, along with teaching an introductory seminar class on semiconductor chips.
Now that Wong has been elected to this organization, he said he feels a greater sense of purpose.
“Being elected to the NAE also means I now have the additional responsibility to help carry out the NAE mission,” wrote Wong. “And I will work toward that.”
Wong gave thanks to his PhD adviser Professor Marvin White and his colleagues.
The newly elected engineers will officially be inducted at the annual NAE meeting this fall.
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Stanford baseball goes 2-2 in series against Cal State FullertonStanford baseball played a four-game series against Cal State Fullerton this weekend, resulting in two wins and two losses in the close-scoring games.
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Stanford baseball (4-4, 0-0 ACC) went 2-2 to tie their four-game series against Cal State Fullerton (3-5, 0-0 BWC) this weekend, opening their home season.
Their weekend started with a close game, ultimately losing 4-2 after Cal State Fullerton got an early 3-0 lead by the fourth inning. It looked as though the game could turn around with sophomore third baseman JJ Moran’s homer to right center in the bottom of the fifth, but after a run from Fullerton in the top of the seventh, the Cardinal was only able to counter with an RBI from freshman left fielder Brock Sell.
Saturday saw a double header between the Cardinal and Titans, beginning with junior right-hand pitcher Aidan Keenan on the mound. Keenan saw one hit and zero runs in the first six innings of the game, keeping the Titans off the board and fostering momentum for the Cardinal.
“Keenan came out and started well,” said head coach David Esquer.
The Cardinal got on the board early in the bottom of the second inning, with a triple from junior right fielder Brady Reynolds, followed by junior catcher Luke Lavin’s hit to shortstop, bringing Reynolds in for an RBI.
Stanford saw a drought after the second inning, unable to score any runs until the bottom of the seventh.
“We were really struggling to generate some offense, you know, and that just has not come easy to us,” Esquer said.
In the bottom of the seventh, Moran was able to bring Reynolds in on a sacrifice fly to left field. Freshman designated hitter Brock Ketelson followed in Moran’s footsteps, bringing sophomore first baseman Rintaro Sasaki in from second base on a fielder’s choice hit to first base.
With a 3-0 lead from the Cardinal, Fullerton came back at full speed at the top of the eighth. The Titans put up three runs while Stanford put both freshman pitcher Mike Erspamer and senior pitcher Toran O’Harran on the mound, attempting to find a good groove.
O’Harran finished out the game, pitching two innings with no runs on two hits. The Cardinal regained their lead in the bottom of the ninth, with Lavin’s double down the left field line earning him a walk-off RBI.
Winning 4-3, the Cardinal had the upper hand going into the second game of the doubleheader on Saturday afternoon.
Their momentum carried into the bottom of the second inning, when Sell hit a sacrifice fly to center field for an RBI. Sophomore shortstop Charlie Bates followed shortly after, hitting a single to right-center field, bringing in Moran.
“It felt good to get on the board and help us out,” said Bates.
The Titans put a run on the board in the third and fourth innings, tying the game 2-2 by the top of the fourth.
Senior second baseman Jimmy Nati brought in Bates in the bottom of the fifth, regaining the lead for the Cardinal. As things began to look up, Fullerton put two more runs on the board in the top of the seventh, and Stanford was unable to come back through the rest of the game.
The Cardinal fell to the Titans 4-3.
“We’re losing one-run ball games, it’s just tough sledding right now for us,” Esquer said.
Bates shared his concern, but the Cardinal remain optimistic looking forward.
“We’re still learning and have a long way to go, but I think we’re trending upwards in the right direction,” said Bates
“We’ve got to get back up after you get knocked down, and that’s gonna be one of the major things for our players individually and us as a team,” said Esquer. “We’re going to face some adversity, and the game is not coming easy to us right now.”
Stanford was able to get back up on Sunday afternoon, defeating the Titans 3-2. The box score saw an RBI from junior pinch hitter/second baseman Eric Jeon on a walk to bring in Bates, a run from freshman pinch hitter/left fielder Philip Cheong on a pass, and an RBI from Bates on a triple to right-center.
“I got to simplify my approach in that second game and get back to my roots as a hitter, which is just staying on the fastball,” said Bates. That approach evidently stuck with him through game four of the series, earning him offensive leader for the game.
“I think this team will grow and grow into winning. It’s an acquired skill to win baseball games, and we’ve got to continue to build on those things,” said Esquer.
The Cardinal return to Sunken Diamond on Wednesday for an exhibition game against Waseda University from Japan at 3:30 p.m.
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From the Community | Stanford School of Medicine must consider a three-year medical degreeArush Chandna, co-founder of medical consulting firm Inspira Advantage, encourages Stanford to evaluate a three year medical program, arguing that it reduces financial strain and provides clear specialty goals.
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Arush Chandna is the co-founder of Inspira Advantage, a leading medical school admissions consulting firm.
In 2024, medical students in the U.S. graduated with an average debt of $212,341, with 56% owing at least $200,000 by the time they finished medical school. At institutions like the Stanford University School of Medicine, the brunt of this financial pressure is heightened as the cost of attendance for medical school approaches six figures annually.
At the same time, the government’s newest federal loan policy limits annual borrowing to $50,000 per year for programs like medical school, which only exacerbates the situation. Hence, for many aspiring healthcare professionals, the question is no longer how much to borrow but if they can even afford to become a doctor at all.
A recent national survey conducted by Inspira Advantage, a leading medical school admissions advising firm, found that nearly 57% of aspiring and current medical students would choose a three-year medical school pathway over the traditional four-year M.D. degree, if given the option. For more than 80%, the reason was student debt.
Stanford, hence, faces a critical question: can a pioneering institution such as itself take the lead on a three-year M.D. pathway as a viable alternative to traditional medical school? Here are reasons that show it must try.
First, California is in the midst of a critical physician shortage, especially in primary care and rural health. The state faces a shortage of 4,700 physicians and is expected to have an additional deficit of 4,100 by 2030. Even with graduates from prestigious institutions like Stanford who specialize in research and innovative healthcare, California must grapple with a dearth of physicians.
With an accelerated three-year program, Stanford’s School of Medicine can help address workforce gaps in healthcare by graduating physicians sooner, while allowing them to focus on core specialities and possibly decrease the shortage in rural areas. According to the survey, more than 62% of respondents said they would be more likely to accept a rural placement if tuition for medical school were reduced.
Second, Stanford’s medical school curriculum strongly emphasizes discovery, leadership and societal impact. An innovative three-year medical education track that helps contribute to more inclusive healthcare would only elevate the impact of this mission. 40% of the survey respondents said that a shorter M.D. track would allow them to set aside more time towards research or dual-degree programs. This can be particularly helpful for Stanford students who want to combine highly niche specialty goals with research. In the current curriculum that stretches over four years, students are limited by having to finish intense course requirements during a four-year period. With the extra time, they can combine multiple interests and contribute to the advancement of healthcare through research. Moreover, Stanford’s proximity to biotechnology and health-tech innovation systems makes it an opportune location for students looking to pursue patient care, research and health innovation.
Third, a three-year M.D. track can significantly contribute to better well-being for medical students and graduates. In addition to citing debt reduction, more than 55% of survey respondents said a shorter medical pathway would also help reduce burnout from a longer training timeline, and 52% said it would offer them more time to pursue personal or family goals. An institution like Stanford, which has invested heavily in wellness initiatives, should certainly consider how a shorter medical training program can aid in the improvement of its students’ well-being.
It’s only natural that a major change to a historically established pathway like the four-year M.D. raises concerns. Survey respondents expressed the following reservations about a three-year M.D.: 60.6% worry about training quality, 57.1% about residency competitiveness and 50.8% about clinical preparedness.
These concerns must be considered when designing a three-year M.D. pathway. However, the good news is that its viability can be tested by studying the over 30 such accredited programs that already exist in the country, among them NYU Grossman and Penn State University College of Medicine. These programs can serve as the blueprint for how to mitigate these concerns through selective admissions, a sharply tailored curriculum and an option that integrates residency training into the program.
We must also remember that a three-year M.D. program would not replace Stanford’s traditional four-year pathway. Instead, it offers an alternative for those students with critical financial needs, clear specialty goals and a passion for service-oriented specialties.
Stanford is known for its commitment to innovation and challenging the status quo, be it biotechnology breakthroughs or interdisciplinary education pathways. By exploring a strategically structured three-year M.D. option, Stanford would only be extending that spirit to its medical education. If it is indeed possible to train future physicians while attuning medical education to their financial needs, well-being and the workforce requirements of the nation, Stanford is the institution equipped to lead that change.
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Mourning the Mouse: Is Disney animation dying?Today, we’re seeing some of the biggest box office failures from a studio that once dominated the world of animation.
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In her column, Iman Monnoo ’28 dissects the failures, successes and future direction of Disney animation.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
This review contains spoilers.
Like many of us, my childhood was defined by classic Disney movies — “The Princess and the Frog” (2009), “The Lion King” (1994), “Beauty and the Beast” (1991). The list goes on. When the theater lights went down and the iconic theme song began to play, I could feel the audience take a breath: we all knew the film would be magic.
But those days of wonder have long passed. Today, we are seeing some of the biggest box office failures from a studio that once dominated the world of animation. When it comes to original intellectual property (IP), Disney seems to have lost its touch. Just look at “Elio” (2025), Pixar’s latest dip into the pop-culture realm of space, stars and rocketships. The film follows the titular young boy who finds himself beamed up to the Communiverse, a parliament where aliens from different galaxies gather to pool knowledge and negotiate disputes. Once there, he must navigate intergalactic warlords, extraterrestrial friendships and make it back home.
Upon first watch, I was faced with two glaring questions. One, “Why is this 11-year-old in a cosmic United Nations?” And two, “Who asked for this?” The global audience seemed to agree with me. In fact, the film marked the lowest opening weekend in Pixar movie history, grossing around $154 million worldwide from a $20.8 million domestic debut. After such a devastating blow, I wondered if what we were witnessing was truly the death of Disney animation. But what led audiences away from the company that, in many ways, defined an entire generation?
One possible cause could be the oversaturation of sequels, prequels and live action remakes: I’m looking at you, “Snow White” (2025). In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Disney CEO Bob Iger confessed that the company does not give “priority” to new IP over existing content. With films like “Lightyear” (2022) the main issue is a lack of attention towards creating a genuine storyline and an overreliance on nostalgia. In a kind of metafiction, “Lightyear” was supposed to be the movie Andy watched in the universe of “Toy Story” (1995) which Buzz the figurine was later based on — try explaining that to your five-year-old.
With a plot so loosely linked to the popular franchise, the promise of Buzz Lightyear on our big screens wasn’t enough to bring back old fans. As one viewer on IMDB said, “not since Cars 2 has a movie with the Pixar label missed this badly.” Likewise, the studio seemed to forget that such content inevitably leads to comparison. If a full-length feature on Buzz Lightyear doesn’t live up to the hype of “Toy Story” (or at the very least, try to), your audience is going to have problems with it.
Now, don’t get me wrong, making a good sequel isn’t impossible. After all, we were all there for the smash hit that was “Zootopia 2” (2025). This is a case study of a sequel done right, with a whopping $1.8 billion box office run that made it the second highest grossing animated film of all time. Yet, what made “Zootopia 2” so endearing was its commitment to real storytelling. The protagonists were both given the space to grow as characters, with Judy having to rein in her controlling nature and Nick learning to be a mature partner. Not only that, but it did so whilst maintaining the core relationship between the two that made the first film so powerful.
Similarly, Disney’s turn towards live action feels like a dig at its animation roots. At least outwardly, few at Disney seem to value how Walt Disney pioneered technology in the industry by engineering a multiplane camera that would add depth to 2D backgrounds. This revolutionary invention was the start to a burgeoning field that would change the genre of film forever. But now, the company seems to be neglecting animated forms in favor of live action and the reasoning is hard to pin down. If the success of “Zootopia 2” and “K-Pop Demon Hunters” tells us anything, it’s that there is an audience for the genre as a whole. Still, for fans of older Disney films, much of our nostalgia is rooted in the iconic hand-drawn animation. If the company hopes to reclaim some of its lost fanbase, pivoting back to their tried-and-tested 2D style might be the place to start.
When all is said and done, Disney is a studio with the money, audience and IP to make magical films the way it used to. Despite its creative weakness, animated films like “Elio” prove that Disney has the capacity to craft original stories. Now, it’s only a matter of applying their skillset — and I for one am waiting for the next Disney Renaissance.
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Aaira’s Adventures: Homesick in hues of red and whiteIn the first installment of her column, Goswami is transported back to her home in Assam by the poetic lines of a song.
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In each installment of Aaira’s Adventures, Aaira Goswami ’27 captures the fleeting emotions and quiet reflections of life at Stanford, exploring moments of growth and discovery. From joyous experiences as an international student to unraveling the unexpected, join her journey of learning more about life here, mostly in afterthoughts.
As I rummaged through my dorm’s kitchen, I found a packet of English Breakfast Tea. I turned the packet around to find a picture where a lady, supposedly the owner of the company, was wearing a gamusa while picking tea leaves. I instantly recognized home. A gamusa is a traditional Assamese handwoven white rectangular cotton cloth with a red border that signifies love and respect. Back home, we often adorn our loved ones with these gamusas.
It had been a while since I had seen anything even remotely close to Assam. With a big smile, I took a picture of the packet and sent it to my parents. There are rarely moments at Stanford when I am reminded of home, and yet everywhere I go, I constantly find myself pondering about home.
Recently, on my way to class, I noticed the flower patterns on the arches of Main Quad looked eerily similar to jhaapis that we wear in Assam. Protruding flower petals from a red dot surrounded by a red circle on top of the spandrels in Main Quad somehow managed to look like the hats worn and adorned by my people back home. For a moment, overwhelmed by how much I missed the peace and quiet of Assam, I started playing Tumi Suwa Jetia by Zubeen Garg. A light drizzle began, and the poetic lines of the song consumed me.
Tumi suwa jetiya dusoku tuli… mur akaax bhangi name bijuli.
When you tilt your head to look at me with your eyes, my sky shatters and lightning breaks down.
These lines instantly transport me to the monsoon rain in Assam. I am at the dining table with my aunt, her son and my mom, eating momos with soup and listening to the heavy rainfall. Loud familial laughter engulfs the room, and I can almost taste the delicious chicken curry my aunt makes. I am transported back — I check my phone and realize I am running late for class.
Somehow, the distance makes the culture louder in my head, and even more so in my heart.
In these afterthoughts, I wonder — what reminds you of home when you least expect it?
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“Texting us between runs”: Eileen Gu’s life at Stanford, through friends’ eyesThe Olympic champion's inner circle recounted campus stalking, close friendships and their senior trip to watch Gu compete at this year's Games.
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Eileen Gu ’26 stood atop the Olympic podium Sunday morning in Livigno, the Chinese Five-star Red Flag draped around her shoulders and a smile across her face. In one hand, she clutched a gold medal. In another, she held her skis in the air. Stanford classmate and bronze medalist Zoe Atkin ’26 stood beside her.
In the wake of this latest victory, Gu will leave the 2026 Games as the most decorated female freestyle skier in Olympic history. She has also collected an estimated $23 million per year in sponsorships, including deals with Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., Porsche and Red Bull, making Gu the fourth highest-paid female athlete in the world.
Yet as her success has grown, so has the discourse surrounding Gu, an international relations major who was born in San Francisco but chose to compete for China, her mother’s home country, in 2019.
The athlete has since drawn praise and criticism from some of the world’s most influential media outlets and politicians. And while the Stanford ‘bubble’ is known to insulate students from the outside world, Gu’s life on campus has never fully escaped the fame and scrutiny that trails her every run.
As Gu recently told the press, her first year at Stanford was marked by concerns over her physical safety.
That year, her friends remember a stalker following Gu on campus. “He knew everything about her schedule,” Gu’s close friend Sawyer Williams ’26 told The Daily. “He knew what building she would enter and at what time. She was leaving class and he was there.”
The situation intensified when the stalker chased Gu. Lauren Koong ’26, Gu’s close friend and roommate, recalled that “she was running away from him, yelling ‘get away from me’ and no one did anything until he got close enough to attack.” Koong is a former executive editor of The Daily.
The police intervened after Gu started yelling. “I can’t imagine what would have happened if they weren’t there,” Koong told The Daily.
Gu took legal action after the incident. According to Koong, however, Stanford had been notified of the stalker prior to the attack and did not take action because he had not made direct contact with Gu.
The following year, during winter quarter, an intruder broke into Gu and Koong’s dorm.
“Our room number had [been] leaked because people were taking selfies with her name on our door.” Koong said. The dorm and room number were identifiable based on Gu and Koong’s door signs. “We obviously took her name down from the door, but people found out.”
Williams, who lived on the same floor as Gu and Koong, was the one to discover the break-in. “I walked past the door and it was wide open,” he said. “Lauren’s room had been sifted through, Eileen’s room had been tampered with.”
In shock, Williams called Koong, who was terrified by the news. Gu was traveling at the time.
“I walked in and all the drawers had been pulled open,” Koong recalled. “The closet doors were flung open. It was just a mess. Someone had gone through every single drawer, every single thing.”
After the incident, police came to the dorm and Koong filed a report, but tracking down the culprit proved difficult. “At the time, one of the entrances didn’t have security cameras, so it’s not like we could see everyone that went in and out,” said Koong.
In a statement to The Daily regarding the incident, a University spokesperson wrote that Stanford’s “top priority is the safety and well-being of every member of our community. Our dedicated Department of Public Safety (DPS) is committed to creating a safe and secure environment for everyone on campus. In addition to DPS, students have multiple mechanisms through which they can report incidents of concern and receive support from the university.”
In public life, Gu has faced criticism over her choice to represent China.
Entering the 2022 Beijing Games, she attracted the ire of conservative pundits including Tucker Carlson and Will Cain. Carlson called Gu’s decision “dumb” on his talk show, while Cain, Carlson’s guest, said that Gu was “ungrateful” and “turned her back on the country that not just raised her but turned her into a world-class skier.”
Vice President JD Vance shared his opinion of Gu on Feb. 17, telling Fox News, “I certainly think that somebody who grew up in the United States of America, who benefited from our education system, from the freedoms and liberties that make this country a great place, I would hope that they want to compete with the United States of America.”
After a qualifying run on Thursday, Gu responded to Vance in an interview. “I’m flattered. Thanks, JD! That’s sweet,” she said.
Others have called for Gu to denounce China’s human rights abuses, including the treatment of Uyghur Muslims.
A parallel discourse has played out among some Stanford students, including on Fizz, an anonymous social media platform. Some have used the app to voice negative opinions of their classmate.
“In a world full of Eileen Gus, be Alysa,” one user wrote on Friday, referencing Alysa Liu, an Olympic figure skater who competes for Team USA. Comparisons of Liu and Gu, two Chinese Americans from the Bay Area, have pitted the two athletes against each other.
Over the years, the skier has brushed off critiques. “There are geopolitical factors at play, and people just hate China generally. So it’s kind of difficult when I’m lumped in with this evil monolith that people want to dislike,” Gu told Time. “It’s never really about me and my skiing.”
“There’s a lot of xenophobia,” Koong told The Daily. “For some people, it’s hard to accept that someone can be as talented, accomplished and as hard working as Eileen, and in turn, people will always try to tear her down.”
Koong said she is most bothered by some critics’ inconsistency: “It’s crazy to say she shouldn’t compete for China, when over Covid, those same people were telling Asian Americans to ‘go back where they came from.’”
For those in Gu’s inner circle at Stanford, the story is closer to that of an ordinary college student. Since enrolling in fall of 2022, the Olympian joined a sorority, studied abroad at Oxford and planned dinners and surprise birthday parties for friends, balancing social commitments against her academics and training schedule.
In her sophomore year, she created the “Gu League” with Williams. A riff on the NBA’s G League, playing recreational basketball offered a way of gathering her friends. To commemorate the moment, Williams gifted Gu a custom ‘Gu League’ basketball for Christmas.
“In the same way that she is the best free skier, best model, best student, she is also the best friend,” Koong said. “It’s very cliche but I think that’s a side of her that a lot of people don’t get to see.”
Reflecting on their friendship, Koong recalled Gu once being in New York for work and attending an event catered by a world-class chef. “She brought home a jar of his special pickles because she knows I love pickles. That’s my favorite snack,” Koong said. “Her mind could be in a million different places at once. She remembers the little details and she makes time for things… her friendships are number one.”
Six of Gu’s close friends, including Williams and Emme Roberts ’26, made the journey to support her in the Alps despite midterm season. The plan to travel to the Games came together almost four years ago during their freshman year.
Missing a week of school and taking a 13-hour flight, Gu’s friends continued to show their support in Milan-Cortina, sporting custom hats that combine Gu’s name and the Olympic Rings symbol. After spending hours commuting by bus from Bormio to Gu’s events in Livigno, they arrived early to stand in the front row.
“Being at the base of the pipe, getting ready for an event to start, your heart starts racing,” Roberts said.
While her friends were nervous at the base, Gu remained calm at the top of the mountain, listening to rap music. Gu was “surprisingly chill,” according to another Stanford student and friend. The student requested to remain anonymous because she had skipped class to see Gu compete in Italy. “You’d expect an athlete at this level to be so intense, so focused, so locked in. Whereas… she was texting us between runs and we’re like, ‘girl, put your phone away.’”
The energy on the mountain was palpable each time Gu came down the pipe.
“When you’re there, it’s simultaneously terrifying and electric… it’s like ‘oh my god, you could have died,’” said the anonymous friend.
After Gu fell during the freeski halfpipe qualifying on Thursday, excitement quickly turned into fear. “I literally stopped breathing,” said the friend. Gu was able to recover and her subsequent runs punched her ticket into Sunday’s freeski final.
Gu’s support system also includes her mother, Yan Gu, who received her MBA in 1994 from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and later worked in finance. Yan raised Gu as a single parent, and drove her daughter up to Lake Tahoe to practice on weekends. The round trip journey, which spanned eight hours, brought them closer together. First hitting the slopes at age three, Gu tried out freestyle at eight, and won a national junior title the following year.
Spending summers in Beijing, Gu studied at Yan’s alma mater Peking University during summers before college and considered competing for China early on. The skier has said that she discovered a goal of increasing representation for her sport in China. “I like building my own pond,” Gu told Time.
Despite Gu’s public statement, the media has continued to focus on her affiliation with China, including her citizenship status. The Olympic Charter requires that Olympic athletes must be citizens of the country they represent. Gu is eligible to be a Chinese citizen through Yan. China, however, does not allow for dual citizenship, raising questions about the skier’s citizenship status which she has avoided directly addressing in recent years.
“I’m American when I’m in the U.S., and I’m Chinese when I’m in China,” Gu told reporters in Beijing. “I’ve been very outspoken about my gratitude to both the U.S. and China for making me the person I am.”
While the Olympian’s situation is unique, Gu is not alone in competing for an ancestral country. Other Stanford athletes, including Gu’s competitor and freestyle skier Zoe Atkin ’26 and snowboarder Siddhartha Ullah ’27, were born in the U.S. and compete for Great Britain.
In June 2019, Gu, who was 15 at the time, posted her announcement to compete for China on Instagram, writing that it was an “incredibly tough decision.” Gu also noted that in making the decision, she hoped to “unite people, promote common understanding, create communication, and forge friendships between nations.”
Following Milan-Cortina, Gu will return to Stanford to complete her degree.
“She can do anything. The world is her oyster,” said Koong.
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Sanders, Khanna denounce role of AI in wealth inequalityIn a Wednesday address at Memorial Auditorium, Senator Bernie Sanders and California Rep. Ro Khanna advocated measures to defend working-class Americans against AI's social effects.
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Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), senior U.S. senator from Vermont, condemned the use of AI to increase the wealth of billionaires and advocated protections for American workers at a student town hall with Representative Ro Khanna (D-Calif. Friday evening.
The event, organized by Stanford Speakers Bureau and Stanford Democrats, drew a full-capacity crowd of over 1,000 to Memorial Auditorium, where Sanders and Khanna called for measures to ensure that all of society benefits from rapid technological advancements.
Sanders, the longest serving independent in congressional history, argued that humanity is at the beginning of a “profound technological revolution” that will bring dramatic changes to the country and world. “The question that we should be asking day after day… is who is pushing this revolution, who benefits from it, and who gets hurt?” he said.
According to Sanders, billionaires are investing huge sums of money in technology to increase their own wealth and power, not improve the standard of living of the 60% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. “In other words, the richest and most powerful people on earth will become even richer and more powerful,” he said.
Sanders claimed that AI and robotics will replace human labor, wiping out tens of millions of jobs while boosting corporate profits. He voiced concern about how the country will maintain institutions like Medicare and Social Security without taxpayer dollars. Sanders advocated for a moratorium on the growth of data centers.
Event attendee and Tech for Liberation president Eva Jones ’25 M.S. ’26 said this sentiment aligns with advocacy efforts to reduce the spread of environmentally damaging infrastructure along the Columbia River, where Google’s data centers are located.
“It’s really personal to me to hear Senator Sanders call for a moratorium on development of data centers,” Jones said. “The Columbia River is somewhere where I plan to spend the rest of my life as a hydrologist.”
Beyond the economic consequences of AI and robotics, Sanders expressed anxiety about the potential for these technologies to worsen the current mental health crisis. He evidenced these concerns with many individuals’ growing dependency upon AI for emotional support.
Sanders also warned that technological advancements threaten the future of democracy, highlighting the rise of deep fakes, or digitally altered photos and videos used to spread false information.
Khanna argued that although tech entrepreneurs have worked hard and taken risks, they nonetheless stand on the foundation of public investment. “We must ask not what America can do for Silicon Valley, but what Silicon Valley must do for America,” he said.
Khanna laid out seven principles for what he termed “Democratic AI,” including augmenting human capabilities rather than eliminating jobs, ensuring that workers benefit from increased productivity and making it easier to hire humans instead of AI agents.
“Particularly to the Stanford students, to emerging technology and business leaders, my challenge is simple: the future must not be written by AI agents that serve San Francisco billionaires,” said Khanna. “It must be written by all of us together, in a way that binds our divides and gives us a new national purpose of economic renewal and independence for every American.”
Event attendee and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organizer Amanda Campos ’26 said that Sanders and Khanna’s calls for AI reform were admirable, but might not adequately address systemic factors driving economic inequality.
“I will call upon Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna to…have a bolder platform on the harms of AI,” Campos said. “We can talk about AI in isolation and say that we can use AI to better working-class people, but we really need to start talking about bolder solutions.”
According to Stanford College Democrats president Sravan Kodali ’27, event organizers hoped to foster open dialogue and viewpoint diversity. While Sanders and Khanna typically advocate liberal issue positions, Kodali said, the talk aimed to provide a nonpartisan forum for discourse.
“We wanted to create a space where anyone could come regardless of their background, and they would feel empowered to ask questions of [Sanders and Khanna],” Kodali said. “Yes, there were two liberals that were on the stage, but the goal was to make sure that students from any political background… could ask questions.”
During the “town hall” portion of the event, students asked questions of Sanders and Khanna extending beyond AI, covering topics from antitrust regulations for AI companies to labor union membership and the cost of a college education.
Sanders encouraged a student from West Virginia to take political action on behalf of his community, which is rapidly becoming a site for data centers. “Go back to your home state. They are in desperate need of good leadership,” he said. “Help build a political movement which will represent the great working people of West Virginia.”
Stanford Education and Democracy United (EDU) president Turner van Slyke ’28 said that as someone who grew up in a rural area, Sanders and Khanna’s comments in response to the student’s question were uplifting.
“Bernie does a really good job of speaking to the helplessness that a lot of people in this country feel,” van Slyke said. “He was clear about his respect for what he called the decent, hard working people of West Virginia, and I appreciated how he reoriented his rhetoric towards addressing their very real economic concerns.”
Stanford Democrats vice president Robert Liu ’28 appreciated Sanders’ emphasis on the value of public service throughout the event. “[Sanders and Khanna] showed us that there’s a way for Stanford students to become involved in politics,” he said.
Before going on stage, Sanders met with around 25 representatives from various student organizations, including Stanford Political Union, Students for Justice in Palestine and The Stanford Daily.
Kodali said that event organizers arranged the reception to provide other student leaders on campus the opportunity to engage in dialogue with Sanders and Khanna.
Sanders told the group that because faith in government is so low, not enough people are entering the public service sector. “We need young people to make government work effectively,” said Sanders.
He added that the only thing that can defeat money and powerful institutions is mobilization. “Your generation — if you just get out there and organize — could change the whole country,” he said, speaking as a former protest organizer.
Reid Smith ’28, who represented Jewish Voice for Peace at the backstage reception, called the opportunity to meet with Sanders “very special,” given that Sanders is one of the reasons he became interested in politics and a role model to him.
Smith said that he was inspired by Sanders’ leadership on AI. “This 84-year-old man is, in some ways, grappling with AI… more than some of the people that are studying it at this university.”
Update: This article has been updated to include additional quotes and information from student organizers.
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Fourth Big Swap sees record turnout, diverts 2,000 pounds from landfillsStudents flocked to White Plaza to donate and procure clothes, shoes and books at Stanford’s fourth Big Swap, held on Feb. 21.
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Students gathered in White Plaza to browse tables of goods, clothes, and books and enjoy food and dessert at the fourth quarterly Big Swap on Feb. 21.
An initiative under the Office of Sustainability, Big Swap brought the Stanford community together to both donate items and look through other donated goods to optimize student reuse. This year, Big Swap brought food from Stanford Street Meats and Froyo-Cycle, as well as live music.
Living Lab fellow Julia Lecana Hok ’23 M.S. ’25 organized the first-ever Big Swap Spring of 2025 as a project for the fellowship. The fellowship focuses on reuse with the goal of transforming how students participate in reuse by building new infrastructure and educating students.
Living Lab fellow Kai Blankenship ’26 took over the project this year after Hok’s graduation.
“The mission [of Big Swap] is to provide an opportunity for students to reuse in a free way as well, by not participating in a profit model, like a thrift store, but a pure swap model,” Blankenship said. “It allows students from all backgrounds to participate and come find goods that they might need.”
Past Big Swaps have received funding from the previous neighborhood system, but since the University discontinued the system in August 2025, organizers have had to look elsewhere for funding. For this Big Swap, the Associated Students of Stanford (ASSU) sponsored food and music and also assisted with table rentals, while FashionX hosted an upcycling station.
“It’s really about finding all these new partnerships to make Big Swap bigger and better every time,” Blankenship said.
Edith Chamberlain ’27 attended the first Big Swap last year and volunteered this time as head of marketing. Chamberlain also serves as a sustainable community intern. “ I just really love sharing it with people because I love it so much,” she said.
“We even had a volunteer who came to swap and then asked how she could help and stayed the entire event. We’re really lucky to have so many great volunteers.” Blankenship said.
The organizers estimated this Big Swap to be the largest turnout yet, with roughly 600 students in attendance and 2,000 pounds of items diverted from landfills.
“Big Swap is an event that fosters not just reuse and sustainability but also community building because everyone who goes is just having a good time finding things, talking to each other. I think it’s a really great way to get out into the community of Stanford and tidy up your life along the way,” Chamberlain said.
Dalila Gulati ’29 attended this Big Swap to support a friend volunteering. “I came to see her and get froyo because I love Froyo-Cycle,” Gulati said.
Rahm Sheinfeld ’29 stopped by to drop off donations and browse. This was his first time at Big Swap. “It had more items than I thought it would have, and I was just happy to see a lot of people coming to participate in sustainable practices,” Sheinfeld said.
The Living Lab Fellowship is currently trying to build infrastructure so students can practice reuse in between Big Swaps. “Right now, we’re trying to launch swap stations across a bunch of different dorms. We want to make it a part of daily life,” Blankenship said.
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Eileen Gu ’26 and Zoe Atkin ’26 medal in Olympic freeski halfpipeGu repeated as Olympic champion, and Atkin took bronze in the same event on the final day of the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics.
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Two of the top halfpipe freeskiers in the world are Stanford students.
Eileen Gu ’26, the reigning Olympic champion in the event, successfully defended her title on Sunday morning in Livigno, Italy, earning gold over fellow Chinese teammate Li Fanghui. Zoe Atkin ’26, the reigning world champion, took bronze.
Gu’s gold medal further cements her status as the most decorated freeskier in history, having earned medals across all six Olympic events she has competed in to date. She also took silver in both slopestyle and big air in Livigno, which limited her halfpipe training — a situation she criticized the International Ski and Snowboard Federation for in an Instagram post last week.
With her bronze, Atkin becomes just the second Team GB athlete to medal in an Olympic skiing event, following after her sister, Izzy Atkin, who won a slopestyle bronze in PyeongChang eight years ago.
After leading halfpipe qualifiers, Atkin opened Sunday’s final — held after a 15-hour delay due to heavy snow — with a conservative 90.50 run that put her on top of the standings. Gu stumbled and abandoned her opening attempt, turning up the pressure for her following runs.
The roles flipped on the second run: Gu responded with a 94.50 to take the lead and Atkin clipped the deck to crash on her fourth trick. Gu went on to improve her score to 94.75 on her final run.
Then it all came down to Atkin, who needed better than a 93.00 to displace Fanghui for silver or 94.75 to displace Gu for gold in the final run of the day. Even with the highest amplitude out of the pipe of any skier, Atkin fell short of silver by 0.5 with a score of 92.50. The bronze marked a significant improvement from her ninth-place finish in her Olympic debut at the 2022 Beijing Games.
From Stanford to the ski slopes of the Italian Alps, Gu and Atkin capped off an Olympics that saw four Cardinal compete and win four medals.
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Alternative media spaces reshape society, gender and politics, scholars sayScholars argued that media ecosystems are reshaping ideas about gender, politics and beauty at a Thursday talk.
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Alternative media spaces are reshaping ideas about gender, politics and beauty, scholars argued in an event sponsored by the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies department Thursday afternoon.
“Manospheres, Femospheres, and Momfluencers: Gender and Content Creators in the Age of Social Media” brought together communication professor Angèle Christin, Stanford visiting scholar and University College London sociologist Katie Gaddini and third-year communication Ph.D student Elizabeth Fetterolf for a conversation about how niche online communities are changing societal norms.
For Gaddini, these communities are growing less niche, however. “This isn’t just a dark corner of the web that some people are tuning into,” she said. “This is very much a mainstream platform.”
Christin examined the lived experiences of men who engage in the “manosphere,” which she defined as “a network of websites, of forums, of social media groups that are broadly promoting masculinity, misogyny and opposition to feminism.”
According to Chrsitin, one example is r/TheRedPill, a Reddit forum that offers a set of principles about the different sexual behaviors of men and women. These principles include that women are biologically programmed to seek high-value men, feminism is a sexual strategy disguised as politics and men must transform themselves into “alphas” to succeed in competitive sexual marketplaces.
Through her interview-based research with fourth-year Ph.D. candidate Tomás Guarna on TheRedPill, Christin found that participation in TheRedPill is a way for men to connect their personal troubles to a larger societal crisis. “Usually in the interviews, [participants] started by talking about their individual romantic failures… and they connected that to a broader sense of a decline of the West,” she said.
Christin also observed that TheRedPill community members see themselves as having superior knowledge, based on personal experience and what they characterize as scientific evidence. Additionally, she said that these members frame their lives as hero’s journeys in which they transform from “beta” to “alpha” through fitness, career advancement and stoicism.
The manosphere is not the only segment of the alternative media ecosystem reshaping cultural norms. Another is the world of so-called “momfluencers” — female content creators who share parenting-focused content, often intertwined with Christian faith and conservative politics, according to Gaddini.
In her talk, Gaddini highlighted social media personality Allie Beth Stuckey. “She represents a broad group of Christian mom influencers who blend motherhood and Christianity to claim political authority for a massive female audience,” Gaddini said of Stuckey.
Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research, Gaddini highlighted several strategies that momfluencers use to gain political power, such as moralizing motherhood to gain legitimacy and communicating political ideas indirectly. Gaddini argued that the second strategy is especially influential because it allows momfluencers to reach a group of women who wouldn’t engage with politics otherwise, perhaps believing it is men’s domain.
Although the manosphere has attracted much public attention, Gaddini emphasized that the so-called femosphere also carries significant societal implications. “The manosphere is not the whole story,” she said. “While these [mom] influencers may not look like political actors, they are central to how MAGA is lived and sustained in the U.S. today.”
Fetterolf closed the event by analyzing “looksmaxxing,” or what she described as “the long process of promoting time, energy and money to looking hot.” Those engaged in looksmaxxing “see the very real financial and social rewards of feminized beauty, and they want that,” she said.
Fetterolf distinguished between two types of looksmaxxing: softmaxxing, which refers to minimally invasive measures like diet, makeup and fashion, and hardmaxxing, which primarily refers to surgical interventions.
Although the Reddit community dedicated to women’s looksmaxxing is relatively small, its ideas have disseminated into society, according to Fetterolf, who highlighted recent articles and TikTok trends that promote sometimes extreme beauty treatments.
For Fetterolf, the looksmaxxing community shows that alternative media is not exclusively conservative. “Reactionary ideas — about gender, about race, about the body — are being embodied by communities that do not explicitly identify as right-wing,” she said.
Event organizer Rachel Jean-Baptiste, faculty director of the Program in Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies told The Daily that the panel was partly inspired by the feminist, gender and sexuality department’s new subplan in technology, science and medicine.
She said that the event provided insight into the ways gender, technology and society interact. “[Social media] is a site of formation about alternative ideas of gender,” Jean-Baptiste said. “What’s happening online… is impacting real life and vice versa.”
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Daily Diminutive #124Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords three times a week and a full-size crossword biweekly.
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Toward a decolonial sensorium: Staging embodied resistance at the Center for South AsiaThe performance "suggested that regional knowledge need not remain sequestered within institutional walls," Jain writes.
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Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
How does one decolonize when the colony’s lingering residue outlasts its literal existence? Dance creator Joti Singh’s “Ghadar Geet: Blood and Ink,” performed by the Duniya Dance and Drum Company and organized by the Center for South Asia on Saturday, suggested the answer to this question might lie in song and dance, a medium that activates a decolonial sensorium and raises questions of what decolonization sounds like and how the resistant, anti-colonial body moves.
With two full-house performances interspersed with a mehfil (poetry recital) — “Sunnō Panjab Bolda” — organized by curator Sonia Dhami and the Art and Tolerance group, the event symbolized resistance to a violent archive while also shaping futures of dissent.
The Ghadar Party, the subject of Singh’s performance, was founded in the Bay Area in 1913 by Punjabi revolutionaries committed to overthrowing British rule — a radical history that unfolded not far from Stanford’s own campus.
“It’s been a dream come true to have the radical histories of South Asia in the Bay Area come to Stanford,” said Usha Iyer, an associate professor of film and media studies and faculty director for the Center for South Asia.
While I couldn’t get tickets to the initial 3 p.m. performance of “Ghadar Geet,” I did manage to attend the mehfil followed by the 7 p.m. dance performance — a chronology that stitched together a distinctly layered experience. The mehfil unfolded through recitals of dissident poets such as Amrita Pritam and Faiz Ahmad Faiz, interwoven with original poetry by Bay Area artists Jessi Kaur and Lakhvinder Kaur, and accompanied by visual works from Kanwal Dhaliwal and Sarabjit Singh. Rooted in the history of Punjab, these artistic interventions oscillated between portraits of the late freedom fighter Bhagat Singh and poetic invocations of the role Panjabi soldiers played in India’s resistance to British rule.
Yet preceding her rendition of Baba Bulleh Shah’s poetry, Priya Satia, Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and a member of the Panjabi Poetica, unsettled this widely accepted colonial timeline.
“There’s a common assumption, still, I think, that South Asian revolutionary thought dates to the colonial era,” she said. This belief indicates that South Asian dissent is often misconceived as something that emerged only in resistance to the Empire, thereby overlooking revolutionary expressions that preceded the first half of the 20th century.
At the moment Satia commented on the “revolutionary quality and influence of … earlier traditions,” the mehfil’s anti-colonial charge was productively altered. Her intervention gestured toward a deeper provocation: even the language of decolonization can remain tethered to the empire when it assumes colonialism as the origin point of political consciousness. By foregrounding lyric traditions that predate formal anti-colonial movements — including those of Bulleh Shah, the 18th-century Punjabi revolutionary philosopher — the mehfil unsettled the temporal centrality of empire itself, reframing dissent not as a mere reaction but as an already existing mode of being.
However, if “Sunnō Panjab Bolda” historicized Punjabi dissent, “Ghadar Geet” pointed toward the futurity of anti-colonial sentiment, mobilizing resistance in India as a parable for contemporary forms of oppression that demand comparable overhaul.
Show producer Karishma Bhagani described the performance as “an extremely timely piece for our community to be experiencing,” one in which Singh “weaves stories of resistance and revolution across time.” Here, temporal layering functions less as biography than as method. By drawing parallels between colonialism and transnational migration, the performance reframed migration’s limits as neo-colonial mechanisms through which the empire continues to exert informal power.
What emerged was a call to action: a choreography that looked backward to compel its viewers to look forward, gesturing toward an anti-colonial futurity for an audience — including academics — willing to accompany scholarship with praxis.
Two instances of embodied messaging were particularly indicative of this sentiment. In the first half of the performance, a British soldier stripped a Sikh dissident of his pagri — though the garment is, in fact, a pagri-adjacent cap. While this substitution aided staging, its hybridity also allowed for the scene to be universalised, ensuring it resonated beyond a single historical moment and features toward minorities worldwide whose sacred symbols are distorted, surveilled or removed under the guise of policing.
The other instance emerged through a visual tableau of anti-colonial fighters being punished in the aftermath of World War I, betrayed by “internal traitors” who reported them to the British. At a time when India’s far-right Hindutva regime appropriates histories of dissent — despite having played no role in many of them — reclaiming those narratives through performance is a powerful act of resistance.
Toward the end of the performance, I was struck less by its spectacle than by its structure. In an era when the future of area studies remains politically precarious — scrutinized and flattened into culture wars — the convergence of lecture, mehfil and choreography did more than commemorate dissent. It modeled a broader creative approach — one that treats performance not as an add-on to scholarship, but as a way of producing knowledge in its own right, with embodiment serving as a powerful form of expression.
The kinaesthetic and sonic force of the evening opened discourse on Punjab outward, into the Bay Area community that filled the room — dissolving the boundary between university and public, archive and audience. By moving between historiography and rhythm, citation and choreography, the event suggested that regional knowledge need not remain sequestered within institutional walls; it can circulate, resonate and take root in shared civic space.
In the pursuit of these imagined solidarities that we ought to work toward, the Center for South Asia shows both the way and the hope.
Correction: A previous version of this article presented a paraphrased version of Professor Satia’s quote as a direct quote. The Daily regrets this error.
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Men’s basketball comeback falls short against CalCal has won its last two games against Stanford, earning its first season sweep over the Cardinal in 16 years.
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With 5:08 left on the clock, it was déjà vu for the Cardinal. Stanford men’s basketball (16-11, 5-9 ACC) had crawled its way back from a double-digit deficit to pull within six points, sitting in the exact same position as it had in last month’s first contest against Cal (19-8, 7-7 ACC).
One possession later, Cal forward Chris Bell hit a pump fake and drained a three, squashing any Cardinal hopes of a late surge and sealing the Golden Bears’ first season sweep over Stanford in 16 years with the 72-66 win Saturday evening.
Unlike the initial matchup earlier this season between the historic crosstown rivals, the Cardinal were not able to regain their footing after tip-off on Saturday, trailing for a majority of the game while the Golden Bears extended their lead to as much as 14 points. The beginning of the game featured consecutive scrappy possessions, a flurry of loose balls and end-to-end transitions.
The Cardinal committed nine turnovers in the first half and shot 33% but stayed just in reach throughout the game, thanks to an offensive spark led by redshirt sophomore Aidan Cammann. With a team-high 19 points, the Massachusetts native put up a resilient fight, tasked all game long with guarding fellow Brewster Academy alum and Cal standout forward John Camden. Cammann tallied a steal and assist apiece and drew 10 fouls, feeding off of freshman guard Ebuka Okorie, who was double-teamed for most of the game.
After a season-ending injury to senior forward Chisom Okpara in January, head coach Kyle Smith needed a new impact player to man the paint.
“We were looking for someone to step in and it’s been Aiden [Cammann],” said Smith, who also praised Cammann for being a “big team guy.”
Cammann also earned respect from his opponents. Cal head coach Mark Madsen ’00 dubbed him a “foundational piece for Stanford.”
Coming off a 26-point game against Wake Forest, Okorie put up 17 points, three assists, drew five fouls and posted a season-high 13 rebounds. As a freshman shattering Stanford records and capturing the attention of national media, Okorie drew praise from head coach Kyle Smith, who applauded his ability to adjust.
“He’s got a growth mindset… his individual play from this game versus the first time against Cal, I think he played a lot better,” Smith said. “[He’s] one of the best players I’ve coached already.”
Regarding Okorie, Madsen said, “Different [Cal] players had a different chance to guard him… everyone knows what a great player he is, and it’s a compliment to him that so much of our prep was centered around him. He is not only a great scoring threat but he makes everyone around him so much better.”
Madsen, a key contributor to Stanford’s historic 1998 Final Four team, was complimentary of the effort put up by the entire Stanford team.
[Stanford is] a very good basketball team,” Madsen said. “They made a late run, kept our guys on our heels… Benny Gealer was hitting threes. Okorie getting to the rim. Cammann was just attacking us.”
But after leading Cal to a season sweep over his alma mater, Madsen surely felt what his standout performers echoed after the game. Camden also called it “a big accomplishment” for Cal.
After starting conference play 3-2, with marquee wins against top-ranked No. 16 Louisville and No. 14 North Carolina, the Cardinal have dropped seven of their last nine ACC matchups to end their NCAA tournament hopes. This rivalry game concludes their three-game road series, and they will return to Maples Pavilion this Wednesday to face Pitt with a 5 p.m. tip-off time.
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Stanford softball goes 2-3 in DeMarini InvitationalStanford softball falls to Texas and Arizona, splits Boise State, and run-rules Santa Clara to end the DeMarini Invitational 2-3.
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Stanford softball (9-4, 0-0 ACC) began the weekend back in Stanford Softball Stadium with a heated game against No. 3 Texas (14-1, 0-0 SEC) on Friday.
Texas came out strong in the top of the first with a sacrifice fly to left field for an RBI with freshman pitcher Elena Krause in the circle.
Stanford countered in the bottom of the second with an RBI double to left field from senior outfielder Kyra Chan.
“Everybody was getting good pitches to hit, so I just wanted to capitalize and score runs for my team,” Chan said.
Texas put up three runs in the top of the third, bringing the score to 4-1. Junior pitcher Zoe Prystajko relieved Krause, who allowed two runs on two hits in 2.1 innings.
Prystajko was able to hold off the Longhorns for the rest of the game, surrendering two runs on four hits for her 4.2 innings pitched.
Stanford had a strong attempt at a comeback in the bottom of the seventh, led by freshman catcher Izzy Cacatian’s sacrifice fly to right field to bring in freshman second baseman Addyson Sheppard. Chan scored from third base on a Texas error, bringing the final score to 4-3 for a Stanford loss.
“We have a chance there to win a game, and I think if we come out and we are more ourselves, I think we walk away with the win,” said head coach Jessica Allister. “So I think it’s a missed opportunity, just in our approach.”
“I thought we were timid,” Allister said. “I don’t know where that came from. That’s not what we are, that’s not what we play best and we can be better.”
The Cardinal faced No. 16 Arizona (12-5, 0-0 Big 12) and Boise State (8-8, 0-0 Mountain West) on Saturday, falling to both.
Stanford’s only run of the 4-1 loss to Arizona came from Sheppard, who hit her first home run of the season.
Stanford fell to Boise State 5-4, holding the Broncos to zero runs until the top of the sixth. The Broncos put up four runs in that inning against Krause before she was relieved by junior pitcher Alyssa Houston, who allowed one more. The matchup saw RBIs from sophomore first baseman Joie Economides, sophomore pinch hitter Sydney Boulaphinh and junior third baseman Jade Berry.
The Cardinal faced Boise State a second time on Sunday, and the game was scoreless for the first six innings. After the Broncos put up two runs in the top of the seventh, Stanford had one last chance for a win.
Berry hit a single for a two-run RBI, tying up the game. With two runners on base, Economides singled for a walk-off RBI, earning the Cardinal their first win of the weekend.
Stanford rode their newfound momentum into their last game of the DeMarini Invitational against Santa Clara (6-9, 0-0 WCC). In a game that ended after six innings, the Cardinal run-ruled Santa Clara in a game that concluded 11-3.
The game saw an RBI from senior shortstop River Mahler, two RBIs from Cacatian, one from senior center fielder Emily Jones, two from Boulaphinh, three from senior first baseman Taryn Kern and two from Economides.
The Cardinal ended the weekend 2-3 in their first set of games back in Stanford Softball Stadium.
Stanford played last weekend’s Cardinal Classic I tournament at various Bay Area stadiums due to complications with Santa Clara County regarding permits for the new Stanford Softball Stadium. The Cardinal permanently returned to the stadium this weekend.
“I’m just really grateful to play at the stadium with my best friends,” Chan said, “and sometimes when you’re away, it makes you just appreciate it more.”
“It’s wonderful to be back,” Allister said. “It’s my favorite place in the world, so it’s great to be back.”
Up next, Stanford travels to Louisville to begin ACC play this weekend.
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From the Community | The case for medical doctor-physician assistant student unityMedical student Brian Zhang calls for more respect toward PAs in medical school and hospitals, reflecting on his training at Stanford.
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Brian Zhang is a first-year medical student at Stanford.
On the day of your Stanford white coat ceremony, you will take the Hippocratic Oath and find a new family in your 118 medical doctor (MD) and physician assistant (PA) classmates. The years ahead feel wide open, and you are swimming in potential energy. You will look out into a sea of proud parents and siblings, scanning for the one face that has anchored every milestone before this one.
But my anchor is not here. My undocumented mother always told me that if she had the chance to continue her education, she would have become a PA. There were many moments when I let myself imagine another dimension, one where circumstance did not narrow her options and there was a real possibility we might have been colleagues instead of mother and son. I also think about, if we had worked together, how she would have been treated in the medical field.
Stanford’s deliberate overlap between PA and MD training was a significant draw for me. It is one of two American medical schools where the cohorts train together for an extended period. Coming from an Ivy League university, I am deeply grateful for the breadth of opportunities I was afforded. At the same time, I became aware of how certain clinical careers — nursing, PA and social work — were discussed with less visibility or prestige, if at all. I knew I wanted an inclusive curriculum where collaboration reigns supreme, where diversity in aspiration and background translates to the best possible care for patients in the healthcare system.
Today, that same system is strained. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) projects a physician deficit of 86,000 within the next ten years. A Stanford-led study reported that nearly half of the U.S. physician workforce experienced at least one symptom of burnout. When asking my MD peers “why medicine,” nearly all mention the human-interfacing nature of our profession. That reality may be diminishing. In 2018, 70% of physicians noted spending 10 or more hours a week on administrative tasks, up from a third of doctors in 2014. The Commonwealth Fund reports that in every country, less than a third of primary care physicians were satisfied with the amount of time they spent with each patient.
An expanding workforce of non-physician clinicians is one response to these challenges. Between 2013 and 2019, the proportion of U.S. healthcare visits provided by PAs and nurse practitioners (NPs) nearly doubled, rising from 14% to 26%. However, despite evidence showing negligible differences in patient satisfaction between PA and MD-delivered care, comparable clinical reasoning styles among PA and MD students and increased PA propensity to serve rural and underserved communities, stigma toward PAs and PA students certainly persists.
Stanford has emerged as a leader in narrowing these divides, advancing a model of training that merits broader emulation. PA and MD students share a campus, complete similar service requirements through the university vaccination crew and free clinics and run for leadership positions within overwhelmingly the same student organizations.
There is a misconception that PA school is a fallback to medical school. In reality, these are distinct pathways, shaped by lived experience and professional interests that deserve inter-cohort learning.
The average PA student matriculates with 2,500 to 4,000 clinical hours. Unlike MD students, they are also often required to complete coursework in anatomy. In my experience, PAs demonstrate greater ease in early clinical sessions such as drawing blood and administering vaccines. More than once, I have turned to them for anatomy tutoring. MD students, by contrast, generally enter with fewer clinical hours and more research experience; I have supported PA colleagues in identifying research mentors and involved them in my own research. Stanford PA trainees are also paired with leaders in their field, while MD students are matched with physician advisors. Intentional pairing signals institutional recognition of each profession’s distinct training needs.
That said, building bridges, even at Stanford, remains a work in progress.
Some barriers are internal. PA students are guaranteed on-campus housing for one year, even though their program runs 2.5 years, while MD students are guaranteed housing for four years.
Beyond campus, federal policy is reshaping both pathways. Beginning this July, the Big Beautiful Bill will eliminate Grad PLUS loans, capping federal borrowing for most PA students at roughly $20,500 per year, or $100,000 total. Since PA programs are no longer classified as “professional degrees,” these limits fall far below the cost of attendance, pushing many toward private loans. The same legislation also imposes new federal loan caps for MD students: $200,000. That amount, while higher than for PAs, still grossly misses the median cost of medical school given that MD training usually spans four years, with students increasingly taking additional research years to be competitive for residency.
MDs and PAs must be more vocal, not only about the challenges facing our shared profession, but also about those that fall disproportionately on each other. Too often, medical culture is entrenched in corrosive pride. How can we claim, as future providers, to want healing for others if we normalize division and silence in ourselves and our colleagues?
Due to her legal status, my mother will probably never come to the Bay. She will never sit with me in a lecture hall or even watch me graduate. Medicine, however, is more than those things. The most meaningful way to honor her is not to dwell on the life she might have had, but to practice gratitude for the reality I do have: that I am here, studying my calling.
With gratitude also comes responsibility. Now more than ever, I call on myself to defend the calling of others with the same ferocity as my own, regardless of whether that person shares my walk of life. I urge us all to advocate for a future in healthcare where collaboration is the norm, not the exception. In this future, bureaucracy does not stand in the way of those who are ready to serve.
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Beyond Bars: Why the words still matterIn her column, Tina Li explores the importance of authenticity and lyricism in rap, reflecting on how truthful storytelling deepens listeners’ connection to music.
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Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
On Friday nights at Stanford, rap is rarely background noise. Lyrics are shouted across dorm rooms, blasted through speakers in Row houses, and circulated on Fizz the next morning. “Never going back to Phi Psi if they play that same Drake set again,” someone comments. Even in Green Library, late at night, you can catch a hook slipping out of someone’s headphones. Moments like these make it clear that rap is not just party music. It’s woven in students’ everyday lives.
When J. Cole dropped his album “The Fall-Off” on Feb. 6, that same energy carried into everyday life. At the Computing and Data Science complex (CoDa), conversations between problem sets drifted toward track rankings and favorite bars. Online, YouTube reactions appeared within hours, TikToks highlighted standout lyrics and Reddit threads expanded with competing interpretations. That instinct, to pause the beat and analyze the words, reveals that beneath the beat, rap has always been a lyrical art form. Even in an era shaped by streaming algorithms and social media engagement, lyricism still drives listener connection and relatability.
To understand why listeners are instinctively drawn to lyrics, it helps to look at the history of the genre. In the 1970s Bronx, DJs like Kool Herc looped breakbeats and emcees narrated neighborhood realities over them, describing poverty, violence and everyday resilience.
With the early 2000s came greater commercial polish. Artists like 50 Cent paired glossy production with radio-ready hooks while collaborations like “Yeah!” by Usher and Ludacris blurred the line between rap and pop, pushing hip-hop deeper into mainstream culture.
The 2010s ushered in the rise of melodic rap, exemplified by songs like Juice WRLD’s “Lucid Dreams,” where a guitar beat loop and drawn-out vocal delivery make the song drift between singing and rapping. The rise of streaming platforms reshaped song structures. Labels, producers and artists began optimizing tracks for algorithm-driven listening environments where “replayability” affected chart performance and revenue.
Alongside these structural and commercial changes, the style of lyricism itself also shifted.
Earlier generations prized dense wordplay and intricate rhyme schemes that rewarded close listening, as heard in the works of artists like Nas and MF DOOM. Today, minimalism carries its own emotional force. Just look at how fans gravitate towards Kendrick Lamar’s line “We gon’ be alright” from the song “Alright”: a simple phrase grew larger than the song itself and became chanted during Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality to convey a sense of hope.
But is the genre ultimately defined by its sound, or by its lyrics? This is where lyricism becomes more than a technical skill; it becomes a question of authenticity. When listeners are pulled toward artists like Cole, it is rarely just about the music’s flow; it is because their lyrics feel personal and are grounded in real experience. In his song “Love Yourz,” Cole raps: “There’s beauty in the struggle, ugliness in the success.” The line is simple, but it cuts deep, challenging the idea that achievement automatically equals fulfillment.
That sentiment of finding meaning within struggle feels particularly relatable at a place like Stanford. Here, success is both visible and measurable through department-specific research grants, summer research internships, and acceptances from programs like the Rhodes or Marshall Scholarships.
But the pressure underneath that visibility is rarely visible to others. It shows up in the habits people rarely talk about, from studying into the late hours of the night to projecting effortlessness in a way that echoes Stanford’s “duck syndrome.”
Conversations turn into subtle comparisons about how many units someone is taking this quarter, about who secured which internship for the summer. People celebrate their wins publicly, but process their doubts privately. LinkedIn highlights the offer letter, not the rejection that came before it or the anxiety that lingers even after success arrives. Cole’s line, “There’s beauty in the struggle, ugliness in the success,’’ resonates because it reframes ambition, suggesting that struggle is not a detour from success, but part of it. On a campus defined by aspiration, that reminder matters.
Further, appreciation for meaning becomes especially visible in social spaces like parties on the weekends. The bass hits, the chorus echoes and the song becomes an atmosphere. But even there, words are not irrelevant. Students shout entire verses in unison, and the fact that some can even recite them without flaw, suggests that lyricism still anchors connection, even when the primary mode is celebration.
Ultimately, lyricism endures because listeners still seek authenticity and relatability. Even as production trends shift, the pull towards honest storytelling remains. Lines that articulate pressure, uncertainty and hope travel with students from crowded Row houses to quiet walks home, lingering long after the music fades. At its core, rap becomes a relatable friend to the listener. Beats may draw listeners in, but words are what make them stay.
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Why dining hall plates are beyond beautifulA student is no different than a dining hall plate, Batts argues. Both are overspilling, busy serving others, then stacked at night to repeat the cycle again.
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Every day, you probably walk into the dining hall. Tap once — or twice — to scan in. Then circle once, twice, to scan the options. Grab a plate (the big ones, of course; you aren’t going to put up with carrying two small ones).
Then you wait. And wait. And wait. Scoop some assortment of the warm food (or cool melons) proffered that day. Grab silverware, a drink (probably not water — haha, you dehydrated scholar) and finally sit down. After clearing your plate (hopefully, no waste is great!), you gather your fistful of napkins and precarious dishes before unceremoniously depositing them in their respective bins and buckets. Then, harried, you rush off to the next item on your 50-entry-long daily schedule.
Did you taste the food?
Really, we’re not much different from that lone plate. We are always overspilling. We carry different loads, but every day we get out there. We find a path, we are carried along and we serve along the way. We rotate on a carousel — get dunked, boiled and hung out to dry. Then we’re dusted off, polished and stacked with our peers. At night, we finally get to rest — only for the grind to start again. Blinding light floods in as a door opens and hands reach for us.
Sometimes, I see fellow Stanford-ers abandon their plates, leaving them in dark dorm corners to fester for a fortnight. Discards of previously known meals morph into galactic colors — colors yet to be seen in any establishment of proper edibility. I’ve seen people toss these ceramic plates into the garbage, reluctant to trek to the dining hall the next day.
This deeply saddens me — it symbolizes a myopic mindlessness, a shortsighted inconsideration for those around us. And if we are but plates in this daily hustle, I hate to think of all the ways I may have blindly bumbled and shattered someone else’s day as a wasteful byproduct of striving for productivity.
So today, I’m going to walk into the dining hall with a bit more mindfulness in my step. I won’t put on my podcast or music (even though post-Super-Bowl-me desperately wants to hop back on that Bad Bunny train I rode last summer). I’m going to taste the food. I’m going to listen to the music of the place I’m in and focus on the lovely humans bringing joy into my life — the people I run into and, of course, our wonderful family of dining hall workers. Living in hi-def takes an attentive eye and the willingness to behold beauty.
Carousels of weeks sometimes blur the plates and faces.
I challenge you to savor.
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Stanfordle #086Enjoy The Daily's Stanfordle, the newest part of our Games section. The Daily produces Stanfordles on weekdays.
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Clyburn and Khanna urge historical understanding, voting rights advocacyRepresentatives Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) covered a range of topics relating to Clyburn’s new book, "The First Eight", at a Wednesday talk hosted by Stanford Law School.
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Representatives Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) took the stage at Stanford Law School Wednesday to discuss Clyburn’s new book “The First Eight.” To an audience of over 100 students, faculty and community members, the two engaged in a wide-ranging dialogue that blended their personal stories with pointed warnings about American democracy through a historical lens.
Clyburn, a democrat, represents the 6th district of South Carolina and previously served as House Majority Whip. A member of the Civil Rights Movement prior to his election to Congress, Clyburn was imprisoned while demonstrating as a student activist. Khanna represents the 17th district of California and previously taught economics at Stanford.
“The First Eight” chronicles the lives of the first Black politicians who were elected to Congress from Clyburn’s home state of South Carolina.
According to Khanna, Clyburn is “a figure of American history.” Clyburn, he noted, was one of only a few civil rights leaders to achieve high political office in the United States. For Khanna, there’s a personal dimension to his admiration for Clyburn: “I would not be serving in the United States if it weren’t for people like Mr. Clyburn,” he said, referencing the 1965 immigration reforms that allowed his parents to come to America.
The two lawmakers’ rapport anchored the evening.
“Ro is my good friend,” Clyburn said. He admitted that in Congress the phrase is often perfunctory, but in this case affirmed his sincerity. Mutual respect and shared political goals remained a throughline in the pair’s discussion of Clyburn’s book.
Clyburn explained that the book was inspired by portraits of the first eight Black congresspeople from South Carolina that hang in his office. When visitors assumed Clyburn was the first Black representative from South Carolina since the Reconstruction, he would respond playfully: “Oh no, before me there were eight.” Eventually, he decided; “My next book is going to be about these eight people,” he said.
But the project changed course in 2020. Watching attempts to challenge election results in several states, Clyburn said he realized the story needed sharper contemporary resonance. “Rather than just introduce these eight people to the American public, I need to introduce their efforts, what happened [and] why there [have been] 95 years between number eight on this list and yours truly, number nine.”
According to Clyburn, the book’s central argument is a stark reminder: “Reconstruction came to an end by a vote of eight to seven. Jim Crow became the law of the land by a vote of 185 to 184.” “That’s what this book is all about,” he said, “and why we have to be very careful that we don’t relive that history.”
Khanna agreed. “If you didn’t know the history book, that it was that one vote, it reminds you of how historically contingent things were,” he said. Khanna drew a parallel between the Reconstruction and modern political inflection points like voter identification laws.
Among the eight, Clyburn believes Robert Smalls was “the most consequential South Carolinian who ever lived.” He recounted how Smalls, born enslaved, commandeered a Confederate ship and delivered it to Union forces.
What struck Clyburn most was what came after Smalls’ journey. “Think of this,” he told the audience. “In February, you were enslaved. In August, you’re sitting down with the President of the United States.” Smalls met with Abraham Lincoln to argue for the enlistment of Black troops. Lincoln ultimately authorized their recruitment. “But for the freedmen,” Clyburn said, quoting Lincoln, “the war would have been lost.”
Clyburn believes the 95-year gap between him and the last of the eight results from the mechanics of disenfranchisement. Southern states, he said, “changed their constitutions” and “changed their voting procedures.” He described majority runoff requirements designed to prevent a Black candidate from winning a three-way race and “full slate” laws that invalidated ballots unless voters selected an entire roster of candidates. “They racialized all the elections,” Clyburn said.
Even after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, new methods emerged, including at-large elections that diluted Black voting power. The result was not accidental but engineered, he said.
Attendee Robert Liu ’28 said Clyburn’s talk reminded him that “everything is unprecedented if you don’t know history.” Nason Li ’29, who hopes to one day run for political office, called Clyburn “a legend.” Li said that Clyburn’s story stands as an inspiration for students.
For Li, Clyburn remains “a paragon of rights.”
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Lagunita Court erects fortificationsResidents have been having trouble entering Lag Court. That's by design. However, countermeasures are in place.
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Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.
In recent weeks, students living outside of Lagunita Court have been met by locked doors when attempting to reach Lakeside Dining. After many complaints, Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE) has finally responded, confirming that the doors to Lagunita Court were locked to keep droves of East Campus residents away from the coveted dining hall during its Mardi Gras special.
In their statement, R&DE called the move “fully intentional,” citing it as “both a moral and effective way to reduce the burden on limited hospitality resources West of the Quad.” Furthermore, R&DE announced that Lagunita Court will undergo renovations to further discourage outsiders from partaking in Lakeside Dining’s sweet sweet specials.
Internal emails received by The Daily refer to the protective measures as “The Gauntlet.” Draft designs include high turrets, flying buttresses above the housing center and construction of a medieval style motte below the dining hall to fortify it behind the new and improved walls.
Many students criticized R&DE’s response to the popularity of Lakeside Dining. “The fix is more capacity and staff, not deterrence,” said Elijah Barish ‘28, “People go to Lakeside to enjoy the dining opportunities, not to hop fences and dodge cartoonish traps.”
Maya Ellis ‘29, a resident of West Lag, had mixed feelings about the fortifications. “I would like shorter lines, but I like when my friends from East campus come visit me all the way out here because of the good food. There has to be a better solution,” she said as she ate her fifth beignet during our interview.
As a countermeasure, Stanford Student Robotics released plans to build a bot called “The Key to Lag Court,” which utilizes a half ton mass to breach the new fortifications. Stanford’s LARPers broke into tears upon being asked to man the siege engine.
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Four Cardinal sign with NWSL teamsJasmine Aikey, Andrea Kitahata, Elise Evans, and Shae Harvey will begin their professional soccer careers in the NWSL in March.
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Four Stanford women’s soccer players — Jasmine Aikey, Andrea Kitahata, Elise Evans and Shae Harvey — have signed with teams in the NWSL. They helped lead the Cardinal to a dominant 2025 season that culminated in an ACC regular season title, an ACC tournament title and a Women’s College Cup Final appearance. Aikey, Kitahata, Harvey and Evans join a long and storied list of Stanford women’s soccer alumni who have gone on to have tremendous success at the professional level.
Senior midfielder Jasmine Aikey will help to lay the groundwork for Denver Summit FC throughout its inaugural season. Aikey, hailing from Palo Alto, comes off of one of the most decorated careers in program history. She is a three-time United Soccer Coaches All-Region first team member and two-time MAC Hermann Trophy semifinalist, and she helped lead Stanford to three College Cup appearances in four years.
In her final season, Aikey earned TopDrawerSoccer Player of the Year honors as well as the MAC Hermann Trophy, the most prestigious award in women’s collegiate soccer. In 89 games throughout her career, she posted 115 points and scored 43 goals to rank ninth in program history.
Aikey will return to the Bay Area in mid-March for the opener of Denver Summit’s inaugural season against Bay FC.
“The chance to be a part of creating a team’s culture was something I couldn’t pass up,” Aikey said of her decision to sign with an expansion team.
Redshirt senior forward Andrea Kitahata will join New York’s Gotham FC, the reigning NWSL champions. As a two-time captain, Kitahata helped lead Stanford to back-to-back College Cups in 2024 and 2025.
In her final season, she was recognized to the All-ACC first team, ACC Championship All-Tournament team and both the United Soccer Coaches All-Region and TopDrawerSoccer Best XI second teams. Over 99 matches, the Hillsborough, Calif. native racked up 32 assists, which ranks eighth in program history, and 39 goals.
“It’s been special to play so close to home, and Stanford being my home for the past few years has been so formative,” Kitahata said. “I’ve made friends for life, and I feel very proud of the person and player I am going into the world as. It’s a product of everyone I’ve been around at Stanford.”
When asked about which NWSL teammate she was most looking forward to play alongside, Kitahata’s response came almost immediately.
“Tierna Davidson [‘20] is someone I have looked up to for a really long time as a person and player,” she said. “She’s the epitome of a great person and player and really advocates for the players. To have someone who has also bled Cardinal is special.”
Senior defender Elise Evans will bring her talents in the backline to Chicago Stars FC. Evans, from Redwood City, Calif., began her career as the PAC-12 Freshman of the Year and a member of the TopDrawerSoccer Freshman Best XI first team. In her final season, she was both the ACC Defensive Player of the Year and the United Soccer Coaches National Scholar Player of the Year.
As a senior captain, she was named to the All-ACC first team, ACC Championship All Tournament Team and the United Soccer Coaches All-Region first team. Over the course of her career, Evans helped Stanford hold 47 shutouts and limited opposition to 69 goals over 95 games.
“My main goal is continuing to develop my game,” Evan said, looking ahead to her professional career. “A big reason I wanted to come to Chicago is because they have some defensive and offensive world class players who I am excited to learn from. I want to put myself in uncomfortable positions to push myself and grow as a player.”
Junior midfielder Shae Harvey signed with the Portland Thorns FC. Harvey, a Hermosa Beach, Calif. native, helped her team to College Cup appearances in each of her three seasons. In her first season, Harvey was the No. 1 freshman midfielder in the country and the No. 2 freshman overall, as well as a member of the TopDrawerSoccer Freshmen Best XI first team. As a captain in her final season, she was named to the All-ACC second team and the Women’s College Cup All-Tournament team. Harvey started 69 of 73 career matches, accumulating 11 goals and 15 assists.
Aikey, Kitahata, Evans and Harvey will return to the pitch donning new jerseys when the NWSL season kicks off this March.
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Heating impact threatens ‘significantly cooler temperatures’ in buildings across campusA University alert on Wednesday night notified students of a campus heating impact. Students can expect repairs to the system in two to three days.
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As of 8:53 p.m. on Thursday, heating has been restored to campus and repair work at Central Energy Facility (CEF) has been completed.
At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, the University alerted students to reduced campus heating capacity due to a hot water generator “in need of immediate repair.” “An urgent maintenance issue at [campus’] Central Energy Facility (CEF) will be affecting the ability to provide heating and hot water across the Stanford campus over the next several days,” wrote the University in a campus-wide announcement. “One of the facility’s three hot water generators is in need of immediate repair.”
“Specific buildings affected remain fluid as we monitor heat usage and work to address midterms and other campus needs,” wrote Luisa Rapport, director of emergency communications and media relations, in an email to The Daily.
Both Stanford Residential and Dining Enterprises (R&DE) and the University’s alert mention that residences and dining halls will be prioritized at this time but do not guarantee they will remain unimpacted.
“Although housing and dining facilities are not currently subject to space heat impacts, campus heating systems are interconnected,” R&DE wrote in their message to students.
The heating impact also caused Arrillaga Outdoor Education and Recreation Center (AOERC) and Arrillaga Center for Sports and Recreation (ACSR) to close for Thursday. The Avery Rec Pool (ARP) will also remain closed.
“The pool and gym closure have certainly been tough to hear,” wrote Arin Vansomphone ’28, co-president of Stanford’s club swim team in an email to The Daily. “Missing out on several practice days just a week before a major swim competition (next Saturday) makes it even more of a bummer, but our club remains optimistic and hopeful that the facilities will open soon for us to prepare for our upcoming meet!”
“Since the University became aware of the problem, Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE) has been in close collaboration with our campus partners to understand the potential effects on housing and dining and to determine what actions, if any, we need to take to ensure comfort and continuity of service to students,” wrote Jocelyn Breeland, chief communications and marketing officer for R&DE, in an email to The Daily.
The heating system is expected to be repaired in two to three days. A message on Thursday afternoon notified campus that “work is underway to address the urgent maintenance issue at our Central Energy Facility.”
Until then, the University urges students to dress warmly to prepare for the temperature drop. Stanford’s campus and the wider Bay Area will be experiencing a cold weather advisory through Friday morning.
The University did not cite a direct cause of the heating impact beyond “a mechanical failure” to the system, and that “one of the facility’s three hot water generators is in need of immediate repair.” This issue comes just a day after a storm-inflicted power outage swept campus. The outage on Tuesday led to canceled classes and midterms for students, alongside elevator failures.
As a consequence of Wednesday’s heating issues, some classes were held virtually instead of in person at buildings like Margaret Jacks Hall and Sweet Hall.
“My only class that was directly impacted [by the heating] was linguistics, which got moved online,” Nandita Talluri ’29 wrote in a message to The Daily. “But on Tuesday, my Spanish class was cancelled in the morning before the power came back.”
In a follow-up email on Wednesday night, R&DE informed students that “classrooms and other non-residential buildings may experience significantly cooler temperatures.”
“To stabilize the campus heating system, the campus will begin shutting off space heat to many non-R&DE facilities,” R&DE wrote in their campus-wide message.
R&DE recommends students keep windows shut and limit hot water use before the heating issue is resolved. They also ask students to refrain from using personal heating devices like space heaters due to the potential fire hazard.
Updates on the changing status of the heating impact are available at https://emergency.stanford.edu.
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GSC passes nominations bill, approves funding for Colombian Student AssociationThe GSC approved the appointment of William Reimers ’28 as ASSU Librarian.
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At its Thursday meeting, the Graduate Student Council (GSC) approved the “Joint Bill Confirming William Reimers as the ASSU Librarian,” which the Undergraduate Student Association (UGS) unanimously passed on Wednesday.
The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Librarian role was created in 2020 to “maintain institutional knowledge in the ASSU” by documenting the history of the ASSU and activism on campus. The ASSU Librarian is responsible for maintaining an “Official Copy of the Governing Documents of the Association” and updating the documents in the event of any changes made by the ASSU. ASSU President Ava Brown ’26 appointed William Reimers ’28 for the role.
Some councillors had questions about the appointment, expressing their desire to meet Reimers to establish a line of communication.
“How would we send him specific materials… if we’re passing something and he would be tracking and putting them in one place, how would we make sure that line of communication is sustained?” GSC co-chair and third-year J.D. candidate Laurel Kim asked.
In response, Brown said that Reimers will maintain an active line of communication and monitor any agendas that come in.
The GSC also voted on a quick grant for the Colombian Student Association, providing $2,577.23 in funding for their upcoming Carnaval de Barranquilla event. The funds will be used to purchase food, drinks and decorations for the event, which will support an estimated 130 students.
Following the grant, GSC Treasurer Elena Vasilache, a fourth-year M.A. candidate, raised concerns about the number of annual grants that the GSC had to look through following a bill passed in the fall that dissolved the club sports funding umbrella.
“The number of applications has increased a lot, from 70 to 240,” Vasilache said. “For next year, I think we should consider at least for the funding for the annual grant season to put an additional two treasurers, because that is a lot of work.”
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Stanfordle #085Enjoy The Daily's Stanfordle, the newest part of our Games section. The Daily produces Stanfordles on weekdays.
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On thanatophobiaHow can one live when they perpetually fear death? Ambrosiou addresses this overwhelming dread, clinically labeled thanatophobia, as she thinks about the loved ones she will someday leave behind.
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There’s one question that follows me around, haunts me like a monster under my bed. It feels wrong to even wonder about it, and every time I do, it leaves me scrambling to find another thought to latch onto instead. To distract myself from the inevitable. But when I am not actively suppressing it, the deafening existential drum in my ears returns.
Who will go first? My mom or I? Will I be left to pick up the pieces of my life after she’s gone, going through the motions of planning a funeral, managing her will? How will I navigate any of that? I feel like I’m still a kid. Or maybe, will she have to bear the unspeakable burden of doing all the aforementioned morbid tasks for me, instead?
Thanatophobia literally means the fear of death in Greek, whether it be in regard to oneself or a loved one. It’s the intense, persistent and even irrational anxiety of all the ways in which it could happen and its aftermath. It can often be a silent, overwhelming dread, as is the case for me. For some people, it’s caused by trauma, near-death experience, past loss of a loved one or terminal illness.
Having a mom that bore me at an older-than-average age has forced me to consider my possible futures while still extremely young. You become self-taught in hyperawareness of your classmates’ parents’ age relative to your own single-parent. You start to ponder who you will have to turn to and how to go on living in an empty house that was once a home in the case of an unexpected passing. Will I be sent off to live with my grandparent? And after she’s gone, too, what would come next?
I have always felt the urge to think much farther down the line than any child ever should. Always worrying that every phone call or conversation will be the last. Always making sure that when my mom’s sleeping, I can hear the steadiness of her breathing or see the rise and fall of her chest — that was my lullaby. It goes without saying that for my worldview to have reached this point, it had to have been shaped by my lived experiences throughout my upbringing, and naturally, thanatophobia can create a sort of codependency between my mother and me. The love I have for her is overflowing and simultaneously draining. It’s boundless, but confines me. Perhaps my biggest fear is actually that the shattered glass of my vacancy would be rendered irreparable in her life.
“A parent should never have to bury their child,” as the saying goes. But over the last two and a half years, I have seen that happen more than I wish I could recall, and I’m sure many reading this would relate. I have had images of death in the most unimaginable ways seared into my memory, making my limbs go weak. What must be a hollow pit in a mother’s heart after that point just deepens and darkens — the stuff of nightmares. It’s a reminder of our own dwindling mortality and the forces that are, to our desperation and powerlessness, out of our control.
You see it so often; youths gone too soon when they had their whole potential to discover ahead. Wishes from dearest friends, long lost classmates, teachers mourning someone thought by all to light up rooms. They share snapshots of a life of vividness that can never be captured in the mundanity of words. Did they know they would be remembered this way? Or was this retroactive declaration of love never outwardly expressed when it ought to have been? Something like death is simultaneously so sacred, profane, macabre, ambiguous to some, clearly defined to others, and yet whole communities are paradoxically born and built around it.
For whatever reason, for me, death has always felt imminent. It could be a fantastical superstition, me being paranoid or simply that I’m drawn to existentializing media. I am always looking over my shoulder, always overly-cautious that the moment will come and I will not have had the chance to give loved ones closure or make a dent on this spinning world of ours. To sow seeds in a garden I will never get to gaze upon. To be a dandelion and leave a piece of myself everywhere I’ve been. Even when marveling at the beauty that surrounds us, I can’t help but stop to ask myself when the last time I look up at Orion’s Belt may be, so I look up each time, as if it is the last.
Part of me wants to write this as if it’s a fail safe. Almost like an “a-ha” moment that feels a bit like cheating death – to express these thoughts in an excessively dramatic, grandiose way “before it’s too late.” That moment may not come soon, and articulating this constant anxiety, which plays like white noise as the backdrop of my day-to-day, feels strange, something that I almost wish I were anonymous writing, or even that I should refrain from entirely. But finding the words can also mean acknowledging, validating, momentarily soothing it.
And so, I implore you, too, to look up at Orion’s Belt each time.
If my thread of life is deemed worthy of early and unexpected snipping by the Fates, at least there will be a record that I had something to say about it.
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The Library of Suspect Origins: Inventing the IdiotIn the first installment of "The Library of Suspect Origins," Ghosal examines national identity and how authentic cultural voices are created by imagining an alternative history where a translator and a government conspire to create the brand of Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
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“The Library of Suspect Origins” is a column about how knowledge gets made, stabilized, and mythologized across literature, science and institutions. Each piece looks at a case where authority turns out to rest less on truth than on repetition, prestige or convenience. In this first installment, Ghosal examines national identity and how authentic cultural voices are created by imagining an alternative history where a translator and a government conspire to create the brand of Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
In 1849, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was subjected to a mock execution and sentenced to prison in Siberia. Between Perm and Yekaterinberg, he died; the authorities disposed of the body. A minor talent, he wrote about drunkards and self-loathing men, but politics ruined him.
The Big Four novels traditionally attributed to Fyodor appeared 20 to 30 years later.
In 1894, Constance Garnett traveled to Russia from England and met Leo Tolstoy. In “What Is Art?” he renounced beauty-for-pleasure as a dead end, useless for grace. Garnett, translator of Turgenev, was startled! Count Lev Nikolayevich dismissed the tasteful Flaubertesque estate-novel as a moral vanity!
Garnett was friends with anarchist Sergei Stepniak. Stepniak, after his murder of police chief Nikolai Mezentsov, could never go back to Russia. Through his exile stories, Garnett imagined Russia to be a land of snow, suffering and intensity — a nation invented by expatriate nostalgia.
Every translator eventually wants to tell their own story. Garnett began to write. She drew allegories between Stepniak’s political exile and the psychological exile one faces after murder. Raskolnikov was born. Stepniak’s correspondences with Parisian anarchists gave rise to Stavrogin and Kirillov. Tolstoy’s late religiosity was reconstructed as Ivan Karamazov.
A British woman couldn’t be taken seriously as a philosopher of the human condition. Who would listen to her ideas in a world where women are domestic accessories? She needed a ghost.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky.
Translators live inside other people’s sentences. A translator edits manuscripts and thinks, here is what should have been written. Pseudo-Dionysius edits manuscripts and thinks, “Here is what could have been written.” To be deeply immersed in a culture yet separated by space and time makes you think like one but not feel like one. Pseudonyms and heteronyms are a way to deconstruct and reconstruct authenticity.
Stepniak went with it. He called it restitution: The Tsars stole Russia’s future, so she wrote it back under a stolen name.
“Garnettovsky” was a product of its time. This was the peak of English “muscular Christianity.” The mystic-stoic Christian Sufferer was the perfect brand for the Edwardian British market. Garnettovsky wrote about a Russia that existed only in the Western European imagination — hysteria, philosophical musings on death, nihilism kindled by the cold and redemption by pain. The Anglo-American literary circles were enamored.
In 1917, the Bolsheviks came to power. Lenin appointed Anatoly Lunacharsky as the inaugural head of the Narkompros, the People’s Commissariat for Education. Lunacharsky informed Vladimir Mayakovsky that the British literary elite had developed an affinity for Russian literature.
“Let me guess, the decadent bourgeois stuff? Pushkin?”
“No no! Dostoyevsky!”
“Nonsense! He died after four snivelling stories!”
“They are being attributed to him. Full of characters that suffer and survive.”
“Comrade Lunacharsky, surely you are not failing to see what I see?”
Garnettovsky was the West’s primary window into the Russian soul. If the West found out that Russia’s greatest literary export was a British woman’s invention, the USSR would look like a laughingstock! A cultural backwater nation of illiterate peasants who managed to kill the king!
But what if they played along? They could claim ownership of a genius. The United States could have their Hollywood and Disney, but the Soviet Union could be the nation with a soul, the culture that teenagers with existential crises turned to. Hence, a 15-minute pitch from Lunacharsky to Lenin was sufficient for an order from the Kremlin: “Backfill the biography.”
The Soviet literary apparatchiks went to work. Synthesize the “later years” of Fyodor to match the themes of Garnettovsky! Recreating printed literary reviews from the 1860s was the easiest assignment ever for the state-run forgers who planted fake documents on political dissidents.
Garnett wrote “The Gambler” as she despised the proliferation of the bookmaking industry. It was not hard for the Soviets to forge police reports of Fyodor losing money in Baden-Baden to make it fit.
Garnett, frustrated by diagnoses of hysteria in women, used the Victorian trope of a physical manifestation of a spiritual crisis. Ergo Garnettovsky must have epilepsy. An army of Georgian prisoners spent hours working away in the basement of the Lubyanka, creating the “handwritten drafts” of Karamazov. There were instructions to carefully mimic the handwriting of the sensitive young man who wrote “White Nights.” But make it shakier, make it “aged” by Siberia!
They couldn’t use modern paper. Teams were sent out to raid the attics of old noble estates that were scheduled to be demolished, as their former owners supported the Whites during the civil war. “Crime and Punishment” was written on paper from a bankrupt Jewish shopkeeper. “The Brothers Karamazov” was assigned thicker stock sourced from a monastery’s accounting ledgers.
A convicted White Army officer had his sentence reduced to one-tenth after he copied out the entirety of “The Idiot” in a painstakingly slow hand with false starts, cross-outs and marginal notes. His grandson lives in Brooklyn.
A chemist was assigned to recreate iron gall ink that would oxidize at a rate consistent with a 40-year-old manuscript.
The visual evidence was a problem. The only existing daguerreotype of Fyodor was a blurry image of him as a youth. To create the brand of a philosopher-sage, you need someone who looks like a philosopher-sage.
Cheka raided the Tretyakov archives and found a portrait by Vasily Perov, with a pencil scrawl “Beggar with Dropsy.” The man looked haunted and gazed into the middle distance, as if burdened by the whole world.
The intense ascetic stare we consider as the Dostoyevsky Look was the face of a bricklayer who died in a brawl over a bottle of vodka.
Vladimir Nabokov figured it out, of course. He knew Russian better than Tolstoy and English better than Hemingway.
He criticized, “Garnett is terrible! Every author sounds the same!” Few figured out the mask he never ripped off. He was still nostalgic for his motherland, so he kept quiet.
Bakhtin canonized the resulting “polyphony” anyway. This infuriated Nabokov so much that he wrote “Laughter in the Dark” just to describe what he thought was realistic, if a man is vulnerable to a woman. Repeated humiliation! Only a middle-aged woman could write a sentimental soap opera where a redeemer-woman performs salvation for the sensitive young man.
What do we take away from this?
The Anglo-American imagination has roles pre-assigned to individual countries. The identity of Europe from the broader Eurasian landmass is the identity of not-Russia. To the east of civilization lies the vast expanses of extreme suffering and more extreme survival, the origin of the eternal recurrence of the barbarian steppe hordes. To be an inheritor of post-Anselmian individualism is to look East and survey the land where theiosis comes through prayer and meditation.
A nation’s soul is not discovered but demanded into being by those who need it to exist. Mirrors are held up until the reflection becomes the face.
Presence precedes existence.
The Author is made by copywriters and copyrighters, translators and editors, politicians and diplomats, you and me. Each of us has our own Russia.
The grave in Tikhvin Cemetery in Petrograd is empty.
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From the Community | On practicing bipartisanship and cross-cultural politicsChuck Ludlam '67 brings his experience on the Hill to argue for collaboration and cross-cultural politics, offering an alternative to the polarization and vitrol he currently sees in our government.
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Chuck Ludlam ’67 was one of 200 Stanford alumni given the Centennial Medallion in 1991. In addition to his 30 years of service on the Hill and in the White House, he served for eight years as the principal lobbyist for the entire biotech industry.
Over several decades I served as committee counsel on Capitol Hill and the White House, I viewed policy and politics as cross-cultural because I have served twice in the Peace Corps. I learned to be tolerant of differences across cultures, and it seemed logical for me to also be tolerant of diverse policy and political viewpoints.
I always worked for Democrats, but I knew that this was a cultural choice. Similarly, I knew that Republican staff raised in Christian-observant homes came from a culture very different from mine and would likely hold different policy views. I was tolerant of them, and it led me to ask why they believed what they did, rather than ascribing them to bad motives and low intelligence. I also believed that our country’s survival depended on finding ways to listen and be more tolerant and less vitriolic.
Cultures reach different conclusions across all issues: how to be a good person, how to run a family, community and nation, determining appropriate gender roles and practicing tolerance towards those who are unconventional. Around the world, the diversity of responses to these questions runs the gamut. Certainly, there are some answers that are strange or even offensive. But my preference is tolerance of these choices. I respect the rights of cultures, individuals or parties to have different viewpoints, and I value the practice of listening to them. I abhor extreme rhetoric and personal attacks, and I embrace the necessity and value of compromise. For me, the interests of the country or community are more important than those of any leader, group or political party.
On Capitol Hill and in the White House, I focused on enacting legislation to make smart and effective policy. To me, it was never just a question of power and posturing. I wanted both parties to claim credit and hoped to preserve the health of policymaking institutions. I cared about parliamentary rules and the separation of powers. Decorum and long-term relationships were also priorities. I was not averse to compromising on specifics, as long as central concepts remained. I often found that Republicans helped me draft a better bill or amendment.
My payoff for being bipartisan was that it gave me multiple additional opportunities to advance good policies and legislation. Often, I was the only Democrat open to working with Republicans. That was a huge advantage for me. When I retired, I gave an oral history of my top 25 policy projects, and I could see how well I had done due to bipartisanship.
The most telling example of my focus on bipartisanship was when I was working as counsel to Senator Joseph Lieberman. Although he was positioning himself in 2004 to run against President George W. Bush, it was natural in 2002 for Lieberman to support the Bush Faith-Based Initiative. Lieberman was famously bipartisan. I never had a better boss. I became his staffer on this bill, a strange situation for me, as I’m a lifelong, committed atheist. The Republican Senate lead was Rick Santorum, a pariah with Democrats. We solely focused on the bill.
Senators Lieberman and Santorum introduced a bill I drafted that dodged the controversial church-state issues. The first key provision was the creation of tax-free charitable distributions from individual retirement accounts (IRA rollovers), which enables a taxpayer, in effect, to deduct a contribution made to a charitable organization. The other key provision, and my favorite, was the establishment of individual development accounts (IDAs) to give matching grants to spur savings by poor people. The IDA plan is fair given the $400 billion dollars we award as incentives for IRAs and 401(k)s — most of which goes to the well-to-do. Only 1% of the benefit from these incentives flows to the lowest-earning 20% of U.S. workers, while 58% accrues to the highest earning 20%. All I wanted was $15 billion in incentives for poor people to save! When poor people become savers, it transforms their lives; it is not a windfall for doing what they would do anyway. Consigning the poor to depend on subsidies is not remotely as effective as helping them to save and become independent.
No Democrat had any reason to criticize these provisions. Supposedly, charitable organizations and the poor are priorities for the Democrats. Nonetheless, they killed the bill by proposing an extraneous amendment to end the provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that exempts religious organizations, including churches, from prohibitions against religious discrimination in hiring. Others may disagree, but I believe that Democrats killed the bill because it was associated with President Bush and his faith. The biggest losers were charitable organizations and the poor. Yes, the IRA rollover eventually became law, but this was our one and only chance to enact IDAs. It has not been possible since. This was the worst defeat in my career. The most painful. It was the least bipartisan.
In 1965 and 1967, I was a Stanford in Government (SIG) intern on the Hill, which led to my public service career. Out of gratitude, over a 40-year period, I was the principal mentor to generations of SIG students. I was one of three people who crafted the Stanford in Washington program. I endowed the SIG office at the Haas Center, and I endowed SIG Fellowships. In all of my dealings with students, I never cared if they leaned left or right. I was focused entirely on whether they cared enough to be engaged in the political trenches. I always counseled SIG to be bipartisan. We need the brightest Stanford students to take up public service careers, irrespective of their viewpoint.
I’m not naïve about the effectiveness of vitriol. Unfortunately, arguments can be persuasive when they are laced with exaggerated predictions of gloom and doom and the worst possible interpretation of their opponent’s position or morals. Lies are hard to rebut. It may take several generations of ruinous policy results for the venom to dissipate. The risk is that with ruinous policy results, the vitriol may become even more vile.
The quest for political power has intensified in part because the country is so evenly divided. Either party can win the House, Senate or White House. As turnout is key, pitches are more flamboyant and apocalyptic. Social media and the mainstream media are in a brawl to attract clicks and views. We see harsh measures to demand allegiance from party office holders. Swift retribution awaits anyone who deviates. There is no pause in the warfare between elections. Billions and billions of dollars fuel the venom. Arrogance and desperation drive it all.
Ultimately, the politicians won’t abandon their vitriol unless it loses its power to sway voters. Vitriol works and will continue when voters believe it and act on it. We should be especially skeptical of the motives of politicians. If we aren’t, the country suffers as the pendulum keeps swinging wildly left and right. Only when the vitriol of politicians doesn’t work and backfires will we see them focusing more on listening and advancing the best policies for us, not for them. Everything I think and feel tells me that we’re at risk. But I am an optimist and believe we will demand more civility as we wrestle with profoundly complicated issues.
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Daily Diminutive #123Click to play today's 5x5 mini crossword. The Daily produces mini crosswords three times a week and a full-size crossword biweekly.
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Stein Visiting Writer C Pam Zhang shares new work at Faculty Club readingThe novelist answered audience questions about her creative process and embracing uncertainty in writing.
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More than 100 people filled the Cedar Room at the Stanford Faculty Club Wednesday evening for a reading by C Pam Zhang, award-winning author and the 2026 Stein Visiting Writer. The Creative Writing Program invites the Stein Visiting Writer each year to teach an undergraduate writing seminar of their design.
The five rows of chairs filled up more than 30 minutes before Zhang even made an appearance. Those who could not find a seat stood at tall cocktail tables in the back in anticipation of the evening’s reading.
Karen Russell, fiction writer and the newest addition to the Stanford English faculty, introduced C Pam Zhang, summarizing the premises of Zhang’s two novels, “How Much of These Hills is Gold” and “Land of Milk and Honey.”
In “Land of Milk and Honey,” Zhang’s “keen attentiveness to beauty, to the body, to passion, to human connection make [the novel] feel enormously hopeful,” Russell said.
Russell went on to highlight some of Zhang’s various accolades: the 2021 Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award, the 2021 Asian/Pacific Award for Literature, fellowships from MacDowell and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, among others. Russell noted that “this is an abridged version” of Zhang’s awards, eliciting scattered chuckles from the audience at the ironic lengthiness of the list.
Zhang took center stage, crediting Russell for being one of the former’s writing heroes. The Stein Visiting Writer joked that she wasn’t nervous about delivering her reading until after Russell introduced her: “Now I am because I don’t know how to possibly live up to that description.”
Zhang prefaced her reading by thanking students for their emotional openness, bravery and vulnerability when sharing their writing in her undergraduate writing seminar, ENGLISH 190V: “Reading for Writers: STRANGE ENCOUNTERS.” She then revealed that during this reading, she would be sharing a new piece — a rare occurrence for her.
In her reading, Zhang shared an excerpt narrated by a granddaughter telling the stories of her parents and grandparents. Using the granddaughter’s dislike for her own name as a springboard, Zhang explored the origin and importance of names. She painted the image of the narrator’s grandfather, who prioritized naming his newborn son over holding him, and gave up on searching for a dictionary only when “the birthing fluids had frozen into a red, purple mass.”
Zhang then teleported her audience members to a labor camp, bringing to life the struggles and fateful interactions that the narrator’s grandmother encountered, from drawing warmth from a rock on which she lay to remaining calm while being dragged around by soldiers.
Zhang built tension in her descriptions of how the narrator’s grandmother was manhandled by the soldiers, “as if she were one of the clever jointed dolls newly popular in the city she came from,” she said. The writer also meditated on the power of laughter in changing the mood of an entire room — even in a labor camp.
The Stein Visiting Writer then transitioned to the Q&A portion of the event.
She first encouraged an audience member to treat their writing “like a little baby alien” when asked for writing advice.
“[Your writing is] a creature that you just don’t understand yet,” Zhang said. “But it has its own vast intelligence, and you’re just trying to get out of this way and help it grow.”
When a student asked Zhang about how to “hold a whole novel in your head,” Zhang began by analyzing the premise of the question itself.
“First of all, you can’t hold the entire novel in your head,” Zhang said. “With each of my drafts, I try to find myself a North Star.” In an early draft, Zhang might just focus on the relationship between two characters.
“If I try to hold everything else in my head, I’m going to fail at that first task,” she continued. “A lot of this is just being at peace with the idea that everything takes a really long time and that no things are perfect.”
Knight Family Professor of Creative Writing and poet Aracelis Girmay asked Zhang about how the novelist deals with the dread that might arise when working on a piece that is more forced than enjoyable.
“Actually, I really love throwing pages away,” Zhang said. “I think it’s more of a psychological trick, where I would say that things that go in the trash were not useless. They were just something I had to get through.”
Girmay reflected on the novelist’s recommendation to embrace the unknown in writing and push back on predictability.
“When she talked about that dreadful feeling of knowing what would happen next… I was really thinking about how folks determine or come up with the conditions that help them have curiosity in their own writing,” Girmay said.
The night ended with Zhang reflecting on how her writing has impacted her personal growth: “Every book you write not only surprises you, but changes you,” she said.
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EDM artist Barry Can’t Swim to headline Frost Fest 2026Barry Can’t Swim is set to headline Frost Arts and Music Festival on April 11, bringing his talent and unique style for electronic music to campus.
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Electronic DJ and producer Barry Can’t Swim will headline this year’s Frost Arts and Music Festival, the Stanford Concert Network (SCN) announced Thursday. Better known as Frost Fest, SCN’s annual show will return to Frost Amphitheater on April 11.
Barry Can’t Swim, known as Joshua Mainnie offstage, has quickly risen to be a highly sought after artist in electronic music. Known for blending jazz influences and house rhythms, his work has earned critical acclaim and drawn large crowds across major festivals in 2025, including Coachella and HARD Summer. His 2023 debut album, “When Will We Land?”, helped solidify his rise, positioning him as a defining voice in the current wave of electronic and dance music.
Joining him as the opener of Frost Fest will be pop duo Frost Children, while the genre-bending indie-pop duo Between Friends will offer direct support.
According to SCN leadership, the triad was selected intentionally to reflect student listening habits while expanding the festival’s appeal to the student body.
“We polled a lot of people at the beginning of the year,” said Natalie Shtangrud ’26, one of the SCN directors. “We looked at Instagram polls, talked to our friends and analyzed what artists students were actually going to see. We also paid attention to what performed well at Frost last year, and there was a clear trend of students really enjoying DJs and house music.”
Planning for Frost Fest began as early as last summer, with artist selection taking shape by September. SCN organizers compiled data on student preferences, attendance trends and live music demand before narrowing down a list of potential performers.
“When it came down to it, we wanted to pick an artist we thought a lot of students would genuinely enjoy,” Shtangrud said. “At the same time, it was important that Frost felt like there was something for everyone. Bringing in Between Friends helps attract a different crowd and genre, which makes the overall experience more exciting.”
Advisor and former SCN director Johan Sotelo ’25 shared his excitement about this “genre shift” from previous years’ emphasis on pop and hip-hop music. “Electric and dance music does super well at Frost, and this will really be a show people can look forward to and dance at as the community kicks off Spring quarter,” Sotelo wrote to The Daily.
The 2026 lineup follows a landmark year for the festival. In 2025, SCN brought Doechii to Frost Amphitheater, marking the first sold-out Frost Fest in Stanford history. Austin Konig ’26, another SCN director, said that last year’s success helped “inform both the scale and ambition” of this year’s booking decisions.
Continuing the tradition of student involvement at Frost Fest, a Stanford student DJ will open the show. The DJ will be announced at a later date.
“We still wanted students to be a part of opening Frost,” Shtangrud continued. Selecting the DJ at a later date “felt like the most logistically feasible way to keep that tradition alive while working within our timeline,” she said.
Like last year, Frost Fest 2026 will be a closed show, meaning tickets are limited to Stanford students and affiliates. This year, however, each Stanford student will be able to purchase up to three additional guest tickets, an increase from last year’s two. Tickets will be available through the Frost website, with general sales starting on Friday, Feb. 20, at 10 a.m.
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A sustainability ‘Olympics’: Stanford hosts inaugural Global Sustainability Challenge’s Americas finalFour teams of Stanford participants advanced to the challenge’s Global Finale in April with innovative sustainability solutions.
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Two years ago, Arun Majumdar, dean of the Doerr School of Sustainability, was moderating a panel of university presidents from around the world when a question was raised: “What can we do together that we cannot do alone?”
In pursuit of an answer, Majumdar began to conceptualize what would become the Global Sustainability Challenge (GSC) — an “Olympics” of real-world sustainable solutions. Friday marked the Americas final for the inaugural GSC. 23 finalist teams from across North and South America competed, with six advancing to the Global Finale in April at Technical University Munich. Three teams of all-Stanford students advanced, as well as a multi-university team that included a Stanford student.
While students use their campus as a “living laboratory” to test sustainable solutions, such as reducing food waste and emissions or designing energy-efficient buildings, prior to the GSC there was little communication between universities, Majumdar said. For example, Stanford students might not know about the innovation happening on campuses in Munich, Germany or Mumbai, India. With this in mind, the concept of the GSC was conceived.
“The idea of competition is that people get people really excited, and people want to compete and do better than others, which is a good thing,” Majumdar said. “But at the end of the day, the purpose is not the winning and losing, but to create a network.”
Majumdar recruited the Doerr School’s managing director for mobilization and former edtech entrepreneur, Parul Gupta MSx ’24, to take the lead on building the GSC. However, the specifics of the challenge reflect a collaboration between all of its founding partners, including the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and Technical University of Munich, among others.
“The fundamental nature of [sustainability issues] is such that you have to work with others,” Gupta said. “It cannot be a centralized model where one institution or one place seeks solutions.”
Gupta said the first year of the GSC “has been incredible.” When the competition began in September 2025, over 3,000 students across 91 countries assembled teams and competed with ready-to-implement solutions.
“Change doesn’t happen if it remains in the classroom or in the lab,” Gupta said. “That bridge of crossing research into real-world impact is a hard one to cross, and is often not taught in universities. A [solutions-oriented competition] was a very intentional choice.”
Just as intentional were the two themes of the year, which doubled as categories in the competition: “Sustainable Energy” and “Adaptation & Resilience.” At the finals on Friday, posters describing projects’ research, development and implementation processes lined the walls of the Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge, while remote teams participated online. Judges pulled groups aside throughout the morning for tailored presentations on their project.
“It was a bit daunting [to present], because you have to bridge the gap between knowing 100% about your product as a team and having judges who are domain experts in their specific field,” Rudraksh Mohapatra ’27 said.
Competing in the “Adaptation & Resilience” category, Mohapatra was part of the all-Stanford team FloodMAP. By successfully innovating a low-power, self-sustaining sensor system that collects data to monitor and detect floods, FloodMAP will move on to the Global Finale. They are joined by team Electrocean, a three-person team including Faith Qin ’29, and all-Stanford team ResiliNet, comprised of Bhav Jain M.D. ’27, Srinidhi Polkampally M.D. ’28 and Anushka Bhaskar M.D. ’29.
ResiliNet created an AI-assisted platform that can allocate resources during climate disasters for hospitals in demand. Electrocean presented a solution to decimated oyster fisheries — a mechanically-engineered device that uses electrolysis to reverse ecosystem-damaging acidification. Or, as team member and Purdue University student Gabriel Boyd called it, “Tums for the ocean.”
“The GSC has given us good pressure and incentive to rapidly iterate our own device,” Boyd said. Central to Electrocean’s project was the need to combine the concerns of oyster farmers, affordability and practicality, with the simultaneous goal of revitalizing coastal habitats where food chains have begun to collapse.
In the “Sustainable Energy” category, teams Sea2Energy from the University of Puerto Rico, Junipero from Stanford and AmpliFi Energy from Columbia University advanced to the Global Finale. Sea2Energy’s project promotes converting mixed waste from the ocean into sustainable fuels or advanced forms of batteries, while AmpliFi Energy’s platform assembles portfolios of promising clean-energy startups and presents them to investors.
Team Junipero, composed of Daniella Fenster ’27, Miles Bliey ’27, Connor Hoffman ’27 and Panagiotis Papanastasiou ’27, met in the Explore Energy dorm during their freshman year. As engineering majors, they reunited to build two forms of power generation that can be deployed after an extreme flooding event. Their “microhydro” generator can be strategically set up by civilians or emergency personnel to harness the mechanical energy of moving water, while their saltwater fuel cell can generate electricity in still seawater.
It’s important, Fenster said, to innovate solutions that help people affected by climate change now, rather than solely developing commercial technology for the future. “Your technology does not have an impact unless you scale it and deploy it,” Fenster said. “We’re really excited about those next steps.”
Reflecting on the event, Majumdar focused on the legacy he hopes the GSC will build.
“I’m hoping more people will be interested in learning about [sustainable solutions] and in using what I call the biggest renewable resource, their mind, to innovate out of [challenges] and help their communities.”
Gupta said she hopes sustainability considerations extend beyond STEM majors or future GSC participants to the entire student body.
“Even if it’s not something you’re interested in professionally, do engage with it,” Gupta said. “Spend some time working with other students, talking to users and understanding the problems. That knowledge and awareness will serve you well in life.”
Correction: An earlier version of this piece misidentified the educational history of Parul Gupta and misnamed Gabriel Boyd. The Daily regrets this error.
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Bhattacharya M.D. ’97 tapped to lead the CDC amid leadership changeCurrent NIH director and former Stanford medical school professor Jay Bhattacharya M.D. ’97 will act as director of the CDC.
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Former Stanford Medical School professor Jay Bhattacharya B.A. ’89 M.A. ’90 M.D. ’97 Ph.D. ’00 has been tapped to serve as the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to two administration officials.
In March, Bhattacharya was confirmed as the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — a position he will retain while overseeing the CDC. The White House will select a nominee for permanent director of the CDC in the coming weeks, who the Senate must confirm before they assume the role.
By retaining his role as NIH director while overseeing the CDC, Bhattacharya will act in a rare dual leadership position at two of the federal government’s most significant health institutions. According to the New York Times, some former CDC officials have called the task “nearly impossible.” Bhattacharya entered his role at the NIH on March 25, following the organization’s cuts to Stanford funding by approximately $160 million per year.
Bhattacharya’s appointment is part of an ongoing reshuffling of Health and Human Services (HHS) department leadership orchestrated by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the White House.
The transition will mark the third leadership shift at the CDC in less than a year. Last summer, former CDC director Susan Monarez was confirmed by the Senate, but was abruptly removed from the position amid disagreements with HHS leadership over vaccine policy. HHS deputy secretary Jim O’Neill then served as acting director before his recent departure; he is now being considered for nomination to lead the National Science Foundation.
While a professor at Stanford, Bhattacharya rose to national prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as a vocal critic of widespread lockdowns, mandatory masking and other public health measures implemented to curb viral spread. He co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), which called for a strategy of “focused protection” rather than broad restrictions.
The GBD drew sharp rebukes from many public health leaders, including the head of the World Health Organization, who called pursuing herd immunity “unethical.” Trump advisor and senior Hoover fellow Scott Atlas, however, expressed his support for the declaration.
Two weeks ago, Bhattacharya notably endorsed the measles vaccine in the midst of the largest U.S. outbreak in decades and stated that he has seen no scientific evidence linking vaccines to autism.
The CDC itself has recently been at the center of high-profile controversies, including a reduction in the number of childhood vaccines recommended for universal administration and a re-evaluation of guidance on newborn hepatitis B immunization.
Bhattacharya himself criticized the CDC in an X post in 2024. “The CDC peddled pseudo science in the middle of a pandemic,” he wrote.
With public trust in the CDC’s guidance lower than in previous decades, Bhattacharya’s tenure will require his leadership to fulfill its mission to prevent and control disease.
The Trump administration indicated that it plans to nominate a candidate for permanent CDC director, but that individual will face a Senate confirmation process that has, in recent years, grown increasingly politicized. Until then, Bhattacharya will steer an agency whose work directly influences millions of Americans’ health decisions and outcomes.
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UGS addresses Caltrain passes, administrative pushback on reinstating land acknowledgementThe Undergraduate Senate (UGS) heard presentations from its members on GoPasses for students, administrative support of Stanford’s Native American community and the screening of a documentary on Katie Meyer.
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At its Wednesday meeting, the Undergraduate Senate (UGS) pushed for initiatives to provide GoPasses for students, better support Native American communities on campus and reflect on Katie Meyer’s story after a documentary screening on Monday.
The UGS heard a presentation from political action co-chair Laila Ali ’28 and deputy chair Minji Cho ’28 on their meeting with Stanford Transportation. Ali said that the meeting aimed to address Stanford Transportation’s lack of knowledge regarding undergraduate desires, claiming its primary focus is serving employees, faculty and commuters.
One focus of the presentation was the implementation of GoPasses, which allow unlimited free travel on Caltrain. Cho stated that Stanford Transportation attempted to provide GoPasses to students last year, but was unable to follow through because the passes are financed by employee fringe benefits, which are federally prohibited from use by non-employees.
“Legally and financially, Stanford could not extend [GoPasses] to students, and it was not because of a lack of interest. Stanford Transportation did want it to happen,” said Cho.
Ali added that for the upcoming year, Stanford Transportation is working on solutions to provide students with GoPasses, including negotiating a revised Caltrain contract to create a separate student transit designation and explore alternative funding sources.
“The goal is to launch [GoPasses] by next fall,” Ali said.
For next steps beyond the meeting, Ali said that Stanford Transportation will be adding undergraduate questions to its annual survey. “They’re adding questions about how often students are using CalTrain, what transportation issues they see, so that they get a better understanding of undergraduate needs,” she said.
UGS Chair David Sengthay ’26 also spoke about his meeting with Provost Jenny Martinez about reinstating the land acknowledgement at campus-wide ceremonies. Sengthay met with Martinez and Chief of Staff to the President of Stanford Michelle Bhatia alongside Stanford American Indian Organization (SAIO) co-chairs Adriana Young ’27 and Pauli’i Zidek ’27.
The University removed land acknowledgements from its campus-wide ceremonies in mid-September, a decision announced only in an administrative letter. In response, the SAIO released a public statement and petition that both the UGS and Graduate Student Council (GSC) unanimously supported.
Sengthay stated that the administration made no commitment to reinstating a land acknowledgement during the meeting. According to Sengthay, Martinez had said in their meeting that “ceremonies should reflect the research and academic mission of the University” and that “an institutional statement should avoid political signaling.”
Sengthay said he and the SAIO co-chairs proposed future actions that the University could take to support the native community in addition to reinstating the land acknowledgment. These included the expansion of Native studies, hiring more tenured Native American faculty, greater support for the Native American Cultural Center and Stanford Powwow and a scholarship for people working with the Muwekma Ohlone tribe. He added that Martinez seemed supportive of the idea of exploring pathways to improve recruitment and tenure lines for Native faculty.
Regarding the lack of commitment to reinstating the land acknowledgement, Sengthay stated that “the decision appears strategic and reputational in response to the current political climate.”
Chair of administration and rules Dan Kubota ’27, who also writes for The Daily, also gave a presentation recapping the screening of “SAVE: A Katie Meyer Story.” Kubota discussed planning the screening with director Jen Karson-Strauss, a process that began with a documentary review she wrote for The Daily. She also discussed the main objectives of the screening: raising awareness about mental health issues and rallying Stanford community members to advocate for Office of Community Standards (OCS) reform.
“People seemed to have a lot of good conversation… a lot of people were talking to people they didn’t come in with and the documentary really seemed to resonate with the audience,” Kubota said. She added that both the founder of the Student Justice Project Robert Ottilie ’77 and OCS interim director Lawrence Marshall were present at the screening.
“I think that we are at a point where we are ripe for change [in OCS policy]… I think this is something that not only advocates OCS reform, but also honors a member of our community whose life was taken too soon from us,” said Sengthay.
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Ask Your Asian Auntie: Internship applications are the worst!The internship grind is known far and wide. Asian Auntie addresses our reader and gives them some much needed advice. She certainly knows a thing or two.
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Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.
Q: Dear Auntie,
All my friends are applying to summer internships, and I don’t know what to do! I haven’t found any programs that are a good fit for me, and I’ve already missed a lot of deadlines. Do I just grind out applications for any program left? What would you do?
— Unemployed, In Tears at T.A.P.
Dear Unemployed,
Do not be in tears. They will be bad for your skin and then you will have the wrinkles. And then no one will want to hire you.
I do not envy you. My daughter told me in the Wall Street Journal that the job market is not so good for young people. I have a friend at tai chi with a son (studying to be an anesthesiologist — you can meet him if you want) who is “grinding out applications.” But, he is not having fun (Maybe if you meet him you can have fun together. Or at least you could teach him how to tuck in his shirt — if my son came to church looking like him, I would stop paying his tuition).
You can be like him, but you do not sound like you want to. So, I can see two options for you, but only the two options. I learned with my first husband only to give the two options to indecisive people. It makes things easier.
1) Get a job. Even if it is not Stanford University research or top consulting or finance position, you can still make money. Retail position shows strong character to the future employers. But not Starbucks. We boycott them.
2) But if you do not need the money, you can do anything. You can go back home to see your parents. They miss you. You can travel with them to see your grandparents. Or you can travel by yourself… to see your grandparents. There are so many life lessons to learn from your elders. You should take advantage of your time outside of school so when you return to Stanford University you are more focused and can get an internship next year. I know all your friends want the FAANG and the Top Five internships. But I wonder if they can cook five of their mother’s dishes? I wonder if they have five friends? I think for a young person, these are far more important than the internship position over the one summer. Because this is the only opportunity you have to be unemployed. Under capitalism you can work for the rest of your life. If you can afford it, do not rush into employment.
Otherwise, you can come volunteer at church with your Auntie. Many boys there, and a few even do know how to tuck in their shirts.
Good luck. Have some sliced apples, and all will be O.K.
Auntie
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Collective climate action is driven by positive messaging, Stanford research findsStanford researchers investigated which types of climate messaging are most effective in motivating people to take collective action, finding that focusing on past successes ranks the highest.
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Climate messaging is everywhere, urging people to recycle, vote, protest or rethink their daily habits. But which types of messages actually motivate people to take collective action on climate change? A study by Stanford’s Climate Cognition Lab set out to answer that question, testing 17 different climate message approaches to see which ones most effectively drive people to take action.
The study, published in January in PNAS Nexus, recruited 31,324 U.S. residents to undergo short “interventions” through online surveys. The prompts asked participants to complete randomly assigned exercises, from writing about the importance of protecting the environment for patriotic reasons to watching a video on three new climate policies. Researchers then offered opportunities to take different actions, which they grouped into three buckets: public awareness actions like signing up for newsletters, political actions like letter-writing to representatives and financial actions like donating.
“We came at this question from a broad need and desire to understand the state of the field,” said environmental behavioral sciences assistant professor Madalina Vlasceanu, a senior author of the paper. “There’s so much research… and we were still unsatisfied with the answer to our question: what works best to incentivize and motivate people to take climate action?”
The 17 interventions were selected through an open call that welcomed submissions from academics and practitioners. After receiving about 60 proposals, an advisory group helped narrow them down based on theoretical relevance and predicted effectiveness.
Across outcomes, the most consistently effective approach was what the researchers labeled collective efficacy and emotional benefits, which “tells people that collective action has worked in the past, it can work again, and participating can make you feel good and connected,” said lead author Danielle Goldwert, a Ph.D. student at NYU and Stanford research affiliate.
This intervention and the binding moral foundations intervention, which framed climate action as protecting the “purity and sanctity” of our land, were successful in motivating Republicans to take financial actions, such as donations and committing to divestment. This was a particularly noteworthy result, Goldwert said, for a group that is “notoriously difficult to engage on climate-related issues.”
Across the board, messaging focused on positive emotions outperformed those which focused on negative emotions. The guilt and historical responsibility intervention, for example, presented participants with information from a New York Times article about the collective responsibility of the global North for mitigating emissions. It did not significantly impact any advocacy outcomes.
“A lot of people, including myself, assumed for a really long time that you would need to scare people into action,” Vlasceanu said. “But it doesn’t work for these types of [collective action] outcomes.”
For Students for a Sustainable Stanford co-president Shreya Ramachandran B.S. ’25 M.S. ’26, the results felt immediately relevant.
“I would love to see everyone who works at a major nonprofit to look at what their current advocacy strategies are [and] look at who their target audience is,” Ramachandran said. “What is the type of reasoning and appeal that I’m making, and based on the literature, does that show that that works?
The research team hopes that their results will help policymakers and practitioners in the climate advocacy space make more informed decisions about what types of messaging they use. They created a web tool to display their data interactively, showing effectiveness filtered by audience characteristics.
“Different interventions will be effective depending on which outcome you look in, and also which population you look in,” Goldwert said. “You have to be specific about what exactly you’re trying to change.”
On campus, although SSS initiatives like zero waste and sustainable airport shuttles already have large uptake, Ramachandran plans to consider whether they could implement these different interventions to reach new populations of students.
She also pointed to potential challenges to bringing these results into the real world. “Most interventions that I see or put together are a combination of a lot of these [interventions],” she said, describing how groups could mix moral framing, bipartisan cues and co-benefits in a single pitch.
Vlasceanu and Goldwert say that translating controlled experiments to real life practice is the main obstacle ahead. The lab has worked to understand what drives people to take collective action in the moment. However, a bigger question remains: what happens when collective action actually takes place, and under what conditions does it change outcomes?
“What does it take to make progress on climate? What are the main barriers?” Vlasceanu said. “The next step is: what would it mean for a lot of people to take collective action? What else needs to happen to coincide with this movement?”
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