Is it Time to Abolish Greek Life?

stanford politics magazine STANFORDPOLITICS.ORG JANUARY 2021 | ISSUE 09

IS IT TIME TO ABOLISH GREEK LIFE? A LOOK INTO STANFORD’S SORORITY SYSTEM REVEALS PATTERNS OF HARM AND DISCRIMINATION

VACCINE DISTRIBUTION • INTERNET OBSERVATORY • BELARUSIAN PROTEST5

EDITOR’S NOTE Our second issue of the year arrives at a difficult time for our school and nation. With over 3000 Americans dying every day from the COVID-19 pandemic, a country recovering from the invasion of its capitol, and Stanford students once again prohibited from coming to campus, it is easy to despair on the future we face as undergraduate students. Yet I am continually inspired by the work our student journalists manage to undertake in the midst of these national crises. I am exceptionally proud of every writer who contributed to this magazine, with each author illuminating issues not commonly discussed in student journalism. While this issue has no central theme, each piece involves months of investigative work, interviews, and research and exhibits the high standard of journalism Stanford Politics strives to achieve.

Our cover story is an investigative look into Stanford’s sorority system and the activists groups hoping to abolish it.

After months of interviews and archival research, the piece illustrates the patterns of harm and discrimination within Stanford’s sorority system that have caused dozens of women to disafilliate.

The rest of the magazine addresses equally pressing and important issues relevant to our current political moment.

In his first piece for Stanford Politics, Justin Portela shines light on the challenges low-income countries will face in recieving the COVID-19 vaccine. Avery Rogers investigates the role of Stanford’s Internet Observatory in addressing disinformation, and Cat Buchatskiy writes on the changing social and political atmosphere in Belarus.

This magazine was only possible because of the countless hours our writers, editors, and designers dedicated throughout the past months. I am hopeful their words and ideas will resonate with and inspire many readers. And despite the challenges that come along with engaging in journalism today, I am hopeful our work will cement the trust and appreciate for quality student journalism.

Nathalie Kiersznowski Editor-in-Chief

MASTHEAD MANAGING EDITOR GREGORY BLOCK

EDITOR IN CHIEF NATHALIE KIERSZNOWSKI

CHIEF OF STAFF AVNI KAKKAR

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER TOM PFEIFFER

SENIOR EDITORS ROXY BONAFONT NIK MARDA

EDITORS BECCA SMALBACH AVERY ROGERS KYLE WANG PHOEBE QUINTON CAT BUCHATSKIY

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER SIERRA BURGON

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CONTENTS

70 PERCENT OF THE WORLD LIVES ON LESS THAN TEN DOLLARS A DAY. 03 WHEN DO THEY GET THE VACCINE? JUSTIN PORTELA

PROTECTING DEMOCRACY ONLINE

AVERY ROGERS

IS IT TIME TO ABOLISH GREEK LIFE?

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A Look Into Stanford’s Sorority System Reveals Patterns of Harm and Discrimination NATHALIE KIERSZNOWSKI

A NEW HOPE FOR BELARUS The Revival of Belarusian Culture in Europe’s Last Dictatorship CAT BUCHATSKIY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE COVER STORY Nathalie Kiersznowski (Author) is a current senior at Stanford University where she studies economics and political science.

Biata Shem-Tov (Photographer) is a currenst student at the University of South California, where she studies economics and music.

All in-text references are cited online at stanfordpolitics.org.

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An Interview with Stanford’s Internet Observatory

Stanford Politics is a student publication at Stanford University. All views expressed in the magazine are those of the authors and interviewees only and do not represent the views of Stanford University. Copyright © 2020 by Stanford Political Journal. All rights reserved. No original article or portion herein is to be reproduced or adapted to other works without the expressed written consent of the editor of Stanford Politics.

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70 Percent of the World Lives on Less than Ten Dollars a Day. When do they get the Vaccine?

Justin Portela

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n late February 1954, Arsenal Elementary School in Pennsylvania gained nationwide fame for hosting the first injections of the polio vaccine, which neutered a disease that had paralyzed 50,000 Americans in the year prior. By 1957, American Polio cases were down to three per 100,000, and by 1963, U.S. polio cases were nearly zero.

But much of the world never heard about Arsenal Elementary School. Take Sudan, a northern African country with a population of roughly 41 million, a little bigger than the state of California. In 1980, nearly all American infants were vaccinated against polio and the United States’ polio case count was essentially zero. In the same year, 1 percent of Sudanese infants were vaccinated, and the polio case count reached 286 per 100,000. Sudan wouldn’t go on to claim eradication of Polio until 2004, nearly 50 years after the first inculcations took place at Arsenal Elementary School.

And Sudan wasn’t alone in their struggle to eradicate Polio. The majority of the world didn’t eradicate the disease until the 1990s, 17 countries eradicated in the 2000s, and three countries—Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria—still have ‘endemic’ status from the World Health Organization (WHO).

These days, Arsenal Elementary School is closed due to a Covid-19 outbreak, as is the rest of the Pittsburgh elementary school system. As of January 9th, 2021, 92 of every 100,000 people in Allegheny County—the home of Arsenal Elementary—are dead of Covid-19. But, like in February of 1954, there is a flicker of hope, as the first shots of a vaccine have been delivered, starting with a nurse named Sandra Lindsay. Lindsay, 52, immigrated to Long Island from Jamaica in 1990, and was the first American woman to receive a vaccination against Covid-19 on December 14th.

Lindsay’s first words after receiving the vaccine were printed alongside her picture on the front page of the December 14th New York Times issue, an inspiring message of resilience and hope for a nation in hellfire. And Americans have every reason to be hopeful. Most experts estimate that the 10 percent of

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Americans will be vaccinated by the end of January, with the entire American population fully vaccinated between April and August of 2021, as hundreds of millions prepare for a mask-free summer. But optimistic forecasts and words of encouragements in American media mean little to citizens of developing countries like Sudan. On the day Sandra Lindsay received the Pfizer-BionTech vaccine, Sudan conservatively reported 263 new Covid-19 cases—as well as 15 new cases of Polio.

*** Vaccinations are a notoriously difficult problem for developing economies, with an average 10 to 15-year lag for low-income nations. Steve Luby, Professor of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases at Stanford, explains that because of the high cost, poor governance, supply chain deficiencies, and other regional issues, poor nations often receive vaccinations a decade or more after their rich counterparts. “You look at Hep B, childhood vaccines, Hib, Pneumococcal, and despite our best efforts to accelerate that recently, there’s still a long gap.”

And Covid-19 poses challenges that no vaccine has met before. There’s simply no historical comparison to the distribution problems posed during a pandemic, Luby explains, joking that “[t]he only time preceding Sars-Cov-2 that we’ve ever developed a vaccine during a pandemic was on the set of the movie Contagion.” But fortunately for those in rich countries, reality has begun to reflect Hollywood, with Pfizer and Moderna flying in with red capes to intercept the pandemic at its worst, as hospital beds around the country fill to capacity.

But the future is murkier for the rest of the world. Billions of people in low-income countries like Sudan and Bangladesh remain unsure how and when the vaccine gets to them, and other countries worry that they’ll be left out entirely (al illustrated in a map on the following page).

And if the world can’t figure how to share, people will die. As a healthy 20-year-old living in New York City, most estimates suggest that I’ll get my first-round vaccination around early April—meaning I’ll be vaccinated before the elderly in Bangladesh, first responders in Sri Lanka, and immuno-compromised people living in Nigeria. And while healthy people like me can feel protected from a disease with a sparse chance of killing me in the first place, at-risk people around the world will die unnecessarily.

One analysis published by The Gates Foundation imagined two scenarios: a cooperative scenario where the first 3 billion doses are distributed to countries based on population, and an uncooperative scenario, where 2 of those 3 billion vaccines are shelved exclusively by rich nations. The report found that in a cooperative scenario, 61 percent of all

VACCINE global deaths over the next year would be averted. But in an uncooperative scenario, only 33 percent of avoidable deaths will be avoided. With approximately 1.7 million deaths in 2020 and a conservative assumption that next year’s death count would be identical to this year’s in absence of a vaccine, the difference between a cooperative and an uncooperative distribution can be estimated at roughly 476,000 deaths globally. Few moral systems can justify killing three foreigners to save one of your own citizens, but unfortunately, this is precisely the ethical paradigm rich nations are operating under.

But in their race to stockpile, Luby explains that rich nations are shooting themselves in the foot by hampering equitable distribution. The United States, simply put, isn’t alone in the world, and a raging pandemic anywhere is still a threat to the safety of vaccinated countries. “There’s a clear justice argument, but there’s also a case of enlightened self-interest, and the rich nations need to understand that the world is better off if this virus isn’t spreading wildly,” Luby said.

First, because no vaccine is 100 percent effective, and across polls, only two-thirds of Americans have expressed willingness to get vaccinated. With that, once masks become a historical vestige and travel resumes to normal, Covid-19 outbreaks in foreign countries can easily spark outbreaks back home, especially among the unvaccinated. Luby explained that it’s perfectly possibly that travel from the United States to poor nations with high tourism traffic like the Dominican Republic could lead to Covid-19 reappearing on U.S. shores. And while some have suggested that these poor nations can eventually come to rely on herd immunity, Luby countered that there’s no secure evidence of how long antibodies from infections even last, especially as new strains pop up all the time—meaning that herd immunity might end up being something of a folk tale.

But even if the United States keeps its borders closed to travelers for the foreseeable future, those same outbreaks can distress the American economy without anybody getting on a plane.

In an increasingly globalized economic world, where nearly all of our goods are manufactured abroad, economic lag in poor nations can have spillover damage to high-income economies.

Even if Americans are back in schools and offic-

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Which countries will have COVID-19 vaccines widely available first? Rich ones.

When will countries have a vaccine widely available?

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Source: The Economist Intelligence Unit

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VACCINE es, if U.S. trading partners are still seeing business closures, full ICU beds, and hampered productivity, America can’t consider itself out of the woods. To quantify this, one RAND analysis found that unequal vaccine distribution could cost the global GDP roughly $1.4 trillion over the remaining life of Covid-19.

While the rest of the world sits and prays for the wealthy nations to divvy the pot up fairly, those same wealthy nations have spent their time doing the opposite. According to the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, with billions of dollars at their disposal, high- and upper-middle-income countries have collectively reserved nearly 5 billion vaccine doses, enough to vaccinate their entire populations multiple times over. The United States, for example, has entered into at least six of these bilateral deals, totaling more than 1 billion doses—more than enough to inoculate the entire American population. This leaves lowand middle-income countries like Sudan and Bangladesh, countries that house 86 percent of the world’s population, wondering when they can expect relief. Others, like those nations still struggling to battle polio, are left to fear that they’ll be left out entirely.

Take PV13, the series of Pneumococcal vaccines developed in 1980 to protect against Streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterium that can cause pneumonia, meningitis, and sepsis.

Eight years after the pneumococcal vaccine was created, poor countries had near-zero access to the vaccine, mostly due to the $50-per-dose price tag. But in 2007, GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines) established an AMC. In less than a decade, 54 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, were able to roll out the pneumococcal vaccine. Ultimately, an independent review by the Boston Consulting found that by 2015, the AMC deal had saved the lives of almost 300,000 children.

“THE REST OF THE WORLD SITS AND PRAYS FOR THE WEALTHY NATIONS TO DIVVY THE POT UP FAIRLY”

*** To understand the difficulty in vaccinating the population of developing economies, it’s important to understand what the world’s plan was in the first place. Introduce COVAX. Developed as a partnership between the WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, The Gates Foundation, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness, 179 countries, and the World Bank, COVAX is a global partnership designed to ensure affordable vaccine access to poor nations. COVAX works in two parts: 1. The purchasing pool. The pool works like a group of friends investing in a raffle with plans to split the winnings equally. Instead of individual nations purchasing their own supplies, COVAX members pool money into a collective pot, which is used to purchase and then redistribute vaccines back to member states, commensurate to their population and strength of their Covid-19 outbreaks.

2. The Advanced Market Commitment (AMC). The AMC pools funds from nations and NGOs to subsidize vaccine procurement for poor nations. This serves as an advance cash commitment for pharma companies, and a lifeline for poor nations, likely the only shot these countries have at securing hundreds of millions of doses that sell for $30 each.

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Thirteen years later, COVAX and its Advanced Market Commitment is the most promising outcome for low-income nations. In fact, COVAX is probably the only chance for these countries to access Covid-19 vaccines in a reasonable timeline. And COVAX is moving along in some very important ways. As of writing, COVAX’s AMC has just secured its 2020 funding goal of $2 billion, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were recently added to the COVAX portfolio, and private partnerships within GAVI have ensured that, if approved, 64 percent of the doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine will flow to developing nations through COVAX. In sum, by the end of 2021, COVAX plans to deliver two billion doses of safe, effective vaccines that have passed regulatory approval and/ or WHO prequalification. But here’s the rub: even if COVAX and AstraZeneca meet all of their stated goals, only 18 percent of the world’s population will be vaccinated by Christmas 2021.

And on paper, this seems to contradict the stated supply chain goals of the largest vaccine developers. Pfizer has stated capacity to produce 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021, Moderna to produce 1 billion, and Oxford to produce 3 billion — not to mention any other vaccines that get approved in the next 12 months. So by next year, we’ll have over 5 billion doses of vaccine, enough to vaccinate two-thirds of the world, and yet all estimates suggest we won’t even vaccinate one fifth.

The reason for the gap is pre-purchases, a fancy term for vaccine hoarding, which highlights the first major challenge that COVAX will face in the mission to eradicate Covid-19.

To understand pre-purchases, it’s important to understand how nations get vaccines in the first place. Right now, there are two major ways for a nation to get a vaccine on their shores. They can pool their money through COVAX and purchase a vaccine through the international market once it has gained WHO clearance, this being the choice of nearly every low-income nation. Or, instead of waiting for a vaccine to get regulatory clearance, a country can choose to pre-order dos-

VACCINE

es of a vaccine as it awaits approval, orders which pharmaceutical companies are more than happy to fulfill. Most of these purchases have been of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the first to be approved by multiple western nations, a vaccine of which 82 percent of the first doses will flow to countries housing only 14 percent of the global population.

And in some sense, pre-purchases are a double-edged sword. While COVAX only promises to purchase vaccines once they’ve been approved, preorders from rich nations infused the initial capital necessary for vaccine manufactures before they could prove efficacy.

But what isn’t a double-edged sword is the harsh strain of isolationism that has struck the United States in the final stages of the pandemic. COVAX is currently membered by all of the world’s countries save eight. Five of those nations are island micro-states, and the remaining four tally Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, and the United States. Trump primarily shunned COVAX because of its ties to WHO, but as of January 9th, President-Elect Joe Biden hasn’t yet made comment on whether he will join COVAX, although it has been reported that he has met with COVAX organizers about the possibility. So, in addition to hoarding vaccines through pre-purchases, the United States’ refusal to join COVAX could hobble it outright. For example, COVAX has expressed concern about meeting it’s $5 billion funding target for 2021, funding which serves as the linchpin of the plan to subsidize vaccinations for poor nations.

Even middle-income nations are playing keep away from poor nations. In early August, GAVI and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a plan to outsource production of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to the Serum Institute of India (SII), with plans to make hundreds of millions of doses available through COVAX at just $3 per dose. But, in late November, as the approval path began to illuminate for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, SII changed its tone sharply.

In a public statement, SII’s chief executive Adar Poonawalla took an ‘India first’ bent, saying “It’s very important we take care of our country first, then go on to Covax after that and then other bilateral deals with countries.”

Other countries face internal political issues, nations where Covid-19 has been politicized to the point of ruling parties ignoring the virus outright. In these countries, Luby explained, it will be difficult to persuade governing officials to allocate money to pay the steep prices these vaccines sell for, especially when most of these countries are already facing pandemic-induced recessions.

All of this comes in addition to the host of issues that have always plague vaccine deployment in poor countries.

Refrigeration and power are severely lacking in many low-income nations. As one United Nation report points out, health systems serving two-thirds of the world’s population do not have adequate refrigeration facilities, and 30 to 40 percent of the health centers lack access to reliable electricity. And, of course, simply having a vaccine in shipping creates isn’t the same as having it in people’s bodies. “There are anti-vaxxers everywhere, and so a vaccine is necessary but not sufficient,” Luby explained, citing an example of a vaccine that took five years to reach saturation in India after being held up by anti-vaccine advocacy groups.

And even though every moment is crucial, with 8,000 dead globally each day, the exact timelines and mechanisms for the majority of the world are murky. We do know that, thanks to contributions from the Gates Foundation, roughly 10 to 18 percent of the developing world will be vaccinated by the end of 2021. Per public health estimates, this will be probably be sufficient to vaccinate health care workers and the most vulnerable populations in these countries. We also know that the AstraZeneca vaccine will sell for roughly $3 a dose and can be stored at 2 to 8 degrees C, temperatures you could reach in your household freezer, making it a far better candidate for developing nations than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that most Americans will receive. And, in all likelihood, whether the United States joins or not, COVAX will be responsible for the distribution most of those doses.

Overall, for middle- to low-income countries, which house the majority of the world’s population, the AstraZene-

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ca vaccine should supply immediate relief in the coming year, but full safety for these populations is still years away. Especially since, as Luby explains, middle income countries face an especially difficult challenge: being too poor to purchase vaccines on the open market but too wealthy to receive the subsidies promised by COVAX’s subsidization. “For example,” he explained, “Thailand is a high-middle-income nation that still doesn’t have the Pneumococcal vaccine, and I suspect it will be a similar situation for the Covid vaccines.”

Yet still, the picture is bleakest for the lowest income countries. While 10 to 18 percent of the developing world will be vaccinated within 12 months, that’s only an average across countries, and that percentage could be near-zero for nations like Pakistan, in which poverty and civil conflict makes the penetration of any vaccine nearly impossible. Most of these poor nations lack even the supply chain for the AstraZeneca vaccine, with most estimates suggesting that these nations are one to two years away from having their most vulnerable populations inculcated, and three to four years away from a vaccine reaching their full population. And although miracles happen all the time, most poor countries will likely see no breakthrough until long after American stadiums are full and we begin treating Covid-19 as a pop culture relic.

Justin Portela is a gap-year junior studying symbolic systems and creative writing.

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INTERNET Shelby Grossman

Renée DiResta

Samantha Bradshaw

Protecting Democracy Online: An Interview with Stanford’s Internet Observatory

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n the wake of the 2020 election, we’ve witnessed the SolarWinds cyberattack by Russian nationals against US infrastructure, deep mistrust of US election fidelity, and an attack on the US Capitol Building spurred on by President Trump’s tweets and a plethora of extreme right social media accounts. Cyberspace has been a fraught place here and abroad, and several Stanford groups have worked to make the internet a safer place for us all. One such group is the Internet Observatory, a branch of the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Cyber Policy Center.

The Observatory’s goal, in the words of its research manager, Renée DiResta, is to study and develop solutions

Avery Rogers for the “misuse of the internet,” including election disinformation, trust and safety engineering issues and the social impact of web-to-web encryption. They have recently focused on the 2020 election in the United States and disinformation campaigns. I spoke to DiResta and two other researchers at the Observatory, Shelby Grossman and Samantha Bradshaw, about the nature of disinformation, election security and the Observatory’s role in preserving democracy and truth around the world.

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INTERNET Stanford Politics (SP): In broad strokes, how would you describe the impact of foreign election disinformation in the 2016 U.S. presidential election?

Samantha Bradshaw: I think this is a little bit of a complicated question, because we still don’t have very good evidence that what the Russians did actually had an impact. And when we do look to the things that people remember about the 2016 election – take the Pizzagate conspiracy, for example – we can say that these narratives worked in a sense, because a proportion of the American population still believes that Hillary Clinton and her campaign managers were involved in a pedophile ring.

What we do know in terms of impact [on the 2016 election] is very, very little. It’s really hard to draw the connection between someone seeing a post on Facebook and then changing their minds and going to vote Trump or deciding that they’re going to stay home and not participate in the election. There are lots of different factors that go into how people formulate their political opinion. It’s not something that just happens after seeing one piece of news or seeing one story.

And, you know, seeing that content online, it’s a mix of factors: our environment, the other kinds of media that we’re consuming, the friends that we have, the conversations that we have, the radio pieces that newspapers, the shows that we watch on TV. Measuring actual impact is really hard.

Oxford. We were analyzing what people were sharing and the lead up to the vote. On Twitter, we specifically looked at the quality of news that people were sharing. We found that in swing states, there was a higher proportion of what we call ‘junk news’ being shared by users. One hypothesis could be that these were the targeted areas where disinformation campaigns by domestic actors and by the Russians were being coordinated, because in the battleground states one or two votes can make a difference. So there are hypotheses about the impact and whether or not the Russians were successful in their campaigns. But there isn’t really any good concrete evidence. You don’t you have a control group, let alone a clear outlining of who saw what and what else was going on in their media environment.

SP: Do you think social media influence from Russia and other foreign actors had the same role in the 2020 election that it did in 2016?

“It’s definitely right-heavy.

If we look at the content coming out of Russia and its their disinformation campaigns, it was all about promoting Trump and attacking Hillary to undermine her campaign.”

The second challenge is that even if we do have a concrete example of something like the Pizzagate conspiracy, it wasn’t necessarily a Russian-based disinformation campaign.

It didn’t come directly from them; it started in 4chan and 8chan and some of those other more domestic channels.

There’s an overlap in what the Russians do and what is happening domestically. [Russia] will pick up certain narratives that will fit what they’re trying to do in terms of polarizing the US electorate and creating resentments towards the other side of the political spectrum.

There are bits of evidence that I would cite to say that, yes, Russia did have an impact, including some of the work that we’ve done on the computational propaganda project at

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Renée DiResta: What we saw in 2016 were influence operations that involved the creation of pages, fake accounts and dynamics in which the adversary created audiences of hundreds of thousands for its subversive propaganda accounts. And nothing on that scale was discovered this time around. What we saw instead were attempts to use residual assets that remained on the platform from previously disrupted networks, but they didn’t get any traction and their content didn’t really go anywhere.

There were still a lot of myths and disinformation that made the rounds, and there were still a lot of false stories and narratives and wild claims and allegations, but most of them came from hyper-partisan actors that were incentivized to participate in the process. That dynamic — of the allegations coming from somebody who is demonstrably American — means that it’s treated a little bit differently than a fake account owned by Russia, China, etc. With a state actor account, that content will come down under inauthenticity rules. If an American expresses the same opinion, particularly an influential American, there’s nothing inauthentic about that: it is a free expression issue at that point. And the question for the platforms is how to label it or address it without saying that it was an inauthentic account.

INTERNET SP: Who is targeted in foreign social media disinformation campaigns during U.S. election seasons? Is the disinformation applied evenly across demographics or concentrated on certain groups?

Bradshaw: It’s definitely right-heavy. If we look at the content coming out of Russia and its disinformation campaigns, it was all about promoting Trump and attacking Hillary to undermine her campaign. We also saw a lot of campaigns targeting Black American voters in order to suppress them from participating. There were a lot of demobilization messages going towards Black American voters, particularly because these are the groups that would tend to vote Clinton or be Democrats as well. A large part of the Russian campaign was tying into these pre-existing racial tensions that exist within the United States and demobilizing support among Black Americans.

SP: Can you describe the nature of disinformation campaigns beyond the American context?

Shelby Grossman: You can think of it as two buckets: there are foreign disinformation campaigns where a foreign actor is trying to interfere in another country’s politics. And then there are domestic operations with domestic actors trying to influence things in their own country. And you see both of these in much of the world. And you see both of these in much of the world.

In Africa, both types of operations have been found. At the end of last year, my team put out a report on Russian interference in a number of African countries. We found, in cooperation with Facebook, an operation linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been linked to social media meddling in the United States in 2016. This was largely a Facebook network that was targeting Sudan, Mozambique, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a bunch of other countries. These were Facebook pages and accounts that were pushing content supportive of the ruling party in those countries. In Mozambique, the pages were active during M o zambique’s election from last y e a r.

They pushed content that w a s in favor of the ruling party. It wasn’t fake news, per se, it was ju st hyper-partisan cheerleadi n g content — ‘the current president has done so much

to bring stability to Mozambique, that’s why he should be reelected’ – that kind of stuff. That kind of content is obviously problematic, not because it’s untrue; it’s not falsifiable. It’s problematic because the people who are running the pages are being deceptive about who they are, and they’re linked to another country.

But there have also been domestic operations in Africa and elsewhere. There was a Facebook takedown of a network of accounts, maybe a year and a half ago, that targeted Nigeria, and were linked to an Israeli digital marketing firm. But it seems like the operation was run by actors within Nigeria, and they had just outsourced their activity to this Israeli company. And then you have good old-fashioned domestic troll networks that are being paid by the government and that kind of stuff.

SP: In non-democratic societies where elections do not occur, what do foreign actors hope to achieve with social media disinformation?

Grossman: I was just working on a Saudi disinformation campaign that targeted Qatar. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are regional rivals, and there are dissident members of the Qatari ruling family who are living in exile in Saudi Arabia.

So the Saudi government created fake Twitter accounts for these individuals, and then used those sock puppet accounts to spread rumors of a coup in Qatar in May. These accounts were like, ‘Hey, I just heard like gunshots.’ They were basically using these accounts to try to make it seem

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INTERNET like the Qatari government was really weak. They’ll also try to mock the role of Qatar and the international community.

In the parts of the world that I study, it’s about trying to embarrass some political actor or bolster another political actor.

Do they have really defined goals in mind? I think often they don’t. I think often they’re just hoping to sway opinion and that it will have some long-term effects.

SP: Among the speculated goldmines of artificial intelligence (AI) development is content moderation on large social media networks. Do you think AI will be able to solve disinformation and election hacking problems on social media, and to what extent can it help?

Bradshaw: I think we definitely need AI to be a part of the solution. Given the extent to which content is uploaded and shared on the internet, we absolutely need better AI: better machine learning algorithms to be able to detect this information and take it down or prevent it from even being uploaded or shared in the first place. But I don’t think it’s the silver bullet solution to our problems. AI and the [machine learning] models right now are still really, really messy. We’re getting better at doing textual analysis and looking for patterns or identifying certain disinformation narratives, but it’s still not great. A perfect example of this is the Christ Church shootings. A lot of the video that the shooter had uploaded was supposed to be blocked by the platforms, but it kept reappearing and reappearing. People would slice and dice the video and insert segments of it into other clips to mask it so that it could continue to be shared. This is a good example of how AI isn’t good enough to stop the stuff that we have already identified as being bad, let alone the stuff that is new and not yet identified.

SP: How is content moderation handled in countries other than the United States? Do companies like Facebook successfully moderate content in other languages, especially rare ones?

DiResta: It really runs the gamut. The American election is unique in terms of its platform investigation processes. I don’t think that that’s been done for every election everywhere in the world with that degree of care. The challenge becomes: do the platforms have enough people who speak or read the local language to detect operations? Do they prioritize elections far enough in advance where they can find and mitigate things related to those particular elections? Do they apply the same standard? Our team looked at some actions in Guinea related to astroturfing that were directly connected to the ruling party. It was framed as ‘Oh, these are just volunteers who have made some pages and they’re just passionate locals

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who are producing this content,’ when in reality, that sort of behavior would be seen as highly manipulative in the United States, but that’s also potentially in part because of how our laws work here.

Grossman: Facebook and Twitter, especially over the past two years, have put a huge amount of effort into finding disinformation campaigns in other countries and making them public. Twitter is really the leader here, When Twitter does a takedown of a network link to a state actor, they actually make all the tweets or almost all the tweets public, so that you can go on a website right now and download these data sets that are linked to the Saudi government or linked to a digital marketing firm in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that has links to the government of the UAE. Every month Facebook is publicizing stuff about these takedowns. Just a few weeks ago, they did a takedown of a network linked to the Islamic movement in Nigeria, which has ties to Iran. I think there’s increasingly a lot of attention to find disinformation campaigns in other countries, which I think is awesome. I think the hope is that Google and YouTube move in that direction as well.

SP: What roles should be played by the U.S. government and tech companies when it comes to social media disinformation and influence by both foreign and domestic actors?

DiResta: Interestingly, it’s arguably harder for the government to step in and create [rules] because the government in the United States can’t regulate speech. Other countries have been a little more proactive in creating laws related to what can appear within their borders. Twitter has certain restrictions on speech related to Nazism and things that are illegal under Germany’s hate speech laws. That same speech is legal in the U.S., so there are certain tweets that will appear in one country that will not appear in another country because the platforms try to adhere to the laws of the land. That said, when we think about moderation of these things, the challenge is the platforms are quite powerful, so there is no democratic process that goes into the determination of how these moderation frameworks work.

There’s no point at which users really weigh in on the policy changes made or actions that they don’t agree with. So the question right now to ask about moderation is: when there are instances in which people believe that the platform has overstepped, is there redress for people whose accounts have been taken down? Facebook has begun to create this ‘Facebook Supreme Court’ dynamic in which these cases will be adjudicated.

SP: What would you like to see change within social media companies, government or society to make the internet safer

INTERNET

and more protective of democracies everywhere?

Bradshaw: Working more with researchers is a really good thing, but the platforms have still fallen really, really short. The datasets that the platforms curate for academics contain very little information about whether or not they’re representative samples. There are also restrictions on who gets access to do these kinds of studies. While the platforms are saying they’re working more with academic partners, they’re simultaneously closing access to their Application Programming Interfaces, which would allow for more independent data collection and analysis that doesn’t come from these predefined platform data sets. I see a lot of problems with these kinds of solutions to the disinformation problem as well. They’re doing the bare minimum, and it’s still very much in the interest of their shareholders rather than the interest of making our democracies and making our platforms a better place for democracy.

Grossman: I think in general that Facebook and Twitter are leading the way and being transparent about it. I think transparency is the most important thing so that people know what’s being taken down and what we can learn from these operations [to take down inauthentic behavior]. I think Facebook and Twitter are increasingly being really transparent about this. My hope would be that Google and YouTube move in that direction as well. I think YouTube is taking down stuff related to disinformation campaigns, but we don’t always know what is going on. They started being a little more transparent, but I think it’d be great if they could be more transparent and work with independent researchers who can analyze this kind of content before it comes down.

Avery Rogers is a senior junior studying Economics and Computer Science.

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IS IT TIME TO ABOLISH GREEK LIFE? A Look Into Stanford’s Sorority System Reveals Patterns of Harm and Discrimination

Nathalie Kiersznowski

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minah locked her bike and shuffled up the steps to Cemex Auditorium. Despite finals creeping around the corner, she took a study break to attend her sorority’s biggest philanthropy event of the year, Mr. Alpha Phi. The event was a male beauty pageant with men from a variety of fraternities and clubs performing for the audience to raise money for women’s heart health. As Aminah found a seat in the auditorium, though, her sorority’s philanthropy cause was the last thing on her mind.

Aminah — who asked to withhold her real name for personal reasons — was a sophomore at the time of the philanthropy event. As a freshman, she participated in rush and had been a member of Alpha Phi for almost a year by March 9th, 2018, the date of the event. Despite forming some great friendships through her time in the sorority, the year was also filled with pain.

Aminah alleges she was assaulted by a fraternity member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) earlier in the year. At a party, Aminah repeatedly told the member she had no interest in engaging in sexual contact. He proceeded anyway. Noticing Aminah’s distress after the encounter, the fraternity brother attempted to laugh off the event, saying that “it was for the boys.”

Aminah was weary of engaging with SAE after her assault. “But comparatively, I was fine,” she noted in an interview with me. “I mean I could mentally handle the event. Others had it worse than me.”

Leading up to the philanthropy event, Aminah was distressed to learn that one of the main performers in the pageant was a member of SAE. Many women in Al-

pha Phi didn’t understand his involvement in the pageant. “He wasn’t known as a great guy to women,” Aminah recalled. As his turn to take the stage approached, she shrunk into her seat.

The SAE member used the skit to joke about consent and sexual assault. In front of an audience of women, he noted that his perfect date would be describing all of the physical interaction he intended to have with a girl so he could gain consent before they engaged in sexual contact. “I’m a big consent guy, you know,” he joked. Furious and terrified, Aminah left the event.

“It was very triggering for me to listen to these guys joke about consent and joke about doing things for the boys after I had been assaulted by someone in the same fraternity,” she said.

After the event, many members of Alpha Phi began voicing concerns about their continued relationship with the fraternity. Several of Aminah’s friends had also experienced unwanted sexual contact at events held by the fraternity. Frustrated with the lack of action taken

by Alpha Phi, a cohort of women drafted a formal letter to their executive board, pleading for a termination or suspension of events with the fraternity.

This plea by many members of Alpha Phi would not end in the suspension of relations between their sorority and SAE, nor would it entail receiving an apology from SAE members for their rhetoric towards the sorority. The movement rather ended with Aminah and others resigning from the sorority, frustrated and distraught.

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Stories like Aminah’s are common at Stanford. Scores of current and ex-sorority members have recently begun voicing their negative experiences with sexual assault, classism, racism, and exclusivity within sorority life. Aminah has joined a growing group of Stanford alumni and ex-Greek life members campaigning for the abolition of sororities and Greek life on campus.

The group — known as Abolish Stanford Greek (ASG) — arose this summer in the midst of protests over the death of George Floyd. Inspired by the national uproar over racism in the United States, the cohort of Stanford students and alumni sought to abolish an institution they viewed as central to upholding racist, sexist, and classist ideals at Stanford.

The group immediately attracted hundreds of members, put out petitions, and created social media platforms to rally for their cause.

Calls to reform sororities are not new. Students have long campaigned to change Stanford’s sorority system, with varying amounts of success. Yet with the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting on-campus housing for the 2020-2021 school year, ASG has chosen an opportune moment to demand an end to Greek Life on campus. When undergraduates eventually return to Stanford, they may arrive at a campus with a radically different sorority system.

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ororities are some of the oldest organizations on Stanford’s campus. Sororities arrived at Stanford in the early 1890’s, just a few years after the university’s founding. Unlike most educational institutions during its time, Stanford was founded as a coeducational school with women included in its first class of students.

Sororities initially met a housing need among women at Stanford, rather than a social one. The university originally hoped all constructed dormitories would be suitable for the housing needs of students. However, when the construction of dormitories didn’t keep up with the growth in female enrollment in the early 20th century, female students turned towards sororities to meet their housing needs.

Social divisions from the sorority system soon erupted at the university. Female enrollment skyrocketed at Stanford during World War II, placing pressure on the sorority system to accommodate more women. No sororities were added to the university during this period, making the nine sororities on campus coveted places to live. Nearly 75 percent of women in the 1940’s went through the rush process, resulting in a process that was highly competitive, exclusive, and elitist.

Sororities regularly rejected the majority of applicants. Some women who failed to gain entrance to a sorority transferred or left Stanford.

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The University responded to the social competition and unrest surrounding sororities by banning them in 1944.

When the decision was announced to a packed auditorium of female students, cheers and songs sporadically erupted.

Sororities houses — which were originally operated outside of University control — were later transformed into general housing residences for women.

After growing pressure from several student groups on campus to create social spaces for women, the Board of Trustees reversed the 34-year ban on sororities in 1977. Six sororities had formed on campus by the year’s end, with over 200 women becoming sorority members. University policies were at odds with providing housing for the organizations; In the late 1970’s, most national sororities had policies that required sorority houses to be owned by the national chapter. However, Stanford policy dictated that all on-campus housing would be owned and operated by the University. For nearly two decades, sororities existed as social, unhoused groups.

That changed in 1993, when the University announced a proposal that would enable sororities to bid for houses presently occupied by fraternities. The policy resulted in several sororities gaining housing by 1998. Despite initial worries among sorority members that they would not be able to fill their houses, recruitment heavily increased among sororities, leading to most organizations turning down women at their rush events. To this day, Stanford has managed to retain ownership over the houses despite traditional requirements that national organizations own the properties. This unique arrangment gives Stanford more power over its Greek system compared to other Universities.

While the first century of Stanford sorority reform centered around housing, the last two decades have seen the organizations take on other obstacles. Brock Turner’s rape of an unconscious woman at the Kappa Alpha fraternity house sparked conversation surrounding sexual assault and Greek life at Stanford. Stanford instituted a number of regulations

A Stanford Daily article against sororities in 1943 | Stanford Daily

SORORITIES

Stanford Sorority Members of Kappa Alpha Theta in 1897 | Stanford Libraries

from 2014 to 2015 to combat sexual assault by fraternity members (nation wide, men in fraternities assault women at three times the rate of non-fraternity students). In 2014, Stanford announced that “one sexual assault by a fraternity member will lead to a loss of housing privileges for the entire fraternity.” However, few actions were taken to provide alternative social spaces for women, such as working to end the ban on sorority houses hosting parties.

The last few years have also seen a call for increased diversity in Greek life. In 2014, Jackie Fielder ‘16 launched the Greek Life Diversity Coalition, which sought to “address discrimination against students from marginalized backgrounds” in the rush process. The coalition helped institute diversity training events before the commencement of the sorority rush process and established ‘diversity office hours’ to assist prospective members of Greek life. When asked whether the Stanford administration still requires diversity training before the rush process, the University declined to comment.

Despite calls to reform Greek life over the last decade, sorority life has increased in popularity among Stanford women. Sororities on campus saw a 123 percent rise in enrollment between 2008 and 2018. Stanford points to the need for increased social spaces and connections among students as an explanation for the rise in the popularity of sororities. Members of housed sororities also get access to private chefs and better housing choices, heightening the appeal of joining.

2020 started out as a significant year in solidifying the presence of sororities on Stanford’s campus. In March 2020, two sororities — Chi Omega and Kappa Kappa Gamma — were awarded houses previously occupied by fraternities, bringing the total number of housed sororities to five. Although COVID-19 disrupted the transition of housing in 2020, the 2021-2022 school year may see a large increase in the percentage of female undergraduates residing in Greek housing. Yet 2020 has also resulted in significant threats to the existence of sororities on campus: for the first time since 1944, calls for the university to reform Greek life may result in the end of Stanford sororities.

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SORORITIES

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espite decades of anti-Greek sentiments at Stanford, no large movement or organization had ever been formed dedicated to its abolition. That changed this summer.

2020 presented a unique opportunity for students and alumni to imagine a future without Greek life at Stanford. The COVID-19 pandemic prevented Greek organizations from participating in Rush during the school year, adding no new freshmen to their communities. When presented with the idea of virtual rush, most shied away from it.

The summer also saw heightened national dialogue surrounding issues of racial discrimination and white supremacy. Many Stanford students jumped to social media after the killing of George Floyd, voicing support for social movements and demanding policy changes on a wide range of issues.

Social movements throughout 2020 inspired Stanford students to discuss how institutional racism had affected their college lives. Experiences with Greek life arose as a common point of strife. Social media groups formed where Greek and non-Greek students lamented the racist, classist, and sexist incidents they had experienced within Stanford’s Greek system. Groups of students began to jointly imagine a Stanford without Greek life.

“I would say it was really organic, and definitely kind of came out of pandemic conversations on social media,” said Sylvie Ashford, a Stanford senior and member of Abolish Stanford Greek. During the summer, Ashford began publishing her thoughts regarding Greek life on social media.

To her surprise, dozens of friends and recent Stanford alumni messaged her regarding her post. They expressed similar sentiments regarding their experience with Greek life at Stanford and asked if there was a movement they could get involved with. “I told them I wasn’t aware of one, but I’d love to get something started,” Ashford said.

Ashford soon learned that a group of former and current Stanford students in favor of the abolition of Greek life had been forming through word of mouth. The group was founded by recent Stanford Greek alumni, including Marin, a former member of Pi Beta Phi. Inspired by national dialogue on social justice in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, Marin

sought to spark conversations on white supremacy, race, and inequality within her Stanford social circles. She posted a message in the Stanford Pi Beta Phi alumni Facebook group calling for members to deactivate because of what she described as the organization’s history of racism, misogyny, and heteronormativity. To her surprise, the post struck a chord.

“A bunch of people reached out after the post,” Marin noted. “So I ” started this informal Facebook group chat for Pi Phi alumni and current members speaking out about [Greek life].” The group eventually connected with others like Ashford and engaged in informal conversations about what it would take to abolish Greek life at Stanford. From these conversations, Abolish Stanford Greek was born.

Abolish Stanford Greek is a group of students with a wide range of experiences at Stanford. It includes alumni and current students, students who had been Greek members and those who had not, and even students who were still affiliated with Greek organizations. Organizing throughout the summer, they developed a structured campaign to demand the end of Greek life at Stanford.

While the group was founded by a few key actors, Abolish Stanford Greek has no single leader or president. They prefer to keep a horizontal structure that allows for the input of every member. The group is loosely organized by various subcommittees to allow its members to pursue abolition through a variety of avenues. A core leadership team runs weekly meetings, manages their Slack channel, and drives the communication strategy for the group. Another team runs their Instagram and social media pages, while the ‘administration pressure team’ is formed of students that regularly meet and discuss the issue of Greek life with Stanford’s administration. There is even a team dedicated to imagining the many social and housing alternatives to Greek life in the future.

The structure allows “people to join whatever effort interests [them] most,” Ashford said. It has also allowed the groups to gain an impressive social following after only launching months ago.

The group went public on August 6th and officially adopted the name ‘Abolish Stanford Greek’. In a letter in The Stanford Daily, Abolish Stanford Greek argued that Stan-

“Conversations with Abolish Stanford Greek members unearthed a distinctive characteristic among participants of the movement : It is composed almost entirely of women.

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SORORITIES ford’s Greek organizations were not exceptional compared to Greek organizations at other universities. The letter listed the group’s primary motivations for abolishing Greek life, including the racism perpetuated by the organizations, the inherent clacissm associated with Greek life’s exclusivity, and the problematic relationship between sexual assault and Greek life. A petition put out by the group garnered over 600 signatures in a matter of days, signed by students, alumni, and professors.

Abolish Stanford Greek launched their Instagram account the same week. The account serves several purposes, such as helping Greek members disaffiliate from their organizations and posting updates on the group’s progress. Yet the most notable use of their social media comes from the anonymous sharing of Stanford stories surrounding Greek life.

The group posts daily accounts of Stanford students’ experiences with Greek life on campus. Some submissions detail experiences with sexual assault at fraternity houses, portraying the Greek system as inherently protective of social status and brotherhood rather than the safety of women. Other submissions discuss the classist undertones of the sorority rush process. Many people of color have used the platform to describe the consistent microaggressions they experienced while in Greek life.

Conversations with Abolish Stanford Greek members unearthed a distinctive characteristic among participants of the movement: it is composed almost entirely of women. There are a few prominent men who have come out in support of the movement to abolish or reform Greek life; Terrell Edwards ‘21 recently stepped down from his role as Stanford Interfraternity Council (IFC) President to voice his support of an ASSU Senate resolution to dehouse Greek life.

Yet the vast majority of Abolish Stanford Greek organizers and supporters are ex-Greek and non-Greek life women.

The submissions on the Abolish Greek Life Instagram page also primarily detail the negative experiences of women and non-binary students within the Greek system.

“People supporting us, in general, tend to be largely women and non-binary folks. And I think that’s for a couple reasons,” noted Marin. “Women are just more directly harmed by this system than men. Women are sexually assaulted. Women are graded and judged and shamed and all of these things. And the system largely caters to men: what they want, their needs, and their fun.”

Abolish Stanford Greek’s membership presents a paradox. Until COVID-19, sorority membership at Stanford had never been more popular. There were more housed sororities on campus than anytime since the 1940s. The number of women participating in Rush significantly rose in the last decade. Yet countless women used their summer months to actively campaign for the end of the Greek system. Why are

Stanford women now calling for an end to Greek life? And what do their experiences look like within the Greek system?

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tanford women gain their first exposure to the Greek system during rush. For most women interviewed for this piece, this half-week was their most scarring memory from their time in Greek life.

Every Spring, hundreds of freshman girls walk up the stairs of Tresidder to begin the three-day marathon known as rush. The afternoon begins with freshmen girls running through the hallways of dorms, sharing accessories with friends and putting on makeup together to prepare for the day. A parade of nervous 18- and 19-year-olds walk in cohorts together from the freshman dorms, wearing nice shoes, clothes and jewelry to prepare for the day.

After a brief opening ceremony at Tressider, the girls are whisked into straight lines and marched around campus. They visit a new sorority every hour for a grueling seven-hour day.

Unlike the fraternity rush process, potential new members (PNMs) — the nickname sororities give to women rushing — are not allowed to talk to whomever they’d like at each visit.

They are instead assigned a sorority member to talk with for four to five minutes, after which they are passed off to someone else. Every minute of the conversation matters, as these three days will largely determine the social reality and housing opportunities of each girl for their entire Stanford experience.

It is hard to verbalize exactly what ‘qualities’ sororities look for in PNMs. Unlike other exclusive student groups — such as a cappella groups, club sports, or investment clubs — women are not picked based on interest or talent in a specific area. Stanford Politics reached out to seven sororities to ask what criteria they judge new members on, none of which agreed to comment. Unbeknownst to most PNMs, though, many important steps of the recruitment process are made before rush begins.

“They make a list before recruitment even starts with people that they want,” noted Kristen, a former member of Alpha Phi who asked to withhold her last name for professional reasons. “The voting structure [during rush] didn’t actually mean anything, because they already knew the people that they wanted before it even started.”

Another former member of Stanford Greek life who wished to remain anonymous for professional reasons noted that, in her sorority, “you were allowed to submit names in a Google Form to the recruitment team and be advisors of people that you thought would be a good fit. Then they put those names into a spreadsheet.” Marin agreed, remembering that “all of the members had people that they wanted in” before rush

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SORORITIES

THE RUSH PROCESS Potential new members (PNMs) attend an orientation on Monday night where they hear about the structure and rules of rush.

Sororities choose which PNMs to invite back and which to cut. PNMs visit anywhere from 1-7 sororities and hear about each organization’s philanthropy.

PNMs arrive at tressidor throughout the day to pick up an envelope with their bid to a sorority. All PNMs recieve a single bid.

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DAY 1: ORIENTATION

DAY 2: OPEN HOUSE

PNMs visit all seven sororities in a seven-hour period. Each PNM talks with 4-5 sorority sisters at each visit, with conversation partners being pre-arranged.

DAY 3:

PHILANTHROPY

NIGHT

DAY 4: PREFERENCE NIGHT

DAY 5: BID DAY

Sororities make another round of cuts and invite back a select number of PNMs to their final, formal event.

Most PNMs attend 1-3 formal events this night.

started. In Pi Beta Phi, she said, “it was all about connections.”

Many of these connections made between freshmen and upperclassmen Greek members happen in spaces not normally accessible to low-income students. Greek Women meet potential new members “in Stanford Women in Business, or they go to Soulcycle together, or they are in the same clubs or venture capitals,” noted Marin. Greek members also advocate for girls that went to the same high school as them during the rush process. Because of lack of connections, freshmen from poorer and lesser-known schools face heightened obstacles getting into housed or ‘top’ sororities.

The information gap between various cliches and communities makes the process inaccessible to many, especially those who are not well connected to the Greek community.

Class is also accentuated during the three-day rush process. Potential new members signal their class and wealth through a variety of methods, from wearing expensive designer clothing to mentioning their hometown. “If you are bonding with someone over what bracelets you are wearing or where you vacation, it’s all very geared towards bonding with someone of higher socioeconomic class,” noted Jazlyn Patricio-Archer, a former member of Delta Delta Delta.

Women are allowed — and sometimes encouraged — to ask about financial aid options to cover the several hundred dollar expense of sorority membership. However, admission of one’s lower-socio economic class may harm their chances of admission to certain sororities. During Kristen’s time in Alpha Phi, the sorority had specific protocols to follow for financial aid-related questions during rush. The rush chairs hung a single financial aid pamphlet in part of the rush room. When low-income PNMs asked about aid, sorority members were required to “walk them across the room to the paper on the wall. So everybody in the room sees you walking this person over to a paper to look at financial aid, just singling them out even more.” When reached out to, members of Alpha Phi declined to comment for the piece or explain new rush policies they were adopting.

Understanding why freshmen of similar socioeconomic and racial backgrounds are, year after year, sorted into the same sororities may have less to do with rules and signals than simple social aspects that accompany growing up with wealth. Amy, a former member of Stanford Kappa Alpha Theta, noted that it was easier during the rush process to connect with women who shared similar socioeconomic identities.

“You will naturally connect with people who look like you or have similar backgrounds,” noted Amy. “So in your five to eight minute conversation with a potential freshmen, if you went to the same school, played the same sports, have traveled to the same places ... you can connect on things that are very class-based, that automatically gives you something

SORORITIES to talk about and something to connect over.”

It is difficult to address the reality that women of particular backgrounds may subconsciously prefer to surround themselves with those of similar experiences. After coming back from one discussion on unconscious bias and diversity training during a Kappa Alpha Theta chapter meeting, Amy recalls her sorority sisters bemoaning the purpose of the meeting.

“Yeah, it’s cool that we talked about it, but we all know nothing’s gonna change,” one member joked.

Many women enter Greek life with the ambition to reform it. They are often prevented from doing so not by fellow sorority members but by representatives from their national chapters. Most sororities and fraternities on Stanford’s campus have national affiliations. As a result, their decisions are directed in part by people outside Stanford.

For some sororities, this national relationship defines almost everything about the chapter. Noor Fakih ‘22 — who served as the recruitment chair and later President of Alpha Chi Omega (AXO) from 2019-2020 — noted this toxic relationship with the national chapter was her primary reason for leaving the organization. According to Fakih, the national representatives dictated nearly every detail of the AXO rush process.

“Formal recruitment headquarters refused to let us plan to wear white dresses because ‘our women have certain body types that shouldn’t be seen in white,’” Fakih noted. “They also wanted me to police the women ... they told me that if they have a pear shape then they should wear this style of dress and if they have an apple shape then they should wear this style.”

This type of micromanaging continued after the recruitment process as well. According to Fakih, AXO national representatives were incessantly concerned with how the Stanford chapter presented themselves on social media. Everything was centered around “how we can look good and what would look good on Instagram. This translated to them telling me that I need to filter and edit images and advice such as using the ‘classic’ sorority filter. There was an inherent misunderstanding that we couldn’t do that because that filter only looks good on white people.” When reached out to, national members of AXO did not respond to questions about their rush process.

Alpha Chi Omega was not unique in its relationship with the national chapter. Members of Pi Beta Phi, Kappa Alpha Theta, and Alpha Phi noted they had national members present with them during their rush process. When asked about the role of national advisors in their sorority, a representative from Chi Omega responded that “we technically aren’t able to give comments to media, including school publications.” Still, former members of Chi Omega have previously claimed in The Stanford Daily that their national representatives actively campaign against providing more financial aid for sorority members, as “these efforts would lower the value of being in the chapter.”

While most natinoal representatives serve in an advisory role, some take active part in choosing which freshmen were admitted to the sorority. Despite having a system which allowed every member to submit feedback on potential new recruits, final decisions on the admission of new members into Alpha Phi was reportedly only made by those in leadership roles and were heavily influenced by national representatives.

Kristen noted that “a really small group of people at the top, who are mostly not students” often ignored feedback from the chapter and chose new members based on other ‘criteria.’

While some view the Stanford rush process as inconsequential and superficial, its results shape the experiences and opportunities of many Stanford women throughout their undergraduate careers. Gaining entrance to a housed sorority also means having access to private chefs, superior living options, and a consistent community of support for three years.

Men in housed fraternities experience similar advantages, getting to live on the row for up to three years as a reward for their successful admission into these social groups. This reality has existed at Stanford for decades, as explained in a satirical student column in The Stanford Daily from 1998.

According to Ashford — a leading member of Abolish Stanford Greek— the Stanford rush process is one of the key factors driving the movement to abolish the Greek system. “If

A Stanford Daily article against housed Greek life from 1998| The Stanford Daily

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SORORITIES you look at the rush process, you have to think, what determines the composition of these groups? What is the basis for selection? It’s a prejudice basis.” When asked about possible reforms to change the selection of the groups, Ashford replied: “Exclusivity is a feature, not a bug. And so is the classism, racism, and sexism that comes with Greek life.”

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early every current and former sorority member interviewed for this article highlighted that, despite the negative reality of rush, they relished getting to know an impressive and supportive group of women. From having talks on sex positivity to hosting women-only events, sororities provided a safe place for many women at Stanford. However, Stanford sororities often still fail to protect women’s sexual and physical health and safety.

Unlike fraternities, Stanford sororities are restricted from hosting parties. This restriction, commonplace around the nation, is imposed by the national chapter of each sorority. As a result, sororities are largely dependent on fraternities for social experiences. Sororities cater to fraternities, relying on them for invitations to events and parties. “In order for sororities to be popular, they have to have the most fun social calendar. And that’s entirely dependent on fraternity,” remarked Kristen.

Freshmen women are encouraged to engage with fraternities from the moment they enter a sorority. Sororities bring their new members to parties hosted by fraternities on bid night, the first large Greek social night after rush. The night is meant to be fun and light-hearted, but also gives fraternities an opportunity to interact with the younger sorority members for the first time. Reflecting on the event, ‘Anna’ - a former member of Kappa Alpha Theta who wished to remain anonymous - recalled that “the older girls were basically presenting the young pledges to the frat boys to hook up with them … When they bring in the new pledges, you know, it’s a little weird to be like, ‘Oh, you are the men I’m supposed to socialize with and in theory hook up with.’”

No women interviewed for this piece claimed that the majority of events and relationships between sororities and fraternities were problematic; most interviewees noted they enjoyed using fraternity parties as social outlets. However, some subtle mechanisms within Greek life prioritize preserving this social outlet over the comfort and safety of some women.

Many sororities have point systems that require their members to attend a certain number of events. If women don’t meet a point threshold, they may face certain consequences and be barred from events like formals or Special Dinners. Women uncomfortable with the men their sorority chooses to socialize with often have few other choices to fulfill their social attendance requirements.

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This was the dilemma Aminah faced after the 2018 Mr. Alpha Phi event. Following the event in which an SAE member openly joked about sexual assault, a coalition of Alpha Phi members submitted a letter to the executive members in the sorority.

They requested that Alpha Phi temporarily suspend future events and interactions with the fraternity and asked the sorority leadership to file a complaint with the Office of Student Engagement detailing the actions of the fraternity member. To address the issue, national representatives from Alpha Phi met with the executive team during the Spring of 2018.

In the end, no retribution was taken against SAE by the president or other members of Alpha Phi, nor was the sexual assault comedy skit from the philanthropy night discussed and acknowledged in Alpha Phi’s chapter meeting following the event.

Despite a large coalition of Alpha Phi women pushing their sorority’s leadership to end all future interactions with SAE, Alpha Phi’s social calendar contained four events with SAE in the 2018 spring quarter alone. Alpha Phi’s continued reliance on SAE drove Aminah to eventually leave her sorority.

“You need points to remain in the sorority, and the best way to do that is by going to events,” Aminah notes. “We were being coerced to hang out with these guys who don’t believe in consent.”

Aminah is not alone in her experience. Other Stanford women have lamented that the social reputation of their sorority was prioritized over the safety and preferences of sorority members.

On January 28th, 2020, Lizzie Ford ‘20, the former diversity chair of Pi Beta Phi, published an op-ed in The Stanford Daily detailing her experience in Stanford Greek life. Ford’s op-ed stirred conversation on campus, sparking dialogue on the reforms necessary in the Greek system. Her writing particularly brought attention to her sorority’s willingness to focus on its relationship with fraternities over the comfort and safety of its members.

In the piece, Ford alleges that Pi Beta Phi allowed a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity to reside in the sorority house for a week despite the sorority’s prior knowledge of this member’s assault against Ford. The Sigma Chi member, who reportedly hit Ford during her freshman year, was chosen to stay in the house during the annual Pi Beta Phi-Sigma Chi swap event. Despite several members of the Pi Beta Phi committee having personal information on the history of Ford’s assault, he was nonetheless welcomed into the house.

Greek life thus poses potential harm to women through both the fraternity and sorority systems. Women in Greek life are much more likely to be assaulted during their time at Stanford than women not in Greek life. Nearly 14.5 percent of women in Greek life will experience non-consensual penetration by physical force or inability to consent before they leave Stanford, compared to 7.4 percent of non-Greek women. Despite living in a community of women, the unique structure of Greek life also provides incentives for sororities to prioritize the social standing of their organization over the safety of its members.

Pressure to uphold certain images and cater to fraternities also results in other issues within the sorority system. “I saw a ton of the girls in the house develop eating disorders and have Greek

SORORITIES

Apha Phi’s Social Calendar From April - June 2018. Source: Nathalie Kiersznowski

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SORORITIES life really negatively affect them,” recalled Anna. “If you don’t have a strong sense of self, you can get wrapped up in the social climbing pressure, you know, like a hamster on a wheel. So eating disorders were a big problem in the [Theta] house.” Indeed, a common problem discussed on the Abolish Greek Life social media page is the rampant issue of eating disorders plaguing women throughout the Greek system.

Many Stanford students and alumni are dedicated to abolishing Stanford’s Greek system because of the unexpected harm it does to students inside the system. For Ashford and the Abolish Greek Movement, beyond campaigning to end Greek life for its exclusive features, they lament that the system “causes pain to the members of Greek life themselves.”

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he Abolish Stanford Greek movement has garnered significant attention on social media. Yet its message has not been universally accepted on campus among women. Many women acknowledge the issues embedded in the Greek system, but most don’t see abolition as the right path forward.

In response to the ASG coalition, sororities announced a wide range of efforts they plan on adopting to address issues of class and race often present in the Greek system. Some sororities are pushing towards abolishing legacy preference and discontinuing their relationship with their national chapter. Others, like Alpha Phi, have pledged to increase resources toward anti-racism and diversity training. Alpha Chi Omega decreased dues this year to make the chapter more accessible to low-income students. In response to criticism from current and former members, Pi Beta Phi established an anonymous reporting system to allow members to report acts of discrimination.

Before COVID-19 disrupted the 2020 Spring Rush, the Inter-Sorority Council had also planned to transform certain aspects of the recruitment process to ensure it was more inclusive and compassionate. Adithi Iyer — the former President of the Inter-Sorority Council — led the campaign to change rush at Stanford.

“We wanted to provide uniform dress [codes] for girls going through recruitment to reduce bias based on attire, which often discriminates on socioeconomic status,” Iyer recalled in her interview. “I was also working with some brilliant women to reimagine our matching algorithms to improve fit and reduce bias on both the chapter and Potential New Member sides.” Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic halted attempts to implement these and other changes, such as restructuring the rush process to focus on philanthropy.

While the rush process may see reforms, it also important to note that, for many women, rush was an enjoyable process.

Tilly Griffiths — who uses a wheelchair for mobility — noted in a Stanford Daily op-ed that the Inter-Sorority Council worked tirelessly during the recruitment process to ensure her

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needs were met. “I found the whole weekend to be a thoroughly enjoyable experience ... I came away feeling enriched by the conversations I had and increasingly excited about the prospect of joining one of these groups of inspiring women.” ASG’s desire to portray the Rush process as a monolithic, negative experience certainly conflicts with reality.

Others claim that issue of sexual assault commonly associated with the Greek system will not dissipate with the abolition of sororities and fraternities. The levels of sexual assault experiened by sorority members may well be a symptom of Greek life’s relationship with alcohol rather than the problematic nature of fraternities.

While less than 80 percent of non-greek students reported drinking during their time at Stanford, 95 percent of greek members reported drinking. Further, when asked in a survey, 58 percent of greek members reported binge drinking one or more times in the past two weeks. Nation-wide, over half of sexual assaults reported on college campuses involve alcohol or some level of intoxication. Investigating the prevalence of sexual assault in non-Greek environments with heavy alcohol consumption, such as self-operated row houses, may help clarify the relative contributions of alcohol and Greek culture to sexual assault among fraternities and sororities.

Finally, while ASG believes abolishing Greek life on campus will reduce socioeconomic gaps between students, ending Greek housing may do the opposite. Eliminating Greek housing and organizations may encourage the adoption of off-campus housing by former Greek members. Those with significant family wealth can choose to rent houses and form communities outside of Stanford dorms, further exacerbating social gaps between high- and low-income students. Indeed, several former members of the Kappa Alpha chose to form a community off campus this year after losing their fraternity housing.

While Stanford has power over its own buildings and housing, it cannot fully control student reactions to its policies.

These reasons have compelled many Stanford students with poor opinions of Greek life - like Michael Brown’22, an ASSU senator - to oppose the complete abolition of all Greek organizations.

“I have personally witnessed and experienced microaggressions at parties,” noted Brown. “At one party my freshman year, a pair of friends were called racial slurs after refusing to dance with guys at a party.” Still, he “does not personally support the abolition of traditional Greek life nor ethnic Greek life as they are both conduits for facilitating social life within the Stanford community.” Brown - like many others - supports reforming Greek life in a number of ways to increase equity for the entire student body.

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bolish Stanford Greek (ASG) has viewed the COVID-19 pandemic as the appropriate opportunity to campaign against sororities and fraternities at Stanford. With the freshman and sophomore classes have yet to go through the rush process, nearly half of Stanford’s undergraduate student body has yet to fully experience sorority life. Members of ASG hope they never will.

ASG advocates met with members of the Stanford administration throughout the fall quarter to express their concerns about Greek life and lay out their goals for a future Stanford free of the Greek system. On September 10th, members met with Susie Brubaker-Cole, Stanford’s Vice Provost for Student Affairs. ASG used the meeting to propose a phase-out plan for Greek life, advocating to end the rush process but not force current Greek members to give up their affiliations.

ASG members also used the meeting to argue that Greek life conflicted with Stanford’s future plans for a ‘neighborhood’ system of housing. “One of the great things that [Stanford did] is they really tried to make the all freshmen dorms a microcosm of the diversity of the freshman class.” Marin notes. “And then Greek life swoops in and tries to replace all of that really intentional work, which is such a shame.” Many students interviewed for this story described accounts of many friendships and social circles from their freshman year being destroyed by the Greek system. Adopting a more constant and uninterrupted form of housing, ASG hopes, will lead to a healthier and less ex-

“It’s important to recognize that a time comes to change the old systems that are put in place to allow our community to grow stronger together.” clusive social scene at Stanford.

The Abolish Stanford Greek movement has already brought about some concrete steps toward abolishment. In late October, the ASSU undergraduate senate unanimously passed a resolution calling for Stanford to dehouse all Greek organizations. While the act carried no enforcement mechanism, it represented strong pressure from the undergraduate senate for Stanford to address the inherent inequalities that come with the Greek system.

Despite their campaigning efforts, ASG doubts that Stanford will discontinue rush this year. Stanford currently plans to host a virtual rush period for Greek organizations in the winter quarter. This rush period would allow both freshmen and sophomores to join Greek organizations for the first time. When reached out to for more details about the Winter rush process, the Stanford administration did not respond.

To counter Stanford’s plans, ASG plans to launch a ‘boycott rush’ campaign to discourage underclassmen from joining Greek life. Yet despite the controversy surrounding Greek organizations, social groups like fraternities and sororities may

appeal to freshman and sophomores who lack nearly all collegiate social interactions this year.

However Greek life changes in the upcoming years, Stanford must recognize that its current sorority system does not serve all women equally. For people like Brown, changes in the Greek system will hopefully allow new types of students typically not included in sororities and fraternities to reap the benefits from Greek membership. “It’s important to recognize that a time comes to change the old systems that are put in place to allow our community to grow stronger together.”

Nathalie Kiersznowski’ 21is studies economics and political science and is editor in chief of Stanford Politics

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A New Hope for Belarus?

The Revival of Belarusian Culture in Europe’s Last Dictatorship Cat Buchatskiy

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n August 9th, 2020, it was announced that Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, had won his re-election bid. The results came as no surprise, considering the man known as “Europe’s last dictator” has been in power since 1994. This year, however, the election results were disputed on a scale larger than ever before, escalating into what is now Belarusian’s biggest defiance of the Lukashenko regime in decades.

Though official results claimed that Svetlana Tikhanovskaya – the opposition candidate – had won about 10% of the vote, she claimed that her real vote share was closer to sixty or seventy percent. Tikhanovskaya had entered the race after her husband – the original candidate for president – was jailed and had his bid for office rejected.

The opposition grew wary of election tampering after the systemic silencing of Lukashenko’s challengers.

There were no independent observers invited to monitor the election and an internet blackout began after the election that lasted for several days. When

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Lukashenko announced his overwhelming victory, protestors went out to the streets to dispute the results. As of December 2020, the Belarusians are on their fourth month of protests.

Nick Kaeshko, a Belarusian who was present at the protests, describes the scenes of solidarity. “In most cases, it was extremely peaceful, energetic and uplifting. But there were a couple of rallies that have been brutal due to police efforts to distribute the crowd. I have never seen a single object being thrown at the police or any brutality from the side of the protestors. The violence was always coming from the riot police, and that’s what I was afraid of – being arrested and tortured in the prison.”

Despite the thousands of Belarusians that have been arrested and jailed since the start of the protests, the people of Belarus have yet to be deterred in their fight for freedom and against the Lukashenko regime and continue to fight for their future every day.

“We have graffiti on the wall in one of the city districts - it says ‘where to call when the police is the one who is beating you?’ – and that’s how we feel,” described Kaeshko.

A parade in Minsk, Belarus on August 23, 2020.

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BELARUS RUSSIA IN BELARUS The current protests are demanding far more than political and policy change; they are demanding a resurgence of Belgian culture and national identity that has been long suppressed under Russian control and influence.

For decades, Lukashenko has been complicit in the erasure of the Belarusian culture.

“Belarusians are regaining their sense of national identity, which was suppressed by Lukashenko. For a long time, the Belarusian language was forbidden. Belarusian historical culture didn’t have similar opportunities to Russian culture, or Lukashenko-created Soviet-style ideology. And so at these protests, although no one instructed Belarusians to do so, they themselves brought out the red and white flags that they had kept in their homes. It’s very inspiring, because the flags are ‘unregistered symbolics,’ and you could get in trouble with the police for having it, but we were all just quietly hiding them in our homes and spontaneously brought them out at the protests. This national identity goes back much longer than Lukashenko’s rule,” explains Katsiaryna Shmatsina, a Belarusian political analyst at the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies.

This suppression of Belarusian national identity and culture stem back all the way to 1995, when Belarus and Russia first started to strengthen ties and flirt with integration.

“At that time, Lukashenko had actual aspirations to become the leader of Russia. This now sounds very funny, but at the time, there was a chance. He knew Yeltsin would seek out someone to step into his position in Moscow, and before Putin came to the picture, Lukashenko actually thought he might be the leader of Russia,” says Katsiaryna.

Lukashenko demonstrated his loyalty to Russia by restoring the Soviet-era symbolics, creating Russian schools,

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“Belarusians are regaining their sense of national identity” and promoting Russian culture. He created a society which placed Russian culture at its core, with Belarusian language deteriorating and many Belarusian schools closing.

“They changed the history books with all these pro-Russian or pro-Soviet sentiments, without so much of a role for actual Belarusian history. And so, Belarusian culture developed, in many dimensions, underground,” says Katsiaryna.

With the Belarusian language closely associated with the opposition movement and considered taboo in public settings, Belarusians were confined to using their language in the comfort of their homes or in safe spaces they created for themselves in order to escape the overwhelming Russianization of the country. Belarusians learned to live in this underground community. At informal gatherings amongst friends and families, independent art galleries where forbidden speakers and thinkers would lecture, Polish publishing houses where Belarusians had to smuggle their literature to get published, Belarusians kept the spirit of their nation and cultural traditions alive. Now, for the first time, they are coming out in droves with the ‘forbidden symbolics’ that they had been stashing for so long.

“I think that it’s only now that we have started to have a national identity, not the one imposed by state propaganda, but one that most of the Belarusians can relate to,” explains Kaeshko.

The Sovietization strategy imposed by the regime decades ago seems to be wearing off, especially for the younger generation. “[The new generation] do not have Soviet nostalgia, they have

access to alternative information – not just state propaganda – and many of them have already had a chance to live, study, or work abroad,” explains Alla Leukavets, Belarusian policy analyst at the Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Studies. Lukashenko has been holding on to a mindset that many young Belarusians feel isolated from; they do not relate to the Soviet symbols and Soviet patriotism that the regime has tried to keep alive. For them, it’s time for a change, and it’s time for Belarusian leadership to represent the interests and culture of Belarusians.

THE RUSSIAN REACTION The fight for cultural sovereignty and political representation is not only dependent on Lukashenko’s survival; it also depends on the Russian government’s moves in the political chess game to come, and Russia’s power over Belarusian politics is immense.

“In case Russia stops supporting the Belarusian regime financially, Lukashenko will run out of resources to sustain the repressive apparatus,” says Leukavets. This will lead “to his entourage resigning and choosing a new leader. Regardless of the scenario, one of the key roles in the process of regime change in Belarus is currently played by Russia. As long as the Kremlin keeps supporting the regime in Belarus, the success of the democratic revolution will be delayed.”

Although he has so far stood behind the legitimacy of the Lukashenko administration, Putin’s support for the regime will only last as long as the relationship is in Russia’s best interest.

“On the one hand, the post-election crisis in Belarus has provided the Kremlin with a strong bargaining advantage vis-à-vis Minsk. This is a ripe moment to put pressure on the Lukashenko regime to deepen economic and political integration within the Union State by creating supranational organs and introducing common currency. The Kremlin could also be considering dis-

BELARUS

A rally protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus on August 30, 2020. Reuters

missing Lukashenko completely and replacing him with a new leader who will pursue a pro-Russia course,” Leukavets continues.

Putin also must ensure that revolutionary fire does not spread to Moscow.

If Putin chooses to support Lukashenko’s removal from power, it will show the West that Putin is willing to support democratic measures and be a Western ally. However, Putin continues to destabilize the region by waging war in Ukraine and has almost single-handedly funded Belarus for the decades it was shunned from the Western world.

Regardless of whether he chooses to jump ship, Putin was a critical enabler of Lukashenko’s success.

“Putin is afraid of the spillover effect of the protest. Lukashenko is now in a corner. In a crisis, Putin can essentially ask for anything. So there is legitimate concern about scenarios such as Russian annexation, because we’re in a weak position right now,” says Shmatsina.

Putin was quick to take advantage of Ukraine’s destabilization in 2014. His troops illegally seized the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine, and six years

later, the territory has yet to be returned.

In 2008, Putin sent troops into Georgia to annex territories there. Having avoided sufficient punishment for his ventures into Georgia and Ukraine, Belarus is at risk of being the next country incorporated into Putin’s Russian empire.

Shmatsina isn’t kept up at night by this possibility. “I won’t disregard this option, but I don’t think that’s the first one on the table,” says Katsiaryna. “I would learn towards a more moderate scenario, where Putin gets rid of Lukashenko at one point or another. With so much unrest boiling inside Belarus, it’s unclear even if he stays in power or for how much longer he would last. It’s good to change him out now, when Putin can have a say in it.”

While Lukashenko’s Belarus has always had a good and close relationship with Putin’s Russia, their personal relationship has not been so affectionate.

“Putin and Lukashenko are not friends,” Shmatsina explains. “They talk about brotherhood and et cetera, but they can barely stand each other.”

As of now, the protests in Belarus have been very specifically targeted

against Lukashenko; Russia’s influence is not yet threatened. Despite Russia “counter-funding” Belarus while Lukashenko was facing EU sanctions, “the EU has never sanctioned imports of Russian energy from Belarus,” explains Leukavets. Yet, with the increased international pressure the protests have attracted, it may become harder for the Kremlin’s funding to stay under the radar of the Western watchdogs.

Unlike during the Ukrainian Maidan protests, the protestors are not asking to cut off ties with Russia. Russia has been able to maintain its positive relationship with the Belarusian people. A military intervention, however, would almost certainly turn public opinion against the Kremlin, something that Putin would not want to risk. Putin will instead keep a close eye on the way that the transfer of leadership is handled.

“The public opinion polls say we want to have equally good relations with the East and the West. We don’t want to be a part of a union state, but we want to have good relations [with Russia.] Putin wouldn’t mind seeing new leadership in Belarus, but for him,

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BELARUS

it would be important to see the transition of power based on constitutional reform — not to set the precedent that the protest itself won. Because this would set a bad example for his own people, the population who is unhappy with his role,” says Shmatsina.

With Putin’s latest constitutional amendment, it is likely he will be able to surpass Lukashenko’s infamous 26year reign and assume the title of the longest European dictator alive. While protests and opposition in Russia have been tightly suppressed, there certainly is opposition to Putin, and the Russian people are risking their lives to speak out. As in Ukraine, and now in Belarus, the Russians are watching the protests closely in their brother nations and taking note. If Belarus were to successfully enstate a democratic government free of Russian influence, the Russian people might be emboldened to seek their own revolution and leave Putin behind as a corrupt character in the history books.

A NEW BELARUS ON THE HORIZON If the protesters succeed in ousting Lukashenko, there will be no guarantee of a Belarusian cultural renaissance; as long as Russia is interested in controlling the region, Belarus’ fate is un-

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clear. However, the people of Belarus retain a hope that they can regain power over their language, their government, and their culture.

“I’m very proud of Belarusians, because [the protests aren’t] about how much money I get, or salaries. They aren’t about the economy. This is about our key values. Dignity, freedom, and democracy. And I really hope that the new leadership will keep Belarusian national interest in mind,” says Katsiaryna.

For some Belarusians, the protests are the first time that they have experienced such an overwhelming sense of national pride and unity in a country where political activism and civil society has been routinely repressed.

“I never liked my country,” explains Kaeshko. “Never liked the power, and most of the people here. I was always trying to detach myself from the fact that I am coming from Belarus. It all changed during three days of August. I have witnessed things that made me fall in love with the people of Belarus, made me proud to be a part of the community, the people, and the idea that we can be independent. The state failed us in every way, and Belarusians have risen to the occasion.”

“A huge cultural and societal shift is happening now,” Kaeshko continues.

“The emergence of civil society, the belief in oneself – no one we help us, but

us – the politicization of society – every pupil now has a notion. Now everyone has a voice, wants to be heard, wants to affect the political landscape and take the faith in our own hands - that’s something I have seen in Europe and am so proud to see in Belarus. In the long run, the country will emerge way stronger, more united and conscious because of these events.”

As Belarusians stand arm in arm in the face of the riot police, they sing songs in a forbidden language, a testament to the power of their memories and the strength of their spirit. How the new administration chooses to reshape and reclaim Belarus’ national identity and memory is not only going to determine the future of Belarusians, but also how they interact with their past. The world will have to wait to see what kind of Belarus emerges from the smoke.

Cat Buchatskiy is a junior studying International Relations.

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