The Stanford Daily Vol. 260 Issue 10 (01.07.22)

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Volume 260 Issue 10

Holmes guilty of 4 counts of fraud

Theranos founder and Stanford dropout faces sentencing

By BRANDON KIM

OMKAR SHENDE/The Stanford Daily

HEALTH

Record 236 cases on campus Outbreak comes amid spike in Omicron infections

By MALAYSIA ATWATER MANAGING EDITOR

By GRIFFIN CLARK The University reported 136 new student and 100 new faculty, staff and postdoctoral scholar COVID-19 cases for the week of Dec. 27, according to the COVID-19 dashboard.

As of Monday afternoon, 146 students are isolating in Stanford student housing, according to an email from Associate Vice Provost of Environmental Health & Safety Russell Furr. The University did not explain the discrepancy in student case numbers and isolation numbers on their website.

This news coincides with the return of students to campus amid skyrocketing COVID-19 cases nationwide due to the Omicron variant. The University has also announced that the first two weeks of classes will be virtual, and many students have yet to make their return to campus.

Most of the newly recorded cases are from students who returned to campus after winter break, and the remainder of the student cases are from those who were on campus during break and tested positive before the weekend, according to the dashboard and Furr. The dashboard case counts do not include students who returned to campus after Sunday or opted to stay off-campus during the University’s two-week remote learning period, according to the dashboard.

Despite the lower number of tests conducted during the week of Dec. 27, the new student and employee case counts mark a significant increase from the 27 student cases and 12 employee cases reported during the week of Dec. 6, before winter break. The seven-day positivity rates are 7.7% for students and 2.86% for employees, which are still lower than the 11.2% seven-day positivity rate in Santa Clara County and 15.9% rate state-wide.

Students who tested positive are either quarantined in designated isolation housing or in their assigned

Please see COVID, page 4

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder and former Stanford student who was accused of misleading investors and consumers about the effectiveness of her company’s blood-testing technology, was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud on Monday afternoon.

The verdict comes after over three months of proceedings in a case that raised questions about Silicon Valley’s start-up culture and the healthcare industry.

Each count carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. The jury, which deliberated for more than 50 hours across seven days, acquitted Holmes of four other fraud charges but was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on three other counts, over which U.S. District Judge Edward Davila declared a mistrial. A hearing on the three counts is

Please see HOLMES, page 3

STUART ISETT/Flickr

The case raised questions about Silicon Valley’s start-up culture and the importance of ethics in tech innovation. After 50 hours of deliberation, jurors found Holmes guilty of four counts of conspiracy and wire fraud.

PROFILE

UNIVERSITY

Students grapple with travel abroad

Claw sculptor passes away at 89 Aris Demetrios installed the iconic fountain in White Plaza in 1964

International students face pandemic-related delays

By CAROLYN CONSIDINE It’s the day of the Big Game, and the Cardinal just cinched a last-minute victory over Cal. If you’re a Stanford student, you’ll likely celebrate by heading to the White Memorial Fountain and fountain hopping — a long-standing student tradition.

The Claw is one of Stanford’s most prominent symbols, lying at the heart of campus and the core of many Stanford rituals. On Dec. 12, The Claw’s sculptor and visionary, Aristides (Aris) Burton Demetrios, died. He was 89.

The Claw was dedicated in 1964 to two Stanford undergraduate brothers, William N. White ’49 and John B. White II ’49, who passed away before their graduation in separate accidents. In 1963, the brothers’ parents commissioned the fountain, leading Stanford to launch a selection process for the fountain’s design.

“There is a parallel here between these parents choosing to memorialize their two sons through the creation of White Memorial Plaza and the Stanfords creating the university in Leland Stanford Junior’s memory,” wrote Stanford Historic Preservation Planner Julie Cain. While both examples represent the pain of losing children and unfulfilled dreams, they also epitomize a “celebration of life,” Cain added.

Demetrios was born in 1932 in Gloucester, Mass. into a family of talented artists. His father, George Demetrios, was a classical sculptor trained by a student of Rodin. His mother, Virginia Lee Burton, wrote children’s books and is known for authoring and illustrating “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.”

By SOPHIA LI

Building The Claw Demetrios’ work always held a lighthearted character, Nagel said. His goal in life, she added, was to make people feel something positive the moment they came in contact with his art.

“People would say ‘is it okay if the kids climbed the sculpture?’” she said. “Absolutely. He wanted them to enjoy it. He wanted everybody to be playful about the sculpture.”

Even though he was a graduate of Harvard College, Nagel said that Demetrios always felt like a part of the

Sharon Cheng ’24 had envisioned a winter break where she would fly home to Taiwan, spend three weeks with her family and friends and travel back to campus — refreshed and prepared for winter quarter to start.

She never imagined having to take a computer science final holed up in a hotel room in Taiwan, with the hotel staff serving as her proctor, as she waited out a quarantine period that would last nearly twothirds of her entire winter break.

“It was messy, even if it all worked out in the end,” Cheng said.

“This would not have had to happen if not for the pandemic.”

Amid a global surge in coronavirus cases due to the omicron variant, countries raced to enact border restrictions and new safety measures. As a result, international students traveling across borders during break have had to keep a careful

Please see CLAW, page 4

Please see TRAVEL, page 4

Courtesy of Ilene Nagel

His widow, Ilene Nagel MLS ‘87, said that Demetrios derived the passion for his work from his parents, who instilled in him happiness, joy and an unwavering commitment to perfection.

Demetrios’ mother had “an incredible sense of whimsy, joy, happiness and family” while his father inspired in him a “sense of commitment to perfection,” said Demetrios’ widow, Ilene Nagel MLS ’87. The combination of these elements likely drove the greatness of his work.

CAMPUS LIFE

Stanford Marriage Pact expands nationwide

By MATTHEW TURK DESK EDITOR

Graphic: TUAN ANH NGUYEN/The Stanford Daily

In this fall’s iteration of the Marriage Pact, students shared how much they agreed with statements such as “I would keep a gun in the house” and “gender roles exist for good reasons” in search of a perfect match.

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The Marriage Pact has brought together more than 200,000 students nationwide since its origin in 2017 as a final project for a Stanford economics class. By collecting survey responses and applying a proprietary algorithm, this online service seeks to pinpoint, optimize and match the most compatible individuals for friendships and romantic relationships.

Today, the Marriage Pact has been launched at over 60 college campuses. Most of these sanctioned spin-offs started in the past year.

Within a week of Marriage Pact’s arrival to Duke University in January, for example, 4,500 students signed up — roughly twothirds of the undergraduate popula-

tion and 30% of students overall.

Shortly thereafter, one student’s TikTok post about the survey received roughly 100,000 likes.

“I think most people sign up for the very fact that their friends are doing it,” said Liam McGregor ’20, co-founder of the Marriage Pact. He and co-founder Sophia Angus-Sterling ’19, who met early on in their time at Stanford and had continually developed a working relationship, began the project with a question about matching algorithms: “What if we didn’t give you the best, we just gave you the backup?”

To some, the Marriage Pact may be a new way to discover meaningful connections with members of the community; to others, it may be the next installment in a series of exist-

Please see MARRIAGE, page 12

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Recycle Me

The Stanford Daily

2 ! Friday, January 7, 2022 GREEK LIFE

Thinking of rushing?

What you need to know

By CAROLYN STEIN BEAT REPORTER

With winter recruitment just around the corner, The Daily spoke with representatives of the Interfraternity Council (IFC) to answer students’ most pressing questions about the recruitment process.

What is IFC recruitment?

Recruitment is the formal process that potential new members (PNMs) must go through to join a Greek organization at Stanford. For this cycle, current sophomores and upperclassmen will be allowed to participate. Frosh won’t be allowed to participate in IFC recruitment until spring quarter.

This process is separate from the Inter-Sorority Council’s (ISC) official recr uitment process, which took place this past fall quarter. ISC will not be holding recruitment this quarter. However, following a boycott of ISC fall recruitment, the ISC’s Delta Delta Delta (Tri Delt) Chapter will be holding an official recruitment cycle this month. Tri Delt’s recruitment process is not affiliated with IFC’s recruitment process.

Which fraternities are recruiting?

All registered IFC chapters will be participating in recruitment this winter quarter. A full list of the chapters can be found here.

When is IFC recruitment?

IFC recruitment will take place during Weeks 2 and 3 of win-

ter quarter, beginning with Orientation on Jan. 9 and ending with Bid Day on Jan. 19.

How will IFC recruitment work?

Due to current University policy surrounding in-person gatherings, IFC recruitment will be fully online.

The first day of recruitment is Orientation. On this day, PNMs will hear presentations from different IFC chapters and also meet their Recruitment Counselor — a point person who will be a resource for them throughout the recruitment process.

The next day, which is Open House and Tabling Day, will be an event for PNMs to meet members of different fraternities and ask questions.

The following four days consist of open virtual events. Fraternities will split into alternating A and B days that allow for each fraternity to have two open events.

“Open Events A” days will take place on Jan. 11 and Jan. 13. Subsequently, “Open Events B” days will take place on Jan. 12 and Jan. 14. The details of these open events will be at each fraternity chapter’s discretion. All of the events, however, will stress the following core values: state of the chapter, brotherhood and philanthropy.

Following the open events, each chapter will deliberate and call PNMs to an invite-only event, with some fraternities holding events on Jan. 15 and others holding events on Jan. 16. After the invite-only events, chapters will de-

CRYSTAL CHEN/The Stanford Daily

As a result of COVID-19 campus protocols, winter quarter rush will take place entirely online. The Interfraternity Council recruitment will take place during Week 2 and Week 3 of winter quarter. liberate for one more round on Jan. 18 and extend bids to the PNMs they are interested in having as a part of their chapter. Bid Day will take place on Jan. 19.

Alcohol and other substances are strictly prohibited during the recruitment cycle.

PNMs are also not allowed to be in contact with fraternity members after 5 p.m. “on nights that a fraternity doesn’t have a recruitment event,” according to the IFC’s website. On Saturday and Sunday, the time changes to 2 p.m.; and on Tuesday and Wednesday of Week 2, it changes to 4 p.m.

According to IFC Vice President of Recruitment Marcelo Pena ’23, due to the stress that the recruitment process can induce, this policy is in place to ensure PNMs that “they are not expected to continue talking with any fraternity outside of recruitment hours, and

that this won’t put them at any disadvantage.”

IFC misconduct during recruitment can be reported using this form.

How will IFC decide who moves on to the next round?

Each fraternity has its own deliberation process. Even so, members of all fraternities have the ability to select which PNMs they want to invite back for the second round of recruitment, also known as the “invited events.” Following the invited events, each chapter will have one more round of deliberation to decide who receives a bid. Consistent with previous recruitment cycles, PNMs will not be guaranteed a bid to a fraternity.

What is IFC doing to ensure that the recruitment process is equitable and accessible to all?

Inspired by ISC’s Rho Gamma Program, IFC is piloting a Recruitment Counselor to help “foster a more inclusive and supportive Greek environment for prospective new members as they navigate the recruitment process,” IFC President John Zuercher ’22 wrote in an email to The Daily. “This program will allow members of IFC chapters to disaffiliate from their chapters throughout recruitment and act as an unbiased support network for a group of PNMs as they navigate the recruitment cycle.”

IFC is also working to put together a panel with current firstgeneration and/or low-income (FLI) IFC and ISC members. The panel, which will be held on Jan. 10, will also include representatives from the Multicultural Greek Council and the African-American

Please see RUSH, page 12

CAMPUS LIFE

A look inside campus educational farm Farm focuses on sustainable agriculture, agroecology

By ELIZABETH EVERS Patrick Archie walked through the vibrant fields of Stanford’s O’Donahue Educational Farm, stopping every few yards to admire and describe the budding produce.

Archie, who is particularly interested in sustainable agriculture, has been in his role as the Farm’s director for about 10 years.

Under Archie’s leadership, the Farm offers hands-on opportunities for community members to practice sustainable agriculture and serves as a natural haven for the greater Stanford community. From welcoming volunteers on Saturday and Wednesday mornings to employing students as farmhands and hosting Earthtones, an annual environmental justice festival, the farm is a place where Stanford students can develop an understanding and appreciation for the land on which they live.

The Farm, which is located at Governor’s Corner, was established by the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences in 2014, after more than two decades of advocacy led by students in the Earth Systems department. Like all of Stanford’s campus, the farm sits on

the ancestral land of the Muwekma Ohlone people.

Archie explained how the Farm utilizes agro-ecological relationships and natural diversity to grow over 200 varieties of vegetables, flowers, herbs, field crops and fruit.

He said that part of the Farm’s mission is to challenge the traditions of the agriculture industry, which tends to prioritize “amassing wealth and extracting” from the land.

“Those of us that study agroecology are really interested in the Indigenous roots of agriculture, an agriculture that is designed to fit in the ecosystem that it’s in. It’s designed to support the community,” Archie said. Agroecology is the study of agricultural practices that work with the natural environment, rather than impose unsustainable or foreign farming practices on it.

Archie said that agroecology supports farming that is “not designed necessary just to extract and sell to distant markets.” Rather, he said, the Farm’s fundamental goal is to “nourish its community.”

The Farm annually harvests over 15,000 pounds of produce, which is then sold to campus dining as well as local chefs and caterers.

The Farm also produces thousands of flowers, which are cut, arranged and sold as bouquets, generating additional revenue opportunities to support student employment at the

ULA LUCAS/The Stanford Daily

Rows of vegetables line the O’Donahue Educational Farm. The farm produces roughly 15,000 pounds of produce annually, much of which goes directly to on-campus dining.

Farm.

“The other thing about the flowers is they’re often in different crop families from our other crops so the flowers help us with our crop rotations,” Archie said. “We try to manage the soil to make it really biologically rich, diverse, and healthy. One of the ways that we break pest and disease cycles is by rotating crops.”

Environmental justice makes up

another key component of the Farm’s mission.

Archie used the phrase “liberation through land” to capture the intersection between agriculture and Indigenous rights advocacy. The Farm partners with Native Seed Search, an organization that collects ancient crop varieties to create a drought-resistant living seed bank. The Farm is currently grow-

ing a crop of Dene corn to contribute to the seed bank.

Earthtones — originally named Earth in Color — is an environmental justice festival led by Natalie Cross ’22 that is hosted at the Farm each year. The festival reimagines Earth Day to celebrate and center the narratives of students of color in

Please see FARM, page 4

GREEK LIFE

Tridelt moves forward with informal recruitment instead to recruit on their own timeline.

Anyone interested in participating must sign up for recruitment by Sunday, Jan. 9 at 8 p.m.

By CAROLYN STEIN BEAT REPORTER

Following Delta Delta Delta’s (Tridelt) boycott of the Inter-Sorority Council’s (ISC) fall recruitment, the sorority is scheduled to move forward with an informal winter recruitment, which begins on Jan. 10.

Here is everything you need to know about Tridelt’s recruitment process.

So how is informal recruitment actually different from normal recruitment?

What is informal recruitment?

Informal recruitment, officially known as Continuous Open Bidding, is a process that allows Greek organizations to continue recruiting members beyond the scheduled recruitment cycle. Greek organizations can choose to host informal recruitment for a number of reasons, such as filling housing quotas or providing additional opportunities to get to know potential new members (PNMs).

Continuous Open Bidding typically takes place soon after the end of the official recruitment cycle, which happened in the fall for ISC. Tridelt, however, felt that the ISC’s fall recruitment process occurred too soon. Due to the ongoing pandemic, current sophomores (Class of 2024) missed out on the opportu-

Graphic: HANNAH JEOUNG/The Stanford Daily

nity to participate in recruitment during the 2020-21 school year, which prompted ISC to host a recruitment cycle for sophomores in the fall. Last fall was also the first

time many sophomores stepped foot onto campus. Tridelt believed that hosting fall recruitment for sophomores would be too exhausting and mentally taxing, and opted

According to Tridelt president Anais Morroquin ’23, this recruitment cycle looks drastically different from the regular recruitment cycles of previous years. Instead of hosting a weekend jam-packed with activities, Tridelt’s recruitment is being spread over the course of two weeks. This structure will allow Tridelt to host longer events and have more opportunities to get to know PNMs, according to Morroquin.

In a regular ISC recruitment cycle, “PNMs chat with active members 1:1 for 5 minutes each,” Morroquin wrote in an email to The Daily. “In our new structure, we’ve chosen to make 1:1 chats much longer so that conversations could get deeper and PNMs really have the opportunity to go into detail about their values, passions, and all about who they are.”

Tridelt will also be hosting an identities panel to allow PNMs op-

portunities to ask difficult questions about diversity and inclusivity.

Tridelt boycotted fall recruitment due to concerns about equity and inclusion. What are they doing to make this event and joining Greek life more equitable and accessible?

In addition to extending recruitment week and hosting the Identities Panel, all of Tridelt’s members received mandatory implicit bias training. The chapter also hosted mandatory training focused on addressing socioeconomic and racial inequities.

In recognition of the economic burden dues can pose for a chapter’s members, Tridelt is also giving all new members a scholarship of $110 to help offset the cost of joining. This scholarship will lower the total cost of joining from $605.50 to $495.50.

In addition to the scholarship, “members have the option to come to us to learn more about how they can use the Opportunity Fund to cover dues,” Marroquin wrote in an email to The Daily, referencing a fund that is dedicated towards financially assisting students. “If

Please see TRIDELT, page 4

The Stanford Daily

HOLMES

Continued from page 1 scheduled for next Monday.

To some Stanford law professors, Holmes repeatedly crossed the line between hyperbole and falsehood in pitching her company’s blood testing technology to investors. This, law and business professor Joseph Grundfest said, is what made

Friday, January 7, 2022 ! 3 Holmes’ conviction a rare success among fraud cases involving startup executives, many of which end without a successful prosecution.

“The government had clear evidence of bald-faced, brazen lies,” Grundfest said. “Prosecutors love cases of that sort.”

Other legal analysts, however, characterized Holmes’ actions as falling within the acceptable bounds of startup practices. According to Aron Solomon, chief legal analyst at Esquire Digital, while Holmes was

certainly guilty of hyperbolic behavior in pitching her vision for Theranos to investors, this behavior did not rise to the level of wire fraud.

“What Elizabeth Holmes did is what every startup founder does,” Solomon said. “She believed that her technology would one day reach the level that she always said it would.”

Solomon attributed Holmes’ conviction to the average juror’s inability to understand the startup mentality, a problem that he said was exacerbated by Holmes’ exalted status

even among other startup founders.

That Holmes was a Stanford-educated, successful tech executive made it impossible for her to be tried by a “jury of her peers,” Solomon said, which worked to her disadvantage.

Holmes first founded Theranos in 2003 as a sophomore, dropping out of Stanford a year later to focus on the company. Quickly winning over several high-profile figures in U.S. politics and business to her board of directors — including former Hoover Institution fellow George Shultz — Holmes was able to secure hundreds of millions of dollars from an all-star cast of investors. Her proposed blood-testing technology promised to be able to detect diseases with just the prick of a finger.

Theranos was valued as high as $9 billion before the publication of a 2015 bombshell expose in The Wall Street Journal that kickstarted a spectacular collapse for the startup.

Following a series of federal investigations, both Holmes and Balwani were indicted in 2018 on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Leading up to her conviction, Holmes’ trial was widely seen by media outlets as a referendum on Silicon Valley startup culture, said Solomon. Because Holmes’ hyperbolic approach to her company is so common within Silicon Valley, Solomon said he believes that her conviction is likely to have a chilling effect on other would-be entrepreneurs.

“If I’m a Stanford student right now who’s a founder of a startup or considering founding a startup,” Solomon said. “I’d be pretty nervous.”

Law professor Robert Weisberg said that while aspirational statements and hyperbole, or “puffery,” are common in Silicon Valley, Holmes’ “flat out lies” made her case exceptional compared to other Silicon Valley fraud cases.

“It’s not condemning the culture of Silicon Valley,” Weisberg said. “If anything, it’s saying that most of the time, this sort of ‘puffery’ is acceptable, or at least very hard to prove.”

While legal experts disagreed on Holmes’ four guilty convictions, most agreed that the seven nonguilty charges against Holmes were much harder to prove. Weisberg took care to separate the eleven charges against Holmes into two groups: first, that Holmes was defrauding Theranos investors, and second, that Holmes was defrauding the doctors and patients who used Theranos technology.

All four guilty verdicts involved Holmes’ interactions with investors, Weisberg said, to whom it was evident that Holmes had lied. Not all

“If I’m a Stanford student who’s a founder of a startup... I’d be pretty nervous” — ARON SOLOMON,

Esquire Digital

charges involving investors received a guilty verdict, however. With some of the other charges, either the investor had already known of the defects with Theranos’ technology, or had the opportunity to research Holmes’ claims, according to Weisberg.

Weisberg said that proving that Holmes had deceived doctors and patients was an even harder task.

This is because these doctors and patients never interacted directly with the Theranos founder herself.

“A scheme to defraud requires that I deceive you to take your money, “ Weisberg said. “With investors, that exchange is quite clear.

With doctors and patients, the facts are muddier.”

Experts also agreed on the length of Holmes’ prison sentence, which they estimated to likely be around ten years or less. While Holmes can face up to a maximum sentence of twenty years for each count, this is a purely theoretical limit, Weisberg said, with most cases similar to that of Holmes falling around the same range. Weisberg also noted that Holmes has an infant child, which the judge may take into account in delivering a more lenient sentence.

A more punitive sentence will likely be faced by Theranos chief operating officer Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who faces trial in February.

According to Solomon, one key factor in Balwani’s case will be that he is nearly two decades older than Holmes, his former partner. Holmes said in her defense that she was in an abusive relationship with Balwani, who was an older and more experienced entrepreneur. This, in combination with Holmes’ successful conviction, will make Balwani’s defense more difficult, Solomon said.

“Balwani was, in many ways, closer to many misinterpretations than Holmes,” Grundfest said. “My guess is that the Holmes verdict puts the fear of God in Balwani.”

The Stanford Daily

4 ! Friday, January 7, 2022 GRADUATE STUDENTS

GSC sounds alarm on COVID mismanagement

By ISAAC LOZANO The Graduate Student Council (GSC) raised concerns about Stanford’s management of its COVID-19 isolation system and prepared to vote on several bills next week regarding a range of policy changes, including transportation and the Fundamental Standard, at its Wednesday meeting.

Councilors highlighted reports of food delivery issues from students who recently tested positive for the virus and were temporarily relocated to Escondido Village Graduate Residences (EVGR) isolation housing or off-campus apartments. Some students in isolation have reported missing or late meals and a lack of guidance from the University, according to councilmembers.

Assistant Director of Stanford Dining Kahlil Wells said at the meeting that a surge in COVID-19 cases and a shortage of isolation spaces on campus have caused “mistakes here and there” as the University has organized to meet increased demand.

But Kahlil added that the University is “getting those problems fixed” and has “multiple contingency plans.”

Councilors also expressed concern about future surges of COVID-19 as more students are set to arrive on campus and may create additional demand for isolation spaces.

Imogen Hinds, the Executive Director of Residential and Dining Enterprises (R&DE) Student Housing Operations Executive Director, said

FARM

Continued from page 2 the context of environmentalism.

During the pandemic Earthtones organizers produced a collection of student art and writing in lieu of holding in-person events. Community members will celebrate Earthtones in person again this spring.

Cross began working as a farmhand during her sophomore year and has stayed in the role ever since.

“I love being able to dig in the

CLAW

Continued from page 1 Stanford family.

Demetrios, who was “at heart a romantic,” loved hearing that The Claw was the site of many student couples’ first kiss.

After submitting three different proposals to Tresidder Union’s Cultural Arts Division, Demetrios was selected to build the 16-foot bronze and copper fountain at the center of the campus. What would seem like a daunting task to many, Demetrios took as a challenge — Nagel said that Demetrios had always been an overachiever.

“He always did very well academically, but he always tried harder than everybody else,” she said, “and so if they said you could submit one, he would submit three.”

Before starting the project, Demetrios made sure to do his homework. He spent a whole month in White Plaza studying possible angles for the sculpture and the sunlight’s influence on the surface over the course of the day. He even considered the height of students passing the sculpture during high traffic times.

Nagel said that Demetrios designed the fountain such that “the water completes the sculpture, but never in the same pattern. The water represented the fact that the two young men for whom the fountain was named, had tragically died so young, and that we would never know the paths their lives would have taken.”

The always-changing 65 water jets’ flow patterns coat every inch of the sculpture.

The production was no easy task:

TRAVEL

Continued from page 1 eye on pandemic-related news in both the United States and their home country. This made the travel process all the more stressful and unpredictable for these students.

Cheng said that she was relieved when Stanford announced that classes would be held online for the first two weeks of winter quarter.

Her flight back to the U.S. was originally scheduled for Jan. 2 because she was worried she would not be able to receive PCR test results within 24 hours on New Year’s Day, a national holiday in Taiwan.

“Now, I have much more flexibility and time to spend with my family

that the University is looking to increase off-campus isolation housing availability, but that Stanford expects availability to fluctuate as students move out of isolation. Hinds added that deans are working to provide support and resources to Stanford’s graduate student community.

Several of the councilors said they think that students are receiving insufficient guidance from the University about what to do if they test positive and urged the University to provide more robust support for COVIDpositive students.

Emily Schell, a fourth-year doctoral student in education, also expressed concerns that communities living in and around Stanford’s offcampus isolation housing may not be aware of an influx of COVID-19 among Stanford affiliates.

“It’s just kind of like we’re outsourcing our COVID cases,” Schell said, asking whether surrounding communities “even know that there are COVID positive people” in the area.

While speaking with R&DE Stanford Dining Executive Director Eric Montell, second-year electrical engineering student Chloe Glikbarg expressed concerns about meal plan affordability for Stanford’s coterm graduate students who work as resident assistants (RA). Glikbarg said coterm students who staff undergraduate dorms are automatically enrolled in a more expensive undergraduate meal plan, which can become a fi-

dirt for a few hours. The Farm is great for keeping up with this crazy school where so many things are happening all the time,” Cross said.

“The Farm has been a really special place for me and my happy little home away from craziness.”

The student organization Stanford Roots helps out with harvests and hosts events like pizza night and the Fall Harvest Festival on the farm grounds.

Stanford Roots co-leader Diego Rafael Perez ’23 started volunteering on the Farm when he was a frosh.

“I thought it was a great practice to do in the mornings before classes

Screenshot: ISAAC LOZANO/The Stanford Daily

Councilors scrutinized Stanford leadership for mismanagement of its COVID-19 isolation protocols, which have sent students to isolation housing on campus and overflow housing off-campus. nancial burden, reiterating concerns expressed at previous GSC meetings.

Montell said the issue was outside of his domain and needed to be resolved by senior level administration, but that he is in communication with the University about addressing it.

Councilors are set to vote next week on a bill to clarify travel funding policies for student organizations.

The bill would prevent limitations on travel arrangements that benefit specific vendors due to affordability and environmental concerns, including Uber and other popular transportation services, which have a higher cost-per-mile and result in “significantly more pollution than private car rides,” according to the bill’s text.

Councilors will also vote on a bill to

officially record conditional acceptances of constitutional amendments and a bill urging faculty senate to amend the Fundamental Standard to include doxxing as a code violation.

The Council will vote to nominate Joshua Jankelow to the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Constitutional Council next week.

to really reground and center myself and remember why I’m here and what I’m working for,” Perez said.

Archie, Cross and Perez all emphasized that the Farm is a space that is open to everyone and intended to give community members the opportunity to connect with nature and find a moment to breathe amid the chaos of campus life.

“Everyone is welcome to the Farm,” Archie said. “This farm is shared by everyone. Please come enjoy it. There’s ways for everybody to plug in whether you’re a student or staff or faculty member or community member.”

TRIDELT

respond to a request for comment regarding ASG’s criticisms.

“He wanted them to enjoy it. He wanted everybody to be playful about the sculpture.”

— ILENE NAGEL

it took Demetrios a month to assemble The Claw with a welding torch in hand, 2,000 pounds of metal inert gas wire, a flatbed truck and a cart put all the parts in place.

“No one had ever fabricated anything like this before. It has miles of welding,” he said in an interview with Stanford News in 2010.

During the construction process, Demetrios’ two-year-old son, Eames, placed a few pennies inside the sculpture. When the water finally turned on, the hidden pennies fired out onto the plaza.

No one was hurt by the projectile pennies: “It was like being in the Blitz,” Demetrios said in a different interview. “We just roared with laughter.”

Impact of art and artist When the fountain was installed in White Plaza in 1964, Demetrios recounted, “it was tagged The Claw within three nanoseconds.”

Just like that, the sculpture became an integral part of campus life.

“My memory of The Claw is that it meant a lot to students as a place to meet. It was also used as a campus marker,” said Wanda Corn, a professor emerita of art history.

Other Stanford community members also connected with the deeper

meaning behind this sculpture. When art history professor Alexander Nemerov looks at The Claw, “I sense how delicate and fugitive it is to aspire to anything — how beautiful and worthwhile, too,” he said.

Last year, Demetrios agreed to let the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) use The Claw as their logo, perhaps the ultimate sign of its profound impact on the student body.

What many Stanford students may not know is that Demetrios created countless sculptures that touched the lives of communities across California and beyond, including ones located in his hometown museum. In fact, Demetrios and Nagel made one last trip back to Gloucester prior to his death.

“It was the most amazing trip I have ever taken, Nagel said. “Every night they had a different celebration, and they referred to him as the prodigal son, and the prince coming home.”

Demetrios’ final piece was appropriately entitled “Swan Song,” which he finished three days before he passed away. In addition to his legacy at Stanford, Demetrios’ life will be honored through the Demetrios Sculpture Program at the Cape Ann Museum.

and friends,” Cheng said.

However, not everyone was as fortunate as Cheng, who was able to reschedule her flight.

Gheed El Bizri ’24, a Daily staffer, said she was disappointed that she had to rush through her visit home. If Stanford had announced its decision to move instruction online beforehand, she would have delayed her trip back to the United States to allow her more time back home in Lebanon with her loved ones.

Still, she was glad she enjoyed some time at home even with the anxiety of traveling during a pandemic.

“There is no better feeling than being home with the people you love the most,” El Bizri said. “It’s definitely worth it.”

Other students could not even

travel home for the holidays. Oumnia Chellah ’23 planned her flight home months ahead in October, but her plans derailed when Morocco closed down its borders to all incoming flights. Suddenly stuck in the United States during break, she had to scramble to find accommodations.

“I love to spend time with my family, but this time there was no way for me to go home,” Chellah said. “I had to ask my friends if they would have me over at the last minute.”

The international students interviewed said they have learned that plans can quickly shift without warning amid the pandemic.

“It’s like you have to live in uncertainty,” El Bizri said. “You have to be ready for a change of plans at any moment.”

Continued from page 2 they do not qualify for the Opportunity Fund, we are also handling cases on an individual basis for members that need more aid than just $110.”

What is Abolish Stanford Greek (ASG) saying about Tridelt recruitment?

Despite Tridelt’s commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the Greek system, ASG remains skeptical of Tridelt’s progress.

In the fall, Tridelt made a commitment to meet with ASG to discuss their plans for winter recruitment. According to ASG, the group has not had any recent conversations with Tridelt on winter recruitment or had the opportunity to provide any feedback on Tridelt’s recruitment process. “This is particularly important given the history of off-cycle recruitment being even less equitable or transparent than normal,” ASG wrote in an email to The Daily, adding that the informal recruitment process is “subject to a lessened degree of administrative oversight from the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life.”

“In our experience, Greek organizations are excellent at talking about equity, diversity and inclusion, and that is a necessary first step,” the organization wrote. However, ASG still feels that Tridelt is not being fully transparent about any unofficial costs that come with being part of the organization. ASG also reaffirmed their stance that any true and meaningful reform must begin with unhousing Greek organizations, citing the Asian Women’s Alliance op-ed on their disaffiliation from Greek life.

Marroquin did not immediately

COVID

Continued from page 1 housing if they have a private bedroom and single-occupancy bathroom, according to the email. Stanford is providing all isolating students with delivered meals, medical consultations and other support.

Under the University’s new isolation policy, students living in campus housing with a private bedroom and single-occupancy bathroom who test positive upon arrival are expected to self-report their test results using a Google form and to isolate in place. Students living in a dorm or Row house are expected to report to the Quarantine/Isolation Housing Service Center.

Temporary limitations on student gatherings are in effect in an effort to prevent the transmission of the virus on campus, according to the email. The University also still has isolation space available, according to Furr, and the University staff continue to provide support and guidance to arriving students.

“We are monitoring the situation closely and will keep you informed of any changes in campus protocols that may become necessary,” Furr wrote.

What does the schedule look like?

Kicking off the week is “Virtual Delta Chillz” on Jan. 10, followed by a Service & Values event on Jan. 11.

These two events will introduce PNMs to the Tridelt community and provide an opportunity to learn more about the logistics of membership as well as the larger values of the sorority. A short, required written application will also be released the morning of Jan. 10 and will be due by noon on Friday, Jan. 14.

On Jan. 12, Tridelt will hold Delta Chats, which are 1:1 meetings between PNMs and current Tridelt members. Similar to a coffee chat, these meetings are an opportunity for PNMs to get to know Tridelt members more intimately. The following day, Jan. 13, Tridelt will host its Identities Panel. At this event, PNMs will be able to have honest conversations with the Tridelt community about equity and accessibility in the sorority. A final round Delta Chat will be held on Jan. 14, followed by invites released at 8 p.m. that day.

In the invites round, Tridelt will host its final round of Delta Chats on Jan. 15 and Jan. 16. On the evening of the 16th, bids will be released, followed by Bid Night on Jan. 21. Not everyone will be guaranteed a bid to the sorority due to limited space.

What COVID-19 precautions is Tridelt taking?

Consistent with current University guidelines around large gatherings, Tridelt’s events will be held online with the exception of one event: Delta Chats. For this event, PNMs will have the option to talk to a member of Tridelt in-person if they wish to, though they will still be able to participate remotely.

While some employees need to report to campus for in-person work, Furr wrote that leaders of schools and units are making remote work possible where feasible. He encouraged employees to check with their manager about plans.

All individuals returning to campus are required to take a rapid COVID test and, if they test negative, take two Color COVID tests during their first week back on campus. Though the University is hopeful that Omicron will reach a peak soon, Furr reminded students to take a COVID test before traveling back to campus and not to travel if they test negative.

Furr emphasized the importance of mask wearing and wrote that N95 respirators and KN95 masks provide a higher level of filtration than surgical masks — though surgical masks are still acceptable. Eligible individuals should get a booster shot as soon as possible, and the University is working on securing additional booster opportunities for students, according to the email.

“While this is not the way any of us had hoped to begin 2022, we’re deeply grateful for everything you are doing to support the health of our community through this period,” Furr wrote. “Thank you, and we will continue to keep you informed.”

The Stanford Daily

Friday, January 7, 2022 ! 5

OPINIONS

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

Our plan to better serve our community: 10 takeaways from ‘100 people in 100 days’

D

uring the summer of 2021, The Stanford Daily conducted a listening tour dedicated to gauging its readership’s thoughts and perspectives on its reporting on Stanford and the surrounding community.

Our goal was to interview roughly 100 people in order to better understand what we are doing well, what we need to improve on and how we can better serve the Stanford community. In total, Daily staffers were able to interview 71 community members, ranging from students — including undergraduates, graduate students and co-terms — to alumni and staff. We received an additional 200 responses through a survey.

Based on these conversations and survey responses, The Daily’s Vol. 260 executive team and diversity, equity and inclusion co-chairs compiled ten takeaways that will inform our newsroom moving forward.

1. Our readership is digital: Interviews and survey data alike show that our readership primarily accesses Daily content through our email digest and website. The implications are clear: Our digital presence needs to be a top priority for our staff. Already, this volume marks the first where The Daily has moved from printing daily to once a week, with the goal of focusing on producing content for the web. We’ve also created two new roles to further this work.

Lana Tleimat ’23 is serving as the executive editor for digital, and Cameron Ehsan ’24 is our first audience engagement editor, responsible for keeping an eye on readership metrics. We’ll continue to make progress in this area through investing in training, technology, audience engagement, search engine optimization and more.

2. Growing our multimedia offerings: Some community members said that they would love to see more multimedia content, including, as one interviewee put it, “formats and layouts that capture the creativity and essence of our community.” Interviewees suggested a range of projects, from incorporating audio recordings of events into articles to featuring more graphics. We recognize the importance of growth in this area, and to that end, this volume, we’ve finan-

cially invested in physical and digital equipment upgrades for our multimedia sections. This includes new cameras, a video editing computer and more: Investments that allow these sections to produce high quality work and reduce the barrier to entry for staff who do not have access to this equipment otherwise. Standout content from this volume includes a photo gallery of Stanford football’s nail-biting defeat of thenNo. 3 Oregon, a video of professors reacting to mean course reviews and a podcast on imposter syndrome.

3. Expanding coverage of graduate students, faculty and staff: Some community members stressed the importance of ensuring that The Daily’s coverage spans issues relevant not only to undergraduates but to graduate students, faculty, staff and postdoctoral scholars.

The Daily’s staff is overwhelmingly composed of undergraduate students, leading one interviewee to reflect that there is a lack of communication between undergraduates and graduate students on campus, which then leads to less coverage of graduate student priorities. This volume, the news section re-introduced having a graduate students desk, tasked with taking a deeper dive into the issues that affect the University’s nearly 10,000 graduate students.

This feedback is also being taken into account by section editors in the pitching and sourcing stages of our writing process.

4. Spotlights on community members: Some community members said that in addition to the profiles and Q&As The Daily publishes on high-profile students, faculty and alumni, they would like to read more spotlights of underrecognized members of the community. One interviewee said they hoped to see more content that focuses on the everyday life of a Stanford student, while others said that they would love to see more coverage of service workers, who are beloved by many students and community members. For such coverage, readers can follow and submit names to The Daily’s @humans_of_stanford account on Instagram, which was restarted this fall by Saloni Shah ’25, as well as keep an eye out for profiles on

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our website, such as Chloe Mendoza’s ’25 interview with a member of the Branner and Gerhard Casper dining staff.

5. Digging deeper for student reactions: Some community members said they also want to see more indepth coverage of students’ reactions to major campus decisions and world events, such as news managing editor Malaysia Atwater’s ’23 piece on Black students being disappointed but unsurprised by lack of immediate police action at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 or news desk editors Benjamin Zaidel ’24 and Tammer Bagdasarian ’24’s piece on student reactions to Stanford moving winter quarter 2021 online. Interviewees said they want to see these pieces being published more frequently and pushing further to capture the diverse perspectives of the campus community.

6. Exploring issues from all sides: One concern some community members raised was that The Daily’s coverage unfairly focuses on certain perspectives, leaving readers with only one side of the story. The Daily aims to provide the Stanford community with fair,

Why we left our sorority: a call to end Greek life

T

he emergence of pivotal social movements such as Abolish Greek in the summer of 2020 sparked key conversations about genuine allyship, equity and safety and inspired us to critically evaluate our own role and complicity in the Greek system as ex-members of a sorority. It is with a mixture of sadness, relief, and pride that we and the majority of the active former members of the Omicron Chapter of Sigma Psi Zeta (SYZ), a multicultural and Asian-rooted sorority, decided to disaffiliate from SYZ and launch the Asian Women’s Alliance (AWA). After many discussions, we came to the conclusion that though the space SYZ created for Asian women was valuable for many, its position within the Greek system prevented it from practicing true inclusiveness, a principle that we hold most dear. Instead, we have established AWA, a University-funded voluntary student organization, which better represents our dedication to forging bonds between women of color and eradicating systems of oppression.

We value the foresight that the founding mothers of SYZ demonstrated in 2003 in carving out a space for Asian women to connect, enriching the Stanford community’s awareness of nuanced Asian and Asian-American identities. Past and current members of SYZ were deeply dedicated to one another and continue to be inspired by the depth of each other’s intelligence, empathy, and passion for giving back to

our communities.

And yet, we would be remiss not to acknowledge the ways in which we at the Sigma Psi Zeta Sorority relied on harmful practices that characterize much of Greek life. We were not immune to imposing secrecy on members in regards to the specifics of pledging and other rituals, using fees punitively, judging prospective members by their attire or perceived social capital, or restricting membership to give off the impression of exclusivity. A common occurrence during recruitment was coaching current members to skirt questions about the commitment the sorority entails so that rushees would have to join the sorority before fully understanding what they were signing onto. We believe this practice violates the principles of informed consent and blurs the lines between encouragement and coercion.

Reflecting upon the consequences of being in SYZ allowed us to realize that our precious community of Asian women was housed in the wrong vessel. Two of the very few spaces dedicated specifically to Asian women on Stanford campus were sororities. As a result, they remained shrouded in secrecy and barred by hundreds of dollars in quarterly fees. Ultimately, we decided the right path forward was to transplant our community and mission and to leave Greek life behind.

Throughout our disaffiliation process, we have heard criticisms that we would like to take time to address here.

First, the argument stands that Greek life can only be changed from

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within. To counter this claim, it is critical to recognize that fees and secrecy pledges are the lifeblood of Greek organizations. Organizations that rely on these things cannot be fully equitable or progressive, because embodying any of those traits requires transparency, and transparency threatens the very business model that Greek life depends on.

Furthermore, both informal expectations of loyalty to one’s fraternity or sorority and official secrecy pledges nearly always work to protect the perpetrator in instances of hazing, sexual assault, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and other sources of harm. The preservation of white supremacy is baked into the very DNA of Greek life. And at the end of the day, we realized that we could not meaningfully reform a white supremacist institution.

Second, people have suggested that Greek life forges bonds like no other. However, we would argue that it was the people who joined SYZ who created those bonds, rather than the Greek system that the organization belonged to. Moreover, if organizations are relying on exclusionary and pressure-inducing practices such as rush and pledge to forge such bonds, we question the validity of that approach.

In addition, the internal bonds between fraternity and sorority members are strengthened when their organization is housed — a privilege given to these students simply for being selected to join an

Please see ABOLISH, page 9

accurate and ethical journalism.

We will continue to take this feedback into consideration as we work to produce coverage that tells authentic, diverse and layered stories of the many different individuals, perspectives and communities on campus.

7. Interview etiquette: Some community members stressed the importance of training new writers to conduct interviews professionally. Sourcing and interviewing are key stages of the writing process that are integral to the success of the final piece. The Daily will continue to work on ensuring that staff are conducting interviews with empathy and fairness, including working with sources to set the rules of an interview and explaining unfamiliar terms. Additionally, as stated in our policies and standards, when an assertion is made by a source about a specific person or organization, they will be contacted and given a reasonable amount of time to respond before publication.

8. Building institutional knowledge and long-term relationships with activists: Some community members voiced concerns that The

Daily has published articles by writers who do not fully understand the social, political or administrative issue at hand, resulting in a surface-level or inaccurate final product. To address this, interviewees urged writers to build relationships with the communities and activists that they are covering, such as by designating a “point person” for each group or issue or by proactively meeting with stakeholders in certain coverage areas to ensure regular communication. This volume, the news section has continued implementation of its beat reporters initiative, where more experienced writers take on coverage of a specific area, such as Greek life or campus activism.

Additionally, The Daily’s Equity Project is a section that is dedicated to community-oriented journalism and centering underrepresented voices.

9. Coverage of marginalized and diverse groups: Some community members said they want to see more coverage of issues that pertain to community members of

Please see TAKEAWAYS, page 6

Victoria Yee and Thuy-Van Hang

Uni must better support Asian American Studies This series from the community features members of the SAPAAC Asian American Studies Coalition from different generations, sharing their first-hand experiences as Asian Americans on campus. Visit www.sapaac.org (Stanford Asian Pacific American Alumni Club) to find out more about the coalition’s efforts to advocate for Asian American Studies at Stanford.

W

e urge Stanford to provide funding and resources to hire and retain diverse faculty to teach Asian American Studies (AAS) courses. We graduated Stanford as AAS majors in the early 2010s and experienced the program’s institutional challenges. Especially given the recent departure of Dr. William Gow, who taught several popular courses including Introduction to Asian American Studies, we are disappointed that a decade after our graduation, issues around attracting and retaining instructors who teach AAS courses persist.

To this day, AAS at Stanford cannot hire its own tenure-track faculty.

AAS depends on professors from other departments and lecturers, primarily from other universities, to teach courses. When we were students, the quantity and availability of AAS classes each year was uncertain. The breadth of courses was limited. Few instructors taught more than one AAS class a year and could

provide stable, long-term mentorship in the field.

We had to be very intentional to major in AAS. We wanted to study a field driven by social justice and that teaches our histories. However, majoring in AAS at Stanford comes with institutional challenges. To ensure we completed our AAS major in addition to our other academic and extracurricular interests, we designed and redesigned four-year academic plans meticulously, with the support of many those outside the program, such as the Asian American Activities Center, starting from the end of freshman year or the beginning of sophomore year. This included self-advocating for independent research units so we could meet unit requirements, or seeking mentors from other disciplines to conduct our research. This careful calculus is not possible for many students. Many peers told us that they were discouraged from majoring, minoring, or taking a class in AAS because of these institutional hurdles.

Majoring, minoring, or taking a class in AAS at Stanford should not be difficult.

Even more frustrating was when Stanford denied tenure to Professor Stephen Sohn in 2013. Professor Sohn was an Assistant Professor in English who taught many classes cross-listed with AAS. He was well-

Please see AAS, page 6

The Stanford Daily

6 ! Friday, January 7, 2022 Yannie Tan

Divya Mehrish

Online classes may be socially beneficial The case for optimism on winter quarter S tudents panic and rush to message their friends as they receive the news from Provost Persis Drell and Associate Vice Provost of Environmental Health and Safety Russell Furr: “We are now planning to begin the quarter with two weeks of online instruction.”

Many students anticipate that a delayed start will hinder their ability to partake in activities, and many will be reminded of their experiences during winter quarter 2020. This change, independent of the logistical and safety precautions of the pandemic, will impact the nature of the evolving social interactions between Stanford students.

During the winter quarter 2020, many students impulsively packed their bags, booked flights, petitioned for no exams and didn’t even say goodbye to their friends.

Keeping in mind that Stanford is only “now planning” for this change, what are the impulsive decisions students make this time?

This year, some students are even considering staying home for longer.

There are many other voices as

well.

The anxious ones: “How do I form a p-set group during week two?”

“Should I take lab next quarter instead?”

“Do I even want to join this singing class if chances are classes will be virtual?”

Or the relaxed ones: “Yes! I can sleep in.”

Despite these changing situations racing in the minds of many students, there is one fundamental concern: as COVID-19 continues to persist, how will this two-week virtual period factor into the evolution of Stanford’s social culture?

While the online start will make it difficult to create new friendships, it may also serve to strengthen existing bonds among students. However, there are elements of Stanford’s social and academic culture that have been lost (temporarily and permanently) during the virtual transition.

For example, LaIR, evening office hours for computer science (CS) courses located in Tressider Union, had been a place where students would anxiously sit in clusters to

solve the p-set problems, impatiently waiting for a TA to come help. Now that it’s been moved online, the LaIR environment has temporarily lost its culture of hustle and bustle — a place known for CS alumni to reminisce about “the old days.” Though LaIR may be more convenient online, the atmosphere and culture of collective stress amongst students taking the same class has surrendered to laptop screens.

In the winter of 2020, I remember finding my closest friends in office hours during week two, working together on problem sets. Virtual office hours have changed this friendly dynamic. The tangible aspect of interacting with other students during an in-person office hour, which provided the collective comfort of struggling together, has been lost. The substitute of Zooming with people awkwardly staring at one another, afraid to interrupt, creates a barrier to naturally making friends. The design of Zoom, intended to have voices heard by all at once, prevents one-on-one conversation, which is an important

Please see VIRTUAL, page 9

Jacob Brian Budnitz

Uni should require lecture recordings

T

his past quarter, students and faculty alike noticed that lectures were constantly interrupted by a cacophony of coughing from students.

In previous years, such coughing could be written off as the flu or common cold making its seasonal rounds. In the middle of a pandemic, however, Stanford can no longer afford to treat students coughing en masse so casually. Instead, Stanford must actively encourage students feeling sick or exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms to recuse themselves from attending class to prevent them from potentially infecting others.

Currently, many courses incentivize sick students to attend class by not providing complete lecture recordings. While lecture notes, PowerPoint slides or audio recordings do mitigate the effects of missing class for an illness, they don’t provide the full benefit that a complete lecture recording (a recording that includes both video and audio of

AAS

Continued from page 5 published and a mentor to us and countless other undergraduate and graduate students. He won numerous awards for his teaching including the Walter J. Gores Award, which is Stanford’s highest award for excellence in teaching. Students and communities rallied around reconsideration of Professor Sohn’s case for tenure, but his case was not reopened. Professor Sohn left Stanford in the summer of 2014.

Stanford’s professed goals of increasing faculty diversity, teaching inclusive curriculum, and developing global leaders is lip-service.

In 2018, we started hearing about a wonderful new professor who was teaching AAS courses, and that students were very excited about him. Dr. Gow dramatically helped increase the number of AAS majors and minors and taught foundational courses like “Introduction to AAS” that have not been taught for over a decade.

Funding for Dr. Gow’s AAS courses was scarce and cobbled together from different sources. Dr. Gow was initially hired on a oneyear contract through American Studies. The initial job announcement in American Studies did not request any AAS courses, and it was Dr. Gow who proposed that he

TAKEAWAYS Continued from page 5

color, first-generation and/or lowincome students, international students and other diverse communities on campus. The Daily believes it is crucial that everyone feels represented in our coverage, as everyone has stories that deserve to be told. We hope to amplify the voices and stories of those who have otherwise been left out of Daily coverage and to encourage diverse people to join and cover issues that they care about. In addition to the Equity Project, which was launched in Vol. 258, in Vol. 259 The Daily launched its inaugural diversity,

the lecture) provides. Lecture notes rarely capture the nuanced components of a lecture, PowerPoints often omit the connections between the material on individual slides for the sake of brevity and audio recordings are difficult to follow because of ambiguous references to “this” and “that” which only make sense with a visual aid.

Thus, if a course does not provide a complete lecture recording, sick students are forced to choose between the health of their classmates and doing well in their courses.

However, this choice is one that students should not have to make.

And it’s also one that the University could easily eliminate by requiring that complete recordings be provided for all lectures, at least for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hopefully, such a requirement would remove any incentives that potentially sick students might have to come to class and consequently reduce the spread of COVID-19 and other illnesses.

While this solution may sound easy to achieve, there are significant yet definitely surmountable obstacles to its implementation.

The most challenging obstacle to providing students with full video and audio recordings is likely the issue of consent. For lecture recordings to be made available, all participants must consent to be recorded.

During the 2020-2021 academic year, consent was easily obtained as Zoom prompted everyone participating in the live lecture to acknowledge that the recording was “in progress” before participating.

Now, with in-person instruction tentatively set to resume week three of the winter term, obtaining consent may be less convenient, but it’s not impossible. For example, the University could require all lecture participants to consent to be recorded for the winter quarter prior to the start of in-person instruction.

In addition to obtaining partici-

teach them. AAS and History provided the additional funding that enabled Dr. Gow to teach AAS courses. Further, at the end of the academic year, Dr. Gow did not know if his position in American Studies would be renewed. AAS cannot and should not be sustained this way.

It is clear that Stanford drastically underfunds AAS. With an endowment of $41.9 billion as of October 2021, Stanford itself should be funding multiple tenure-track positions and multiple full-time lecturers in AAS, and any additional fundraising monies should be used for endowed chairs and programming. Instead, Stanford has so far not provided funding for one full time lecturer position in AAS. It is an embarrassment that Stanford depends on alumni donations, financial good-will from departments, and the initiative of individuals who offer to teach AAS courses, just to eke out one or two foundational AAS courses a year.

Dr. Gow left Stanford for Cal State University-Sacramento (Sac State) in the summer of 2021. Sac State recognized the importance of attracting and retaining faculty like Dr. Gow, and offered him a tenuretrack AAS position. In response, Stanford offered Dr. Gow a three year Associate Director position of AAS. The position had a reduced teaching load, but could later disappear at which point Dr. Gow only might be able to return as a lecturer on a limited term contract. After it was announced, Sac State’s Ethnic

Studies Department felt the applicant pool was so strong that it asked to hire a second tenure-track AAS position, which the Cal State University administration approved.

Therefore, Sac State was able to give two tenure-track job offers: to Dr. Gow and to Dr. Wendi Yamashita. At the time, Sac State already had three tenure-track positions in AAS along with a number of full-time lecturers.

equity and inclusion (DEI) team, which works to ensure that our content is equitable and inclusive and that our staff represents the campus community and the world around us.

10. Publicizing avenues to contribute to The Daily: One of the goals of The Daily’s leadership is to ensure that everyone in the Stanford community feels that they have a platform to share and express their perspectives through our publication. However, some community members said they were unsure of how to submit ideas and pieces to The Daily or join our staff. In the future, we hope to better publicize opportunities with The Daily, both internally and externally. Thanks to the work of newsroom development di-

rector Emma Talley ’23, this year The Daily set a recruitment record, evidence that our methods of outreach are becoming more effective. Staffers also distributed a one-page handout with information on how to contact The Daily to community members. You can join The Daily here and learn more about how tips, op-eds and other content can be submitted to The Daily here.

We thank everyone who contributed to our summer listening tour; we are immensely grateful for your willingness to help us grow. In addition to this public report, we’ll be distributing section-specific insights from the conversations and survey to our section editors.

Though the tour itself may be over, our hope is that this outreach will

Please see RECORDING, page 9

In contrast, Stanford, an institution that conducts and publishes research about the benefits of ethnic studies, has no tenure-track or full-time lecturers in AAS. Professor Sohn left Stanford nearly seven years ago. However, he continues to mentor us and others, by advising us about navigating the workplace as young professionals and connecting us with his undergraduate students who are interested in learning more about our careers. Professor Sohn is currently an endowed chair at Fordham University, and his latest book won the 2020 Asian American Studies Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Humanities and Cultural Studies. By failing to retain Professor Sohn, Stanford deprived generations of Stanford students incredible opportunities to learn and conduct cutting-edge scholarship.

We can only imagine the loss that comes with Dr. Gow’s recent departure.

Stanford is losing brilliant instructors who can teach AAS and

T

he moment the Outlook icon emerged on my iPhone screen this afternoon, I had a gut feeling about what I was in for.

In the recent weeks, as Omicron cases have risen dangerously, it has become more and more difficult for me to stay present. What if, I keep asking myself, what if ... ? In the past few days, however, as peer universities like Cornell reported nearly 1,000 cases among vaccinated students within one week, these questions have made their way into my conversations with my new Stanford friends. As a freshman just off a gap year, my first and only quarter at Stanford so far had a slight fever dream-like quality to it.

On some blisteringly blue-skied days, I would stop pedaling, slide off my bike and take a moment to gaze at the scenic campus around me, my friends laughing around me, the upperclassmen lounging on the Oval evidently so content and relieved to be back in person. How did I get this lucky?

Now it is Dec. 16, 2021. Our fully in-person fall quarter ended six days ago. Today all my peers and I received an email that the first two weeks of winter quarter will commence online.

Exactly one year and nine months ago, my iPhone screen lit up with another Outlook notification. It was the head of my high school, alerting us that classes would remain online for the first two weeks of school following spring break. Our school administrators affirmed that we would return to an in-person senior spring, but that the school would need to remain on guard.

Little did I know that I had already physically spent my last day at high school.

Exactly one year and nine months ago, Stanford moved classes online for the last two weeks of winter quarter. Days later, the administration announced that all classes would be online during spring quarter, sending over 7,000 undergrads home.

And so, I am sitting here in a post-finals, trying-to-relax trance, tempting our student body’s collective fate with more what if questions, waves of deja-vu inundating me. But perhaps doom is not necessarily coming our way. I am cauactively facilitates that attrition.

Stanford has a history of undervaluing the contributions of professors who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and/or whose scholarship focuses on BIPOC people, such as Professor Aishwary Kumar and Akhil Gupta.

If Stanford capitalizes on the labor of instructors in fields like AAS and wants to practice what it preaches regarding its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, then it needs to treat the people who teach these courses with respect and offer competitive packages that attract and retain them.

There are many ethical, academic, and competitive reasons to hire and retain diverse faculty to teach AAS courses at Stanford, especially when the university is located in California, where ethnic studies is a required class to graduate from high school and at Cal State Universities and community colleges. In the end, it is up to Stanford to stop systematically undermining AAS and start a good-faith investment in faculty who contribute to its vibrancy. Anything less is an affront to Stanford’s students and scholarship.

Victoria Yee, Esq. (she/her) graduated Class of 2013 with a BA in Asian American Studies with honors, a minor in Chinese, and a MA in Sociology. Thuy-Van (Tina) Hang, MD (she/her) graduated Class of 2012 with a BAS in Asian American Studies with honors and Biology. not be an isolated event, but rather the start of an ongoing conversation between The Daily and the community that we serve. To that end, if you would like to continue this conversation, don’t hesitate to reach out, whether through sending in a tip, submitting an article or getting in touch via email.

From, KATE SELIG Vol. 260 Editor in Chief JEREMY RUBIN Vol. 260 Executive Editor for Print LANA TLEIMAT Vol. 260 Executive Editor for Digital SARINA DEB Vol. 260 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Co-Chair JARED KLEGAR Vol. 260 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Co-Chair

tiously hopeful about how next quarter will play out. As Stanford administrators have been reporting, our weekly case numbers have consistently remained at a sufficiently low rate. Now that fall quarter has been capped, it is safe to say that administrators successfully managed emerging COVID-19 cases and post-break spikes.

Thus, this decision to transition online for the early part of winter quarter is not a response to case numbers, which stands in our favor.

Nor is it a response to an official order from Santa Clara County, which issued such an order in 2020, giving me hope that the county may not mandate university closures.

Both these facts make me more confident that Stanford is only taking precautionary measures in order to prevent future crises rather than actively addressing a current crisis.

Moreover, the update made it clear that undergraduates are still welcome to keep their travel arrangements in place and return to campus in two weeks, on the University’s scheduled Jan. 1 reopening date. The Stanford administration is also working hard to put in new supportive structures that would prevent massive campus spikes. Not only are students being asked to get a COVID-19 test preand post-travel, but they are also required to get the booster before Jan. 31. The University-wide email asserted that all these decisions are being made now so as to “minimize disruptions” to course scheduling and allow for adequate quarantine time for students who do test positive upon arrival, thereby perhaps trying to create a more level playing field amongst all students and professors returning to campus from all over the world.

Do I want to believe that in 33 days, as opposed to 17, I will be sitting in my new IntroSem, able to connect with a different set of peers as I continue the process of adjusting to life within the Stanford bubble? Yes. Can I? That’s a slightly different question. All I know is that the next few weeks are not in my hands, nor in the hands of the Stanford administration. My winter quarter, and possibly the rest of my freshman year, are in the hands of the Omicron variant. I can resign myself to the fact that I have no control over the situation and can do nothing but watch and wait in a state of paranoia. But I want to think more critically about our current national and global responses to significant rises in COVID cases.

I believe that many college-aged students are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the notion of putting their lives on hold and living in constant fear of the unpredictable.

Quite frankly, I don’t know how many more times we can experience this level of deja-vu without feeling utterly overwhelmed by what feels like a perpetual, cyclic pattern of panic.

But until we can find a cure for COVID-19, perhaps some level of panic is inevitable. Many of us have different, albeit overlapping, fears regarding catching COVID-19, as well as different ways of expressing this panic. Perhaps more than the fear of becoming ill with COVID19, many college-aged individuals are concerned about the severity of government and institutional responses to COVID-19. Many young people are experiencing what I will refer to as “Virus Response Fatigue.” Whether COVID-19 continues to mutate is currently out of our control on a global level. What is within our control is how governments respond to the virus and how much disruption we choose to initiate. Given that recent research has found that Omicron, while more resistant to our current vaccines, causes less severe symptoms, many young people are not as concerned about their own health as they are those of older or immunocompromised individuals around them. For some college students, their main fear is often tied to the possible disruption that a positive test result would cause: quarantine, online classes, being unable to board a flight to or from home or school, and the potential impacts of solitary confinement on mental health.

Therefore, as Stanford considers next steps for winter quarter, the administration should take these perspectives into consideration in order to foster the most nurturing, safe and healthy — in every sense of the word — environment for all students, in addition to faculty and staff.

Many young, vaccinated individuals with whom I have spoken express their frustration at those who choose to remain unvaccinated around the country despite access

Please see OPTIMISM, page 9

The Stanford Daily

Friday, January 7, 2022 ! 7

CULTURE FINE ART

Exploring light ‘Discussions in the Cave’ exhibit launches in Palo Alto

By BHUMIKORN KONGTAVEELERT CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective opinions, thoughts and critiques.

B

ased in Northern California, long-time friends Tahiti Pehrson, a paper-cut artist, and Jud Bergeron, a bronze cast sculptor, recently showcased their new body of work at the Bryant Street Gallery in downtown Palo Alto, one of the few fine arts galleries within biking distance from campus.

Jud Bergeron’s geometric, hardedged bronze casts are unmistakably bold yet simultaneously meditative. The large, geometric sculptures are built using molds based on cardboard models to cast bronze.

Bergeron’s patina development on his casts is fantastic; their clever placement complements the strong gestures of the sculpture while also creating slight color variations.

Light reflects off the different planes of the geometric sculpture, making Bergeron’s casts appear ephemeral, despite the inherent permanence of metal sculptures.

Similarly, what drew me to Pehrson’s paper-cuts was their tem-

poral quality and interplay of light.

The intricate cuts are meticulously hand-crafted; the barely noticeable traces of human error on the creases of some cuts function as a “proof of work,” evidence of the labor that underlies the craft. Pehrson’s masterful manipulation of light seems both serene and daring as the pieces explore different shapes and dimensions, all showcasing the possibility of beauty in casted shadows.

In “Discussions From the Cave,” Pehrson refreshingly departs from white-on-white paper-cuts.

Glimpses of the expressively painted acrylic back panel seep through the incisions of a delicate-as-ever repetitive paper-cut pattern. Perhaps the colors represent a fresh interpretation of ‘lightness of being,’ a seemingly natural progression for the artist, who has been mastering his craft for 15 years. For what is white light, if not a combination of iridescence?

Jeanne Vadeboncoeur, the manager of Bryant Street Gallery, detailed the process of putting together the showcase, saying that the gallery worked to ensure that there was “a lot of synergy between the work.” The two-person exhibit came about out of a deep mutual respect between the artists and the longing to become a part of a community

again, after much struggle in the COVID-19 era.

“You produce your work in your studio by yourself, and when you’re in there, you’re having all these thoughts,” Pehrson said, “and then you bring it into the gallery; you kind of come out of the cave in flight.”

Pehrson’s paper-cuts and Bergeron’s casts work in a quiet conversation with one another, laborious whispering that strives for beauty.

Bergeron’s bronze casts are rigid in their appearance but softened by the delicate patina that he was able to create, a bold statement about the calmness of creation; Pehrson’s paper-cuts use their gorgeous shadows to feel ephemeral and sensitive.

“I was thinking of the context of his work while I was making these pieces,” said Pehrson, referring to Bergeron, as he explained how having a two-person show motivated his art.

Karen Imperial, the owner of the gallery, told The Daily about the behind-the-scenes work involved with each showing, going back to the firm’s roots as a picture framing company in New York.

“We frame them so that they have depth so that you can see, you know, shades of shadows and things that work,” Imperial said.

Courtesy of the artists and Bryant Street Gallery

Jud Bergeron’s “Demon Dog” (left), bronze, and Tahiti Pehrson’s “Ruliad” (right), paper-cut, play with themes of symmetry and stillness.

Building on their history in the framing business, the gallery made careful curatorial choices when displaying the art, which helped exemplify the techniques and beauty of Pehrson’s works. Many of the frames used for the show are customized to best highlight the papercut pieces.

Bryant Street Gallery has been around for more than 25 years, and Imperial said the secret to their success is to recognize that the business of art is ultimately the business of people; it is about the relationships between the artists and the gallery.

“I can make some suggestions, and then they take it or not because I’m out in the world and they’re in their studios,” Imperial said.

Gallerists routinely interact with clients and patrons who sup-

port artists, in turn gaining a sense of what work sells well. They act as support systems and mentors for emerging artists to help them generate a financially sustainable practice.

“I like process-based work like [Bergeron’s and Pehrson’s], and I like things that are aesthetically pleasing,” Imperial laughed, “I’m never going to be one of those avantgarde kinds of gals. I’m just not; it’s not me. It’s not my clientele.”

“Discussions in The Cave” is an incredible show that I highly recommend. The art on display captures the stillness of the world and allows guests to cherish these rare, precious moments of silence. Viewers can visit “Discussions in The Cave” at Bryant Street Gallery until Jan. 31.

CULTURE

Frosh breaks down astrophysics in podcast

By BHUMIKORN KONGTAVEELERT CONTRIBUTING WRITER

F

rancesca Fernandes ’25 strikes me as an enthusiastic academic who is passionate about learning and her bookshelves, full of all kinds of books. Although the guitar and MIDI keyboard in her dorm room may not immediately suggest she’s a prospective physics major, Fernandes’s podcast “Nothin’ But Space” proves her aptitude for the subject. In her podcast, Fernandes highlights her unique ability to simplify and recount difficult concepts in astrophysics in a comfortable, sisterly tone.

The interview has been slightly edited for clarity.

The Stanford Daily [TSD]: How would you describe the podcast series to someone who’s never listened to “Nothin’ But Space” before?

Francesca Fernandes [FF]: I think what makes my podcast different from other podcasts about astrophysics and quantum physics is that I really try to be very friendly. I’ve listened to a lot of other space podcasts, and they’re always very educational and very in-

Courtesy of Francesca Fernandes

formative, which is great. I really try to have a lot of energy and make myself seem more accessible — not only in the sense that I’m educating you and telling you about things that I’m really passionate about, but also that I’m a nerdy friend of yours who’s telling you about things that I really enjoy. I like to tell people about how I got interested in space, what I’m doing in this field right now and why I like it. I think that really kind of opens me up as a person, and as a narrator, I think that creates a sort of connection that kind of keeps people listening and engaged.

TSD: Yeah, I gotta say, I listened to your episode on lithium seven, and it felt as though I was listening to an older sister who’s really passionate, telling me about

how incredible space is. I think that works like magic.

What inspired you to start the podcast?

FF: I actually started my podcast because I was very much starting to get into the topics of physics and astrophysics in my senior year of high school. I know a lot of people who have been in the community, and it’s something that they’ve loved their entire lives, like they grew up knowing, “Okay, I want to be an astronaut,” or, “I love exploring space” — and I think that experience is very different for me, because I didn’t grow up way. I actually discovered I love this kind of stuff late, relative to other people.

My experience kind of started with my friends asking me, “Why did you suddenly start getting interested in astrophysics, and what got you

interested?” Eventually it got to the point where I felt that I was repeating my answers; I thought I would create one place where all the central information could be located. Because most of my friends were not astrophysics people, if they could find it accessible, I was thinking maybe other people who are also interested in the same information could, too.

That’s when it became more of a formal podcast, and it’s where my friendly vibe comes from.

TSD: How long does an episode take to make, and what are the steps?

FF: As someone who’s trying to provide people with the most up-to-date information, usually the topics I choose are already things that I know quite a bit about. I do quite a bit of research. I think a big thing for me is reading journal articles, which is also something I just love to do in my free time — it’s not really work for me. Everything I’m talking about is stuff that I’m still in the process of being like, “Holy, this is so cool.”

In terms of how long every episode takes me, I would say a couple of hours for research —

Please see SPACE, page 11

MUSIC

Little Simz flows flawlessly

By NICK SLIGH COLUMNIST

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective opinions, thoughts and critiques.

Welcome to “New Music with Nick.”

In this column, I will be reviewing some of the most notable new album releases across various genres, focusing on hip-hop, R&B and pop music. Join me in exploring the ever-shifting landscape of the streaming era.

Little Simz: “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert” (Sept. 3, 2021)

S

imbiatu Ajikawo, better known by the stage name Little Simz, is someone that any fan of hip-hop should familiarize themselves with. Two and a half years following “Grey Area,” the 27-year-old UK rapper valiantly returned with her fourth studio album, “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert” (or “SIMBI”).

Following up “Grey Area” was no small

Graphic: ZAY SMITH/The Stanford Daily

With something new and exciting on every track, “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert” never disappoints, writes Nick Sligh. task. Simz’ last full-length album was an iconic project that I view as a modern classic and one of the best albums of the last decade. But, starting as early as its strategic rollout, “SIMBI’’ did not disappoint. It was easily one of my favorite album rollouts of the last few years, creating lead

singles that were not only amazing music pieces by themselves, but that provided unique sounds, styles and visuals that built the foundations for a grand adventure of an album.

“Introvert” began the exciting rollout by creating a cinematic journey with its video. Unreal production created the aura of an intense film soundtrack while Simz delivered profound bars, reminding everybody of her astonishing writing skills.

Following the debut single was the Cleo Sol-assisted “Woman,” and a marvelously produced uplifting anthem of empowerment was released. “Rollin Stone” and “I Love You, I Hate You” rounded out the singles, each providing something unique to the collection. Due to this rollout, “SIMBI” was not only one of the most anticipated albums of the year for me, but it was one of the more anticipated albums that I have ever waited on.

No bad songs exist on the album; even the interludes are phenomenal. (Seriously,

Please see ALBUM, page 11

Atlantic Records

Ben Platt’s sophomore album, “Reverie,” debuted in August. With collaborators Michael Pollack and Alex Hope, Platt explores his personal nostalgia.

MUSIC

Ben Platt tours new album, to play at Frost

By KYLA FIGUEROA COLUMNIST

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective opinions, thoughts and critiques.

W

hether it’s playing through AirPods during a rainy car ride or through the speakers at Wilbur Dining, Ben Platt’s music is something out of a dream — ranging from energetic pop to soft ballads, his songs can leave you on your feet or in a state of melancholy.

Ben Platt is known for his range; he’s held a wide variety of roles, including Evan in the Tony Award-winning musical “Dear Evan Hansen,” Benji in the “Pitch Perfect” trilogy and Payton in Netflix series “The Politician.” His sophomore studio album, “Reverie,” was released Aug. 13. It is reminiscent of his older music from the album “Sing to Me Instead,” but also incorporates newer themes related to nostalgia. On Nov. 23, the Daily attended a Telecom conference highlighting Platt’s album and upcoming tour, which is scheduled to come to Stanford’s Frost Amphitheater on Apr. 5.

The pandemic shaped this album — Platt wrote it mainly in his “childhood bedroom,” which is unsurprisingly a song title, given the album’s thematic focus on nostalgia. After releasing his one-off single “Rain,” he began writing with collaborators Michael Pollack and Alex Hope, hoping to release something less theatrical and more progressive for his style. While he took a creative pause at the beginning of the pandemic, once he had the opportunity to write again from quarantine in that childhood bedroom, he let the space take over. According to Platt, “being surrounded by [his] old posters, clothes and yearbooks” made the room a very fruitful, inspirational place for him to write.

“I think that’s what brought sort of the late eighties, early nineties, nostalgia kind of a sound [about],” Platt said. “Sort of like a Peter Gabriel, kind of Phil Collins feeling because that’s a lot of the music that I

Please see SINGER, page 12

The Stanford Daily

8 ! Friday, January 7, 2022

THE GRIND

THE GRIND

Resorting to fatalism, the true disease on campus

Meet Meg: Behind the scenes of Carta There’s no typical Stanford student

By AYA AZIZ

STAFF WRITER

Y

ou know what they say — “new year, new me” ... and a bunch of new classes to start off winter quarter! Ever since course registration opened on Dec. 1, the only website I’ve seen used more than Axess has been Carta, a popular course planning service that allows Stanford students to read reviews of classes and create schedules.

While instruction might be virtual for the first two weeks of the quarter due to rising COVID-19 cases across the country and the uncertainty surrounding the Omicron variant, the course shopping period waits for no one! As students rapidly add and drop classes and scramble to finalize their schedules before the Preliminary Study List Deadline, I decided to sit down with Meg Reinstra ’23, Carta’s Co-Product Manager and Back-End Team Lead, to learn more about the website’s behindthe-scenes.

The rundown on Meg? She’s from Menlo Park and is a junior studying computer science. She first got involved with Carta in the fall of her freshman year, saying what drew her to the team was her desire to “work on a project that was meaningful.” While Meg did come to Stanford with previous coding experience, having taken two years of computer science classes in high school, she had never coded outside of school before.

“I think [Carta is] a great way [for freshmen and sophomores] to get experience outside of the classroom,” Reinstra said. “A lot of theory taught in schools is useful for solving contrived problems and building the skills needed in the computer science industry. With Carta, I was able to practice the coding I would need to do in the real world.”

A little bit of history on Carta — it was built in a single summer by a Stanford Ph.D. student, Sorathan “Tum” Chaturapruek ’19, in 2016. It was originally an experimental research-based platform that examined how students made decisions about the courses they planned to take and, in turn, inspired further inquiry into how these factors affected their GPA. Soon, the data was recognized by the Pathways Lab, a sector of the

Graduate School of Education that publishes peer-reviewed research on how people make sense of learning experiences. They later partnered with students and adapted the platform into the prominent course-planning website it is now.

While Carta team members still collaborate with mentors from the Pathways Lab, the website transitioned over the course of the pandemic into an independent, student-run project called Carta V2.

It’s an effort to “rewrite” the platform to optimize the user experience in terms of speed and accessibility to more features, and was actually spearheaded by Meg’s older brother, John Reinstra ’20. “[In 2016], my brother started building a course-choosing platform similar to Carta. Then Carta launched, and he was all like, ‘Oh, crap, this already exists.’” Since Carta had been constructed in one summer by one person, Meg explained, it had been kind of hard to read and maintain, so John started a team to rewrite the platform, which is the Carta we see now.

According to Meg, Carta is divided into three teams: the frontend team, the back-end team and the design team. The front-end team dictates the layout of the website, or what you see when you open the computer. The back-end team codes the data necessary for the website to run. Lastly, the design team brainstorms the future versions of Carta to come. All the magic happens inside a single room in the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center. A peek into their workspace and you’d see team members running code on their laptops and glancing over each other’s shoulders to offer advice on approaching specific problems, ultimately engaging in a “collaborative” process.

“We all kind of work together,” Meg said.

Meg shared with me an exciting bombshell: Carta is starting to plan for the next iteration of the site! This has resulted in the typical workday at Carta consisting of “less coding” and “more whiteboarding” and increased discussion about strategy for future updates to the website.

“I think the biggest thing we’re working on right now is just a new, more intuitive layout with different search filters to make the platform more usable,” Meg described. “I think we’re also trying to rebrand slightly as more of a planning kind of website.”

In that case, what’s next for Carta and Meg? One of the reasons why Meg is glad she joined the Carta team during her frosh year

By MATTHEW TURK

AYA AZIZ/The Stanford Daily

Meg Reinstra ’23 is a product manager for Carta and the back-end team lead. Carta, originally a research platform to understand GPA, now helps students schedule courses. was because of the experience she’s gained. At the time, she was “very torn between medicine and computer science, and had no experience in either.” Working with Carta taught her what it was like to work on a software project.

“I remember asking myself, do I like sitting in a room coding for fun? This is not for everyone.” Meg recalled. “And I think my takeaway was ‘yes, I do.’”

Meg is still enrolled in pre-med classes at Stanford. While she isn’t planning on taking the MCAT in the foreseeable future, she is still drawn to medicine and observed a huge need for computer scientists in biotech and bioinformatics. Yet, no matter the specific sector of computer science she eventually pursues, Meg says that she is most interested in “building infrastructure” rather than coding the data “needed to run complicated algorithms.”

Meg also shared Carta’s vision moving forward. While she believes that Carta’s current popularity for getting a glimpse into courses via data and reviews is “great and useful to students,” she says that the website is also trying to incorporate “more four-year planning.” According to Meg, there is no set timeline during which users will be able to observe much change to the site (besides the occasional bug fixes, of course).

When these changes do take effect, she hopes that they will provide students with the data they need to design the optimal Stanford career.

Yet regarding what she wants users to take away from Carta, Meg shared that she hopes that students avoid reducing themselves and their own unique needs, goals and desires to data points on a graph. She cautions users against putting too much weight on all of the site’s quantitative data, including the “Intensity” graph (which shows how many hours students typically devote to a course per week) and the “Quality of Instruction” score (as derived from

Please see CARTA, page 12

T

MANAGING EDITOR

he reignition of COVID-19 hysteria is somewhat resemblant of a nuclear fusion reactor. Indifferent lightweight particles violently smash into one another as modern physicists hasten to control ionized gas that blazes with the passion of the sun. Others decide to fire lasers at pellets of uranium-235. The energy produced through the fusion of atoms is absorbed as heat in the walls of the vessel — although that does not always work. So why are the physicists doing this again?

Evidently, the worlds of nuclear fusion and infectious disease are alike in that they contain many variables and sometimes lose a sense of direction. It is impossible for one person or a group of people to keep track of so much. There is a wealth of information out there to be discovered about how plasma behaves and how the immune system behaves, but such insights are far from being substantially understood.

Optimists believe that the first proof-of-concept fusion reactor demonstration will dazzle the world in December 2025, and a complete commercial rollout will come sometime around 2040. Merely saying the word “optimist,” however, is enough to make a prisoner at this juncture roll their eyes at this point.

Indeed, there’s a litany of reasons to believe that fusion reactors will not arrive on time, just as there’s a litany of reasons to believe that we will not return to in-person instruction on time. And the logic of such a statement has little to do with logic at all by this point. Rather, it’s the process whereby another disillusioned member of Generation Z is looking to predict how untrustworthy institutions will save face this time. That’s the way this works, after all.

By now, the reasoning does not revolve around case numbers or hospitalizations but rather public perception and the powers that be.

At least 95% of University students, staff, faculty and postdoctoral scholars are vaccinated — and yet, for example, if the aging population of professors and other faculty are weary of exposing themselves to the Omicron wave, then I suppose we can toss our beloved metrics into the waste bin.

As easy as it is to claim that I am the fatalistic one, resorting to our 2020 playbook is a worse concession than carefully relaxing restrictions, I believe, as the former feeds into the bottomless, irrational fear on which the virus thrives.

Of course, I don’t mean to minimize the threat that this virus poses, especially to the immunocompro-

THE GRIND

The ultimate ‘UnoReverse’?, part 3

By KYLA FIGUEROA MANAGING EDITOR

By VIVIAN WANG

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A

nd here we are, back to where we were a year ago, back at a crossroads, a wild card. Cases are rising, this time with variants infecting thousands across the country and students awaiting news from their universities, the ominous message from Dec. 16 being one of the many to come. In part 1, we covered last year’s fiasco of reversals.

In part 2, we found what did go right in terms of students returning to campus. And now, combining student perspectives with our own, we want to ask the following — what does the past have to say about our future? And what do students have to say about what’s to come?

Winter ’22: Third time’s the charm?

When Kyla read the email, the situation was too familiar. She already dreads emails from administration after last year’s fiasco; seeing the latest email’s title caught her off-guard, as she expected winter to be normal, and this made her relive the memories of the past. All she could think was “Oh boy, here we go again.” (She immediately proceeded to post the announcement to an Instagram story, Oliva Rodrigo’s “deja vu” playing in the background of the photo.) After reflection, though, she somehow re-

mains hopeful. Two weeks could just be a delay tactic for an actual announcement of Zoom University, just as it was a year ago, but Kyla believes otherwise. Students should not expect the worst but they should prepare for any change or challenge during these unprecedented times.

As Vivian and her friends were waiting in line at Disneyland on Dec. 16, 2021, Vivian’s friend saw an Outlook notification saying “Update on the beginning of winter quarter.” From just reading the subject line, Vivian knew it was not good news; she thought Stanford was going to announce that students would not be on campus for the entire quarter due to the increasing severity of Omicron. Understanding the necessity for this two-week remote learning decision, Vivian is trying to be optimistic and make the most of the situation.

However, Vivian fears the Class of 2025 will experience the similar fate of the Class of 2024; she worries that the uncertainty of Omicron will cause the forestallment of in-person activities.

As for many, fall was the first time in a while where many could gather somewhat normally amidst abnormal times. It was fun. It was rewarding. We could finally see what the “real” Stanford is, and we want to keep experiencing it. Linda Tong ’24, who took a gap-year prior to COVID and was away another year due to remote learning and

Unsplash

Kyla Figueroa ’24 and Vivian Wang ’25 recount the past two years of emails and contemplate what the future may hold. hopes for continued in-person instruction, “loved the sense of community [she] felt from living on campus this fall.”

Students from across the undergraduate population have mixed feelings about what is to come.

Many, understandably, are looking at it with a “glass half-empty” perspective — Thursday’s announcement appears as Stanford’s tactic to deter the masses from taking a leave of absence and the two-week restriction will eventually be elongated. After all, most dislike online classes due to the lack of connection, something that can make our education fun Sami Raihane ’22, a student interviewed by The Daily, recognizes student concerns and frustrations with online school, especially regarding equity and its social implications. “Online courses lead to greater inequalities and access to resources, such as broadband Internet, affordable flights and mental health/health services, [which]

pose the largest burden on FLI and international students.”

On a Buzz post by Daily reporters, general consensus on the app was the opposite of optimistic.

Again, students believe that this is a repeat of last year’s winter quarter delay and eventual elimination. One student even replied to our post soliciting student reactions, a statement with one word: “bad.”

However, many students, while cautious, remain positive that temporal restrictions are indeed temporary and they’ll be able to rejoin their peers without further barriers. Frosh Kaylee Shen ’25, acknowledging the constant shifts in the pandemic, has “positive affirmations.”

“With the vaccines and booster shots, I do have hope that things will actually end after the two weeks or not long after that,” Shen said. “I think I’m going to choose to believe that things are going to be

Please see UNO, page 11

MATTHEW TURK/The Stanford Daily

Minimization of the spread of COVID-19 is beginning to take direct opposition to the preservation of hope and well-being, writes Matthew Turk. mised and the elderly. All that I mean to insist is that the daily choices that you made before the pandemic were also risk calculations.

Families drive cars even though crashes harm significantly more children than COVID-19. We go on morning runs or bike across campus even though some of us from time to time will end up injured as a result.

What is the endgame? Eventually, we have to take our lives back. We can’t cower to the constant stream of panicked, blase Atlantic articles forever.

From personal observation, I’ve seen that some members of my cohort are planning to stay off campus for the first two weeks, perhaps to gallivant around the world some more or to avoid pricey airline tickets. We can either accept COVID-19 infection as inevitable or we can delay the inevitable, as many students may live off campus for the first two weeks. Would you rather have students living on campus, where 95% of people are vaccinated, or would you have them living among the general population, only to bring disease to campus?

Most of the spread, I would imagine, will take place in dormitories and illicit social gatherings rather than classes. Not to mention, students aren’t going to follow these protocols in their dorms anyway, because the protocols are intrusive and most residential assistants are reasonable enough not to breathe down our necks during trying times like these.

A couple of months ago, I was exchanging emails with a professor who was encouraging me to take a new course of hers. “It would be lovely to have you as a student again, this time in person,” she wrote. Perhaps she spoke too soon — and perhaps I should not have gotten my hopes up.

Admittedly, I think I’ve come to expect disappointment, defeat and dissatisfaction so much that I don’t have a reaction or a take. When I woke up the morning after Thanksgiving to news of a new variant, I merely thought, “Oh, yes. Of course this is happening.” When word spread that the first two weeks of class would be online, I thought, “Checks out. After all, this is the crummy world I was destined to live in anyway!”

The reverberations are real — as are the divisions. In March 2020, we had some zest in the tank and truly believed that we were “alone together.” Time has proven that insipid phrase to be hilariously false.

Schisms have deepened between racial groups, political creeds and generations. The undercurrent of animosity and indignation in this moment becomes harder to ignore as the exhaustion drags on. In fact, a September study by the European Council on Foreign Relations noticed “a widespread sense in many societies that the futures of the young have been sacrificed for the sake of their parents and their grandparents.”

In the words of Ian Bogost, “Everyone knows the past is gone, but now the past’s future feels lost too. I hope it’s not, but I can’t shake the feeling.”

I have a confession. I haven’t unraveled my incessant mindset of victimhood in this piece. Fatalism is more clever than some 30-odd mutations on a spike protein. At a certain point, despair becomes seductive, and hope becomes a destructive narcotic. Grief becomes cumulative, and once you arrive at that point, nothing can be processed. You just shut down, and you come to see your life as I have, through the chaotic lens of a boxer. Maybe Floyd Patterson. Even for the 1960s, he had the utterly plausible body of a featherweight, yet he ended up with his back against the ropes as the future heavyweight champion Sonny Liston landed one hook after another across his face. Patterson surrendered to his fate.

The Stanford Daily

Friday, January 7, 2022 ! 9

THE GRIND

Against prolonged adolescence

By MATTHEW TURK

T

MANAGING EDITOR

his past summer, I stumbled upon a Netflix animated series, “Siege,” which featured the original characters from the “Transformers” franchise. To no one’s surprise, I geeked out, having grown up as a total gearhead.

I absorbed the 1980s Generation 1 content as a lower schooler and can identify character after character with ease. The lore of this media franchise is expansive, typically following battles across the universe between the Autobots and Decepticons, two opposing factions of sentient shapeshifting autonomous robots.

Never would I trade those magical memories of playing with the action figures, reading the comics or watching Blackout transform from a Sikorsky MH-53 helicopter into a 33-foot-tall robot to open the 2007 film. However, that movie debuted more than 14 years ago, and I long ago broke the threshold designed to transition me into a phase of life more suitable for my ever-changing state. What happened instead is that I remained that child.

HUMOR

We might not be allowed to have gatherings DESK EDITOR

Graphic: JESSICA LEE/ The Stanford Daily

A couple of months after starting the series, I watched the Summer Olympic Games from a hotel with my family. How ironic, I thought, that I felt about the same age as I did nine years before. It might have been the perception of being under the same proverbial roof, following the same rules, forfeiting the same privileges of independence that I had desired for so long. In 2012, I had also watched the Olympics from a hotel room, as I was vacationing in Montreal with my family. In 2016, I was in Washington, D.C., for my cousin’s wedding. In 2021, my sister was moving into an apartment before pursuing a Ph.D. — and the rest of her twenties, I observed — starting the following month. My family spent nearly a week in New Haven getting everything settled, shuttling everyday essentials from Walmart to our hotel to the apartment.

In the first few days of the 2021 Olympic Games, I was texting back and forth with a dear friend, sharing which matches we had watched. I particularly remember watching the

Please see SIEGE, page 11

THE GRIND

W

hat makes someone a superhero? An inspirational origin story? Supernatural ability beyond what is expected? Courage? By every metric, actor Simu Liu is a superhero.

Born in Harbin, China in 1989, Liu immigrated to Ontario at the age of five, where he spent the remainder of his childhood. Raised by immigrant parents, Liu lived frugally and faced immense pressure to succeed academically, an experience shared by many children of immigrant fam-

RECORDING Continued from page 6

pants’ consent, the University would have to provide the equipment and labor needed to record lectures and make them available to students. To overcome this obstacle, Stanford only needs to purchase video and audio recording equipment and train TAs how to use it — a feat that MIT has demonstrated to be achievable through MIT OpenCourseWare (even with an endowment around $10 billion less than Stanford’s).

Some professors have also expressed concerns that if lecture recordings are made available on demand, in-person lecture attendance could decrease and students may not retain material as well by watching online recordings (compared to attending lectures in person). Even if lecture recordings decrease in-person lecture attendance, the claim that student learning would automatically suffer as a result is not necessarily true. Educational research focusing on students at Harvard Medical School has found that students find “video-recorded lectures equally or more valuable” than attending lectures in-person. This student preference for recorded lectures instead of live ones can likely be attributed to the fact that a majority of students report that watching recorded lectures makes them

OPTIMISM Continued from page 6

to safe vaccines and without medical or religious inhibitions. “Choosing to get vaccinated,” one of my peers articulated, “is not just a choice to protect yourself, but also to protect those around you.” However, Cornell’s recent spike in cases reveals that having a COVID-19 vaccine may not be the final answer to remaining virus-free. A futurefocused question I’ve begun to hear a lot of lately is “if neither vaccines nor boosters prove effective, what’s

Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious.

All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.

I

t is widely believed that the average person receives in and around 120 emails per day. This rule seems to hold up well at Stanford, and in recent weeks we have all been closely watching any inbox updates that might suggest a U-turn on the school re-

ilies. In a letter to his parents, Liu describes the animosity he developed toward them in response to the pressure put on him: “We fought often. If I tripped on my laces, I was clumsy.

If I scored below an A, I was stupid.

If I wanted to hang out with my friends, I was wasting my time. I grew to resent the pressure you put on me, resolving to make your lives as difficult as you were making mine.”

Yearning for his parents’ acceptance, he followed their wishes and attended the Ivey Business School at

Please see LIU, page 11 more likely to “increase their speed of knowledge acquisition” (>79% of students), “look up additional information” (>67%) and “stay focused” (>64%). To many Stanford students, these findings are not surprising as most have experienced lectures that go too slow to keep our attention, too fast to allow us to look up references necessary for understanding material or are just simply difficult to focus on for long periods of time.

However, even if providing complete lecture recordings does negatively impact student learning, Stanford must allow its students to make the decision to incur that negative outcome — the University can’t hold its students’ hands forever.

From limiting student gatherings to indoor mask mandates, Stanford has already implemented restrictions aimed at curtailing a person’s potential to spread COVID-19, regardless of whether the person is actually at risk of doing so. If Stanford is truly committed to stopping COVID-19, then it must encourage students with signs or symptoms of infectious illness to stay away from large indoor gatherings like classroom lectures, as this is a fundamental, universally recommended measure to protect our community. Providing full video and audio recordings for all lectures, at least for the duration of the COVID19 pandemic, should be immediately implemented as it is a reasonable, rational requirement to help protect our fellow students, faculty and staff. next?” Herd immunity? Total lockdown? It is difficult to say. In the meantime, I believe it is necessary to thoughtfully listen to and engage with the perspectives presented at all levels and from individuals of all backgrounds. Such behavior is essential to preventing individuals from feeling alienated and to avoid widening the already-apparent generational divide.

And as easy as it would be for me to tell myself that my first quarter was, in fact, a fever dream and that the feelings of luck and thrill I experienced this past fall were nothing but illusions, I do have a lot to be grateful for. We all do. Now let’s just keep our fingers crossed.

or rescheduled.”

“Outdoor-only gatherings and meetings” “Indoor performances are ... being canceled” “Spectator attendance at indoor athletic events will be limited” It can be really difficult to understand all of the information thrown at us daily, but drawing on our team’s Stanford education and expertise in statistics, probabilistic analysis, natural language processing and stochastic modeling, we think, maybe, we might not be allowed to have indoor events and gatherings. Just our take.

Pixabay

HUMOR

10 resolutions to give up on this week

By OM JAHAGIRDAR

The superhero behind Shang-Chi: Simu Liu

By ERIC ZHU

opening — in a repeat of what can only be referred to in this piece as The Unspeakable Events of Winter 2021.

Since you might not have had time to read through all 500 words of Wednesday’s email from Persis Drell, your trusted confidants at the Occasionally are here to break it down for you.

Let’s start with some quotations. On five different occasions, the email stated that until Jan. 28, there will be: “No indoor events and gatherings” “Gatherings generally should be moved outdoors, moved online

By UCHE OCHUBA

MANAGING EDITOR

By UCHE OCHUBA DESK EDITOR

By BEN LEES

STAFF WRITER

Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.

Y

ay! It’s the New Year, the time that marks when dads can no longer say “see ya next year!” However, it’s not all positive, as all of your friends and family constantly hound you for a New Year’s resolution. Here are some resolutions you can tell them to keep them off your back!

1. Get taller If athletes and actors are doing it in their 50s completely naturally, then I should be able to, too!

2. Leave campus at least once a month Maybe I’ll study abroad or go backpacking somewhere exotic like GovCo. 3. Eat breakfast at least once This will force me to wake up early enough to not skip all of my classes at least one day this quarter!

ABOLISH Continued from page 5

exclusive social club. We call for the University to unhouse all the Interfraternity Council (IFC) and InterSorority Council (ISC) Greek organizations that are currently housed on the Row and enjoy exclusive privileges that are available to no other student organizations, such as private chefs, guaranteed housing by bypassing the traditional draw process, designated spaces to host mixers, and more. The commitment that the University has made to continue Greek housing further demonstrates that Stanford still upholds such oppressive systems.

Greek organizations, if they continue to operate, should be treated like any other student organization — bound by the same policies, of-

VIRTUAL

Continued from page 6 and significant part of in-person office hours.

As virtual classes become increasingly normal, students may gradually understate the importance of developing friendships within courses and office hours.

Students, now given the option to have office hours online, may prefer this efficient way of seeking help.

However, this transition may eventually cause a series of changes in their social development. Perhaps that person on Zoom, with their camera turned off and microphone muted, could have been your best friend.

After speaking with students from multiple class years, there has been an observable difference in who these students prioritize in their social life. Though the ability to create new and broader friendships diminishes through the use of virtual platforms, not all social implications are negative.

I asked one of my close sophomore friends who had taken their classes online during their fresh-

4. Get into a fulfilling relationship There’s no way putting myself on a timer could ever hurt me!

5. Enroll in less than 20 units I have no need to take more units than my friends to feel superior to them ... I will be satisfied feeling superior to them because I’ll be taller than them.

6. Take one non-STEM class Maybe I’ll do that chemistry IntroSem about science in the news. Does that count?

7. Go to the gym and not immediately turn back once realizing there are other people there Baby steps ... one day I’ll make it past the locker room.

8. Start a problem set more than 24 hours before the deadline And if I start at least 48 hours before, maybe I can think about sleeping!

9. Resist the urge to switch to CS I will simply minor and take several additional advanced electives.

10. Have the confidence to use the bathroom while someone else is in there I’m talking about the communal bathrooms, you creep.

fered the same opportunities.

Through this process, the genuine communities bonded by shared values and interests will survive and thrive. By contrast, organizations bonded only by privilege and exclusivity will fail — and perhaps such organizations ought never to have existed in the first place. We understand that many who join Greek life do so seeking community, and call on all IFC and ISC members and Potential New Members (PNMs) to disaffiliate and to instead join or form organizations that will be subject to the same rules as every other student organization on campus.

Asian and Asian-American women in the U.S. have the peculiar experience of being caught between being invisible and enduring both racist and sexist harassment. The identity of the Asian woman is one that is objectified, made invisible, and downplayed in America’s extensive history of anti-Asian violence, imperialism, and policymakman year about how many people he had virtually met. He told me that he made six close friends — through one class. I realized that I had made so many more by being in-person and immediately felt sorry he had spent a year online.

But he continued to explain how his group of friends were already planning spring break and Thanksgiving trips. In fact, they seemed to do everything together — from asking each other for p-set help on classes that they hadn’t even taken yet, to cooking weekly meals (when back on campus). In addition, they had the opportunity to live off campus as a group, creating additional bonds in ways that only programs such as SPOT would permit. That’s when I realized they had formed a web of reliability.

My freshman experience focused on developing strong relationships in a more linear form, in which I was constantly meeting new people from different courses.

Though I was able to learn about each friend’s background and story, it required an additional shared experience to develop the depth of friendship that my friend had mentioned, such as joining another club together or getting off campus on a trip to San Francisco.

ing. We will broach these painful subjects and more in the Asian Women’s Alliance. But at the same time, we will instill pride and joy in our diverse cultures, educate ourselves and others about how the Asian-American community is far from homogeneous, and take steps to combat the racism and sexism that have harmed Asian-American women for centuries. While AWA is meant to provide a space of joy, friendship, and mentorship, and foster ethnic pride and awareness for Asian women, we welcome and encourage allies of all identities to join our community to learn about the complexities of the Asian and Asian-American experience. Greek life may have brought us together, but we are evolving beyond it and we hope you’ll join us.

ELIZABETH “BETSY” KIM KAVITA SELVA LIZA HAFNER MINH NGUYEN

The serendipity of simply bumping into someone in lecture sprouts seeds of friendship — whether a student wants it or not. The major difference between our forms of socializing were dependent on the platform of interaction. Consequently, I had achieved a diverse breadth of friendships, whereas my friend had spent his time establishing depth with the group he had formed online.

And there’s so much to be said for these chance interactions; it’s certainly something I missed deeply in quarantine. However, the way we have been conditioned and designed to interact on campus contributes to the social pressure of having to divide one’s attention to maintain relationships on campus, and likely factors into the “flaky” Stanford culture that we continue to witness. Regardless of the ways we choose to socialize, establishing such a network of friendships has its costs and benefits.

Perhaps these two virtual weeks will remind us to focus on deepening the friendships we already have, to stop stretching ourselves thin and to appreciate the people that are already in our lives.

And maybe that’s precisely what we need.

The Stanford Daily

10 ! Friday, January 7, 2022

SPORTS TIGHT ENDS SHINE IN WEEK 17 NFL ACTION Cardinal alumni dominate on field

By DREW SILVA STAFF WRITER

DAVID GONZALES/isiphotos.com

Stanford Athletics will limit spectators at both indoor and outdoor sporting events for the foreseeable future in response to skyrocketing COVID-19 case counts around the country, according to a Tuesday press release.

EMPTY ONCE AGAIN COVID-19 surge prompts spectator limits

By NIKOLAS LIEPINS Attendance at indoor Stanford sporting events will be restricted to student-athlete families, Stanford Athletics announced in a press release on Tuesday. Spectators will still be allowed at outdoor events, but they will be required to wear masks and abide by social distancing guidelines.

Stanford Athletics cites “additional COVID-19 safety precautions” as the driving factor for the policy change, which takes effect

immediately and primarily impacts the university’s nine winter sports.

This policy change comes as winter classes begin with two weeks of online instruction and the nation reels from a surge in cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant. 146 Stanford students are in isolation for COVID-19 as of Jan. 3 and, as of Jan. 4, Stanford’s home county of Santa Clara has a seven-day average of 1,316 new COVID-19 cases.

“After thorough consultation with medical advisors and University leadership, it became very clear

that implementing these measures is the right thing to do to protect our community at this time,” Jaquish and Kenninger Director of Athletics Bernard Muir said in the release.

Stanford Athletics will restore full spectator capacity “as soon as appropriate,” according to the release.

Individuals who have purchased tickets to Stanford Athletics events affected by the policy change will receive an email from athleticstickets@stanford.edu with more information in the coming days.

WINTER SPORTS

Three events postponed, canceled

By SOFIA SCEKIC

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR

Stanford sports teams continue to be impacted by health and safety protocols within their respective programs. Men’s basketball’s (8-4, 1-1 Pac-12) Saturday match against No. 7 USC (12-0, 2-0 Pac-12) was postponed; COVID-19 issues within the Oregon State women’s basketball (7-3, 4-0 Pac-12) program prompted the postponement of their Sunday match against No. 2 Stanford (9-3, 1-0 Pac-12) and the wrestling team’s (1-2, 0-0 Pac-12) duel against California Baptist on Sunday was canceled.

This is the fourth straight schedule change for men’s basketball.

Stanford was slated to play Vanderbilt in the championship of the Diamond Head Classic on Dec. 25, but the game was canceled due to COVID-19 issues within the Stanford program and was declared a no contest. Now, all three of the Cardinal’s games thus far in 2022 — all conference matchups — have been postponed. The Pac-12 maintains that it will work with each team to reschedule the games this season,

although it is unclear where three games will fit into the schedule.

Stanford Athletics spokesperson Zach Reynolds declined to provide the number of Stanford men’s basketball players in isolation, but wrote that the team “[has] not met the minimum roster requirements as set by the Pac-12.”

The conference requires that each team has at least seven scholarship players available in order for a matchup to take place as planned.

If enough players are able to return within the next few days, the men’s basketball team will take to the court in Pullman on Jan. 12 for a matchup against Washington State (8-5, 1-1 Pac-12).

While basketball has faced numerous cancellations thus far, the wrestling team’s Sunday matchup is the first of the season to be impacted by COVID-19 protocols.

Stanford Athletics spokesperson Regina Verlengiere also did not provide the number of wrestlers currently available in accordance with health and safety protocols.

The Cardinal are slated to host Little Rock (0-2, 0-0 Pac-12) in Maples Pavilion on Jan. 15 if enough ath-

letes are available.

Women’s basketball is facing its second postponement of the season, although neither has been due to health and safety protocols within the Stanford program. The team’s Pac-12 opener in Seattle on Dec. 31 was postponed after Washington faced COVID-19 issues within the Huskies program, and now health and safety protocols within the Oregon State program have derailed this weekend’s agenda. Oregon (74, 0-0 Pac-12) is still slated to travel to Maples Pavilion on Jan. 7 to take on the Cardinal.

The schedule updates come after Stanford announced temporary changes in its attendance policy for both indoor and outdoor sports. Only family members of student-athletes are permitted at indoor sporting events, whereas the number of fans will be limited, and they will be required to be socially distanced and to wear masks for all outdoor sporting events. The University did not set an end date for the attendance policies, only saying that “full spectator attendance for all events will resume as soon as appropriate” in a press release on Tuesday.

With the NFL postseason rapidly approaching, Stanford alumni continue to lead their teams toward playoffs berths.

Tight end Dalton Schultz ’18 hauled in six receptions for 54 yards, which led the Cowboys in both categories in their game against the Cardinals. Another former Cardinal tight end shined on the same field as well, as the game leader in receptions was Zach Ertz ’13. His seven receptions and 41 receiving yards helped the Cardinals snap their losing streak as they defeated the Cowboys 25-22. Both the Cowboys and Cardinals have already clinched a spot in the postseason and could meet again in the first round of the playoffs.

In Seattle, tight end Colby Parkinson ’20 had his third catch of the season for the Seahawks.

His 12-yard reception contributed to an avalanche of offense, as Seattle put up 51 points in a win over the Lions. Tight end Austin Hooper ’16 added two catches for 28 yards for the Cleveland Browns, but the Browns lost to the Steelers 26-14.

Quarterback Davis Mills ’21 made his return to the Bay Area as his Texans traveled to San Francisco to take on the 49ers. Mills threw a touchdown to Brandin Cooks in the second quarter to give Houston an early 7-0 lead.

However, the 49ers came back to secure a 23-7 win. Mills finished with 163 passing yards, one touchdown and an interception, and he completed 21 of 32 passes.

On the offensive line, Nate Herbig ’19 started and played nearly every snap for the Eagles in their 20-16 playoff-clinching victory over the Washington Football Team. The Eagles have won all four of their games since Herbig entered the starting lineup in Week 13.

Walker Little ’21 got his second career start and played every snap for the Jaguars’ offensive line in a 50-10 loss to the Patriots.

Cameron Fleming ’14 also played every snap, starting at tackle for the Broncos in their 34-13 loss to the Chargers.

Wide receiver/running back Ty Montgomery ’15 had just one carry in the first half for the Saints, but he was brought down for a loss of 4 yards and did not see

Graphic: AMY LO/The Stanford Daily

more playing time against the Panthers.

On the defensive side of the ball, Harrison Phillips ’18 led the defensive linemen, posting four tackles, one sack and three quarterback hits for the Bills in their 29-15 win over the Falcons.

Washington defensive end Casey Toohill ’20 had four total tackles, three of which were solo in his team’s loss to the Eagles.

Defensive tackle Solomon Thomas ’17 had a solo tackle for the Raiders in their 23-20 win over the Colts. After an up and down season, the Raiders enter the final week of the regular season in control of their destiny; Las Vegas will make the playoffs if they defeat the Los Angeles Chargers next week.

Although the Raiders got the best of the Colts on Sunday, Indianapolis is also in control of its destiny, and a win over Jacksonville in Week 18 would send Indy to the playoffs. Linebacker Bobby Okereke ’19, who had a game-high nine solo tackles in their Week 17 loss, will look to continue leading a stellar Colts defense to the postseason.

Texans safety Justin Reid ’18 and Saints cornerback Paulson Adebo ’21 both had five solo tackles for their teams. Two of Reid’s tackles were for a loss, and Adebo added a pass deflection as the Saints shut down a Panthers’ offense that has struggled since Christian McCaffrey ’17 saw his season end due to an ankle injury.

The Saints won 18-10 and were able to keep their playoff hopes alive. New Orleans will need a win over Atlanta and a 49ers loss to the Rams in order to make the postseason.

The defensive back performances were rounded out by Michael Thomas ’12, who had three tackles for the Bengals in their AFC-North clinching 34-31 victory over the Chiefs.

It was a relatively quiet week for Stanford special teams, as punter Jake Bailey ’19 was not needed very often in a game where the Patriots scored 50 points. His lone punt went for 40 yards and pinned the Jags on their own 20 in a blowout win for New England.

WRESTLING

Woods makes history at Southern Scuffle

By JORDAN JOHN LEE DESK EDITOR

By COOPER VEIT STAFF WRITER

Two seems to be a lucky number for redshirt junior Real Woods. On the second day of 2022 and in only his second appearance this season, Woods etched his place in Stanford wrestling’s history as the first twotime Southern Scuffle champion at 141 pounds. The Scuffle, a prestigious and extremely difficult tourney in its own right, has a reputation for predicting future NCAA champions.

Ranked seventh nationally in his division, Woods had a relatively straightforward path to the semifinals with decisive decisions over redshirt sophomore Marcos Polanco from Minnesota (4-0), redshirt freshman Andrew Bloemhof from Oklahoma State (6-0) and true freshman Ethen Miller from Maryland (3-1).

Woods’s biggest test came against No. 8 sophomore Andrew Alirez from Northern Colorado in one of the closest and most technically impressive bouts of the entire tournament.

In the first minute of the first period, Woods was unable to use a body lock to prevent Alirez from scoring with an outside snatch single. However, within seconds Woods sat-out back to standing to escape and dominated the remaining time by keeping pressure on and owning the cen-

JOHN P. LOZANO/isiphotos.com

Redshirt junior Real Woods (above) etched his place in the history books for Stanford wrestling over the weekend when he became a two-time champion in the 141-pound division at the 2022 Southern Scuffle. ter of the mat, eventually getting a snap-down to an arm drag for a take down.

The second period went scoreless, with Woods seemingly comfortable to keep Alirez at bay up two.

Woods began the third period on top with an ankle ride, using his knee to trap Alirez’s right ankle. Alirez almost escaped with a standup, but

Woods returned him to the mat with a lift. On the return Alirez executed a roll-thru switch. Woods countered the roll with a granby maneuver and drove Alirez to the very edge of the mat, but Alirez was able to keep a single toe in bounds while scoring a reversal and tie the match up 4-4.

With one minute left, Alirez on top and a confident Woods on bottom,

Alirez disengaged to give Woods an automatic one-point escape and put Woods up 5-4. With 39 seconds to go, Alirez tried to score a takedown. He got Woods on one leg and used an ankle pick to get Woods’s leg in a tight single. Normally that tight a single would have been inescapable, but Woods showed incredible awareness and timing to one-leg hop over a trip attempt. Seated, Woods again countered his way out of a tight spot and won 5-4 as the clock ran out while he executed another driving takedown on Alirez.

Woods described the match to FloWrestling: “My leg defense came through but interestingly it was more of the ‘heart,’ you know,” he said. “Heart got me through that defensive position, that’s not something you work on technically. It’s something that — when you’re in the room in those bad spots, those bad positions — you wrestle through them.”

Heart is at the core of Woods’ technical style, which marries stingy defense with opportunistic awareness and a driving motor. He utilizes a low, active stance and owns the center of the mat.

“I think it even goes way back to when I was like 5, 6 years old, starting wrestling with my godbrother,” Woods said. “We’d go his dad’s — my godfather’s — police academy and grind it out. Stingy, stingy, stingy. We wouldn’t let each other have anything.”

Woods finished the tournament how he started, earning a 4-0 decision over No. 15 redshirt junior Allan Hart from Missouri in the finals to seal a history-making moment for Stanford wrestling.

Woods, however, was not the only Cardinal wrestler to earn some success this New Year’s weekend. Fellow redshirt junior Tyler Eischens also reached the quarterfinals of the tournament. After a loss to No. 13 redshirt sophomore Peyton Mocco from Missouri in the quarterfinals, a decision victory over redshirt freshman Jay Nivison from Buffalo in the consolation bracket earned Eischens a top-eight finish.

Eischens medically forfeited his final match of the tournament, placing him in eighth overall for the 174pound division.

As a team, Stanford finished in 11th place with 47.5 points. The Cardinal’s next match comes during return to Burnham Pavilion on Jan. 9 to face California Baptist.

Ultimately, the program hopes to make another strong showing at the NCAA tournament. When asked by FloWrestling about how he views early-season matches like the Southern Scuffle, Woods said he was grateful for the chance to compete.

“Competing is different than the practice room; ask any wrestlers,” Woods said. “It’s different, and being out here getting these matches in before the NCAA title, I say NCAA title because that’s where my mind’s at!”

The Stanford Daily

LIU

Continued from page 9 Western University, earning his finance and accounting degree in 2011. Following college, he worked briefly as an accountant at Deloitte before promptly getting laid off.

Ashamed and lost, Liu found himself a role as a minimum wage extra in a Guillermo del Toro movie through Craigslist. He describes himself there as having instantly fallen in love with acting and filmmaking through this experience. From there, Liu jumped around portraying small roles and doing work as a stuntman. He even became a stock photo model — now the basis for countless memes of the actor which followed his rise to stardom.

Liu’s first significant role was as Paul in the Omni Television crime drama series “Blood and Water” (2015). From there, Liu went on to portray the recurring character of “Jung” on CBC’s “Kim’s Convenience” (2016), a wildly popular sitcom following a Korean family living in Toronto. However, what Liu is most known for recently is his lead role as Shang-Chi in “ShangChi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” (2021), Marvel’s first Asian superhero in Marvel’s first movie with an Asian-led cast.

Outside of acting, Liu is a vocal activist on Asian-American issues and has been for a long time. Using his social media platforms as an outlet, Liu is known for his constant advocacy against anti-Asian racism and for increased Asian representation in traditional media and entertainment.

“Hey @Marvel, great job with Cpt. America and Thor. Now how about an Asian American hero?”

Liu tweeted in 2014. He has brought the Asian-American community under the spotlight not only through his recent work as a talented actor, but through his activism to ensure that his community receives the recognition it deserves.

Like most superheroes, Liu is an inspiration not because of the fame or the wealth that he has accrued, but rather the challenges that he has overcome and the relatability of his story. Just like the color of his skin, his upbringing was different from most actors. He wasn’t rich, was heavily discouraged from pur-

SPACE

Continued from page 7 maybe around three. It takes me around an hour to record. And then it takes me around two to three hours to edit the episode and make sure everything is ready to be posted online.

TSD: Which episode would you recommend first-time listeners to start with?

FF: I think for me, episode five. I was talking about what shape our universe is like, what geometry it is, the different theories that we have for what shapes it could be and how that aligns with what we’ve observed. It’s my favorite episode I’ve ever recorded because I think the subject matter is very interesting; and while some of the theories I discussed in that episode are a little bit more concrete, a lot of them are very controversial.

I remember right before recording that I had read online that we would never, ever, ever be able to observe all of our universes because of the constraint of the speed of light. There’s this idea of the future horizon, which is that because of the constraint of the speed of light, not only will we never be able to observe the complete universe (because it’s expanding outward), but we also will not be able to influence the complete universe, because no matter

ALBUM

Continued from page 7 they are easily some of the best interludes, if not the best, I have ever heard on an album). Every track is special enough to be pulled out and dissected on its own as a unique and magnificent piece of art. Although every song is wonderful, “Two Worlds Apart” really stands out as one of my favorites. With perfection in sampling, writing and delivery, Simz’s open exposition of her feelings is portrayed with grace and wit. Even my least favorite tracks on “SIMBI” were still very strong. The incredible consistency of the album compliments the coherence, as not only are all of the songs great, but they fit together effortlessly.

The narrative ability of Simz is nearly unmatched in the world of music. Her ability to take the listener on these grand journeys through her life and stories, while keeping them grounded in the relatability

Friday, January 7, 2022 ! 11 suing the arts and never went to acting school. Liu felt like he had no say in his future with his parents’ approval being contingent upon his ability to fit a mold. But despite his upbringing, all it took for Liu to accomplish his dreams was losing his job and a leap of faith. If he can do it, anyone can.

From talking about his love for Asian snacks in an interview with GQ to being outspoken on social media to proudly showing off his physique, Liu has redefined for many what it means to be AsianAmerican. His unconventional path to success helps to dismantle the monolithic preconceptions of what success looks like for Asian-Americans. Consequently, his rise to fame represents one of many steps in the fight to deconstruct the model minority myth and other stereotypes surrounding Asian-Americans. By having a platform to talk about his experience, Liu lends visibility to the narratives of Asian-Americans from all walks of life and allows them to take pride in their differences.

They say “seeing is believing.”

When the only superheroes kids see look distinctly different from themselves, they might end up believing that they can’t be superheroes. Superheroes in this case could be athletes, writers, singers and, of course, literal superheroes on the big screen. This fact, along with the pressure that many Asian-American children face to focus on traditional education and pursue reliable and “realistic” career paths, provide possible explanations for their disproportionate representation in American popular media and in the arts — a vicious cycle that builds on itself. The lack of prominent AsianAmerican public figures catalyzes further increases in the disparity of representation. That’s why the stars and role models that the Asian-American community does have are so important.

As a first-generation ChineseAmerican freshman at Stanford and a prospective MCS major myself, Liu’s story doesn’t make me want to be an actor. It does, however, give me the confidence to pursue creative interests beyond those that are expected of me and push back against the constraints of social stereotypes. By becoming Marvel’s first Asian-American superhero, Liu has made sure that he won’t be the last.

SIEGE

Continued from page 9 gymnasts and thinking how they weren’t that much older than I was.

Maybe they had no more than two or three years on me. Maybe they even grew up watching “SpongeBob” too.

Inevitably, my mounting insecurity about the undersea-pineapplewatching stars rose to the surface.

“Here I am, unknown to the world, and there they are, already performing on the international stage,” I said. “The sense of inadequacy is relentless.”

Being a professional athlete is a completely different life, my friend reasoned in response. “It appears to be super glamorous,” she said, “but I think there are a lot of downsides and sacrifices that just make it hard to compare.”

“That’s for sure,” I thought, for indeed, all that glitters is not gold.

In Jean Piaget’s 1932 book “The Moral Judgement of the Child,” the Swiss psychologist observed that babies sometimes would show signs of “violent rage” when toys were taken from them and given to another. Many experts call these kinds of toys “transitional objects” because they are proven to help in the transition to independence. For me, these were Transformers action figures.

Since “Siege” was the first season of a trilogy, naturally I elected to watch the second one, “Earthrise.”

As the season comes to its conclusion, Optimus Prime’s arch enemy, Megatron, leader of the Decepticons, is venturing among the stars when an uninvited guest boards his spaceship. When Megatron spots the emerging mysterious figure, red eyes piercing through the shadows, he asks who he is, where he is from.

“I am from a place of only agony,” he replies.

His name turns out to be Galvatron, and he lives his days in the servitude and torture of Unicron, a planet-sized menace of a Transformer who appears to embody nothing other than chaos and destruction. Eventually, it becomes clear that Megatron and Galvatron both have motivations for hunting down Optimus Prime for his artifact of immense power, the Matrix of Leadership, which can bestow its wielder with the ability

how we try to interfere using light signals, you know, the speed of light is a constraint for us.

I remember I read that fact right before I was about to record, and I was just sitting there, mindblown. Just the way that I was recording it, I was having my moment of passion, really having my moment of excitement. So, definitely one I would recommend.

TSD: You told me earlier that you have another episode coming out soon. Can you give us a taster in terms of what it’s about?

FF: At the very, very, very beginning of our universe, it started as a singularity, which is when matter and time really didn’t exist; they were not definite. And then, in less than a trillionth of a second, the universe expanded outward from smaller than the size of an electron to almost the size that it is today, and ever since then, it’s been expanding. This very violent moment was known as the Big Bang.

A lot of ideas that are very central today to how we perceive the universe really came down to this one theory, the Big Bang. I could talk about it forever, but I guess that’s my little rundown of the new episode.

You can find “Ep.13: The Big Bang, Cosmic Inflation and the Creation of Our Universe” here.

TSD: Since you’ve been at Stanford, you have more technical resources at your disposal. How do you want to shift your podcast in the future?

FF: I’ve actually thought a lot about this. I went to visit Texas over the summer, which is where I’m from, and on the ride there I was reading a book by Brian Greene. It made me think a lot about where I want to take the podcast because I had a lot of time to just reflect on this plane ride.

Now that I’m really with people who are at the center of physics and who are going to be the next big thinkers in this field, I really want to invite Stanford physics students to do a fishbowl episode, where we just kind of talk about the controversies and why we believe the ideas that we do and just explore the nuances in physics theories.

I also want to do an episode with one of my professors, and I’m actually kind of rooting for that, because I’m going to be working with a few people next quarter, taking a few physics classes with people who are monumental in the field.

I’m hoping that maybe if I do some networking, I can get them to be on my podcast. So those are a couple of the ideas I have, just really branching out, making it more collaborative and hearing voices besides my own.

TSD: How can people listen to your podcasts?

FF: The podcast is basically on all platforms. We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many other free platforms. So there’s no barrier to listening to it, which is something I’m trying to do to make it very accessible for everyone.

and humanity of it all is part of what makes her a top artist. Technically, all of her skills are consistently on display as some of the best in the world. Few people can rap at this level. The flows, lyrics and innovation with which she delivers her rapping could not be better.

Inflo also deserves his flowers.

With production credits on every single song on the album, the entire sonic foundation was built through his vision. The production was absolutely spectacular, from start to finish. The tracklist contains some of the most well-executed and creative samplings I have ever heard, and there is such a wide variety of diverse, yet cohesive, sounds. I could not imagine a group of 19 songs having a higher average quality of production.

Putting all of this together has created one of the best hip-hop albums of all time. No hyperbole, no exaggeration. It will age into a classic and be forever remembered as a landmark moment in the career of a rapper that will become a legend.

All of the music was truly beautiful and felt like it could have only been

made by an all-time great.

It is a special time to highlight the diversity and the incredible state that hip-hop is truly in right now. For women in hip-hop, nonAmericans in hip-hop and anybody who is a fan of the genre, this album is a very remarkable moment. Albums like “SIMBI” remind you just how incredible music can be.

I have preached for years now that Little Simz will go down in history as one of the greatest rappers of all time. Not one of the greatest “UK rappers” or greatest “female rappers,” just simply one of the greatest rappers of all time.

“SIMBI” further builds the legacy of a historic and all-time talent in Little Simz.

Favorite Songs: “Two Worlds Apart,” “Woman,” “Introvert,” “I See You,” “Rollin Stone,” “Miss Understood,” “Little Q, Pt. 2,” “Standing Ovation,” “I Love You, I Hate You” Album Score: 97/100 Check out this Spotify playlist and like it to follow along with some of my favorite songs of 2021 as the year progresses!

to communicate with the dead or revive the fallen.

When Optimus Prime crosses paths with Megatron and Galvatron at the end of the subsequent and final season, “Kingdom,” he is apparently faced with a choice upon the sight of a new character to the plot. This character, Nemesis Prime, can be thought of as a fallen angel. His left shoulder now sports a Decepticon badge, and what once was a multicolored paint job is now black like night. In fact, Nemesis is simply Optimus reborn — and condemned to the same agonizing future as Galvatron. How someone so full of life and virtue could end up as a corrupted machine of evil remains eerily unclear.

During a battle scene, since Optimus believes that he’s destined to become Nemesis someday, he figures that he must either join him in endeavoring to destroy Unicron with the power of the Allspark — an even more sacred artifact — or he must take a stand against Nemesis to ensure that the Allspark and its life force safely return to his home planet Cybertron, thereby succumbing to the future in which he, too, is enslaved by Unicron and becomes the foe before his eyes.

As one’s life unfolds, our possessions can start to become part of the self-concept, external nodes of memories, relationships and experiences. A souvenir, for example, might not just be a “thing,” but a physical extension of the self that represents who you were, who you are and who you will be. Unfortunately, these attachments to an object such as a rustic bracelet or an old stuffed animal are predicated on the mistaken belief that an individual will always possess that to which he is attached, supported by the additional fallacy that his ability to keep said attachments is within his control.

Independence isn’t what it used to be; the lines are blurrier than ever. So maybe what I meant to convey to my friend was that prolonged adolescence — they call it “emerging adulthood” these days — has been normalized, making it appear as though we had all the time in the world. The reality is that climate change, political division and the latest who’s who of COVID-19 variants (to name a few examples) are ever more urgent threats to the preferred state of affairs.

We don’t have all day. Especially

UNO

Continued from page 8 different this time.”

For Justin Weller ’24, he at first reacted to email in the way many students did, concluding that “we’re going to have another quarter online.” However, as he read on, he had a lot more hope, even with last year’s switch.

“The change is primarily designed to help students who get a positive test and have to quarantine so that they don’t miss out on class,” he said in an interview with The Daily. “It’s very likely given the break and Omicron that there will be students who get COVID.” Some praise Stanford’s decision to have the two-week remote period.

For students who needed to return to campus by plane, the general consensus was that Stanford’s original plan for students to fly in on New Year’s was ridiculous, given the price and lack of time to prepare for classes on Jan. 3. A student who wished to be quoted anonymously was glad the two week period was put in place — they were able to move their flight from Jan. 2 to 8, lessening financial strain, and spending more time with family.

Daily reporters also interviewed Mike Carragee ’23, who shared that both of his parents are doctors.

“Something a lot of people (including myself until recently) don’t get about COVID is the fact that deaths aren’t the only relevant statistic,” Carragee said in an interview.

“Even if it isn’t as deadly, Omicron is far more transmissible than Delta and will cause more hospitalizations.”

Carragee wants his fellow students to remember that although “online school is hard, January’s emergency patients deserve good care more than we deserve in-person class.”

Raihane also commends the University’s announcement, as he wants the Stanford community to remember that the “Stanford student body represents roughly 50 states and 70+ countries.” With students returning after winter break travels and festivities, the odds of transmission are higher than usual.

Raihane also cites Cornell University’s recent spike in COVID-19 cases and says “we do not want to follow in the steps of other universities.”

Upperclassmen have advice for either path we end up taking. Ximena Sanchez Martinez ’23 suggests that students should resist overbooking themselves. “There will be more flexibility to schedule meetings and events during the first two weeks since we won’t have to worry

in the wake of the recent death of Henry Orenstein — the Holocaust survivor who sought refuge in the U.S. and subsequently invented the Transformers toyline — I am reminded that there will come a moment for all of us when time’s up.

That moment’s proximity remains unknown. I, too, want to achieve financial independence, vocational efficacy and more sooner rather than later. I, too, want to leave something behind. Am I impatient, then, or have my reserves of patience been strained more than they should have been?

I’ll admit it: the outline of a modern life is not conducive to faster maturation. Additionally, it’s always been true that a childhood of nourishment and enriching experiences is integral to flourishing down the line. In this country, to begin a career without some form of higher education would be absurd for many families — never mind that starting a family of one’s own in this century can be devastating for women if undertaken too early. It’s true that in the 1950s, the median age at first marriage for a man or a woman hovered around 20, but now we’re living in 2022, in which those metrics have crept to 28.7 and 26.5, respectively.

Supposedly, as the world improves in some ways and worsens in others, so is our task to optimize our behavior to best fit it.

Is that it? Am I destined to conform to the trends I was born into as well? Well, to acknowledge the shifting world is one thing. To resign is another.

While endeavoring to settle disputes against his enemy faction the Autobots, Megatron is confronted with a similar thought. He starts to connect the dots from interactions over the past few episodes, arriving at the horrifying realization that he and Galvatron are, in fact, the same entity — merely from different points in time. He can’t believe it, and he continues to try to convince himself that he is the one who determines his fate.

In a brilliant climax to the final battle of “Kingdom,” Megatron turns the canon on his future self, at last asserting that he is not bound to his fate. In this manner, I hold that the world becomes more complex with each day, but ideally never complex enough for dishonest steadiness of pace to be permissible in efforts to attain responsibility, emotional depth and purpose. about going to in-person lectures.

[Refrain from filling up time you won’t have later.]”

Raihane also wants to remind students to tap into Stanford’s resources, specifically things such as sending emails for help or connecting to professors, using community centers, digging into monetary support (such as the FLI opportunity fund) and online tutoring from the Hume Center for essay or application editing and speech preparation.

“To underclassmen, I understand how this can be a frustrating time in terms of social life, classes, internships, research opportunities, as well as garnering what you hoped to be the Stanford experience,” Raihane said. “My biggest suggestion to you is to remember that Stanford faculty and peers are here to help you. You will be shocked at the vast array of resources Stanford has and the number of people willing to help you achieve your dreams and goals.”

With that, a mix of hopeless optimism, hysteria and fatigue spreads rapidly throughout the Stanford community, and students continue to stay alert and reflect on our University’s current situation. With 2022 quickly approaching, we’re entering the second year of this seemingly never-ending pandemic.

We’ve been through a lot these past two years — closure, time that we should have had and yearn to have back, yet, due to fate, was never ours. And it seems to escape us at every chance, even when it feels like the coast is clear and we can make up for what we can. Then, the road takes a turn and we’re back to the same uncertainty. Normalcy continues to act like sand within the grasp of a hand — you may think you have a hold, but it always manages to slip between the cracks and eventually returns to the ground it came from.

While we grieve for some time, it’s important to find a balance between being optimistic and remaining cognizant of the rapidly-evolving situation. While 95% of the Stanford community is vaccinated, anything can happen. Above all, we need to be kind to one another as a supportive, empathetic community.

“We can and will get through this pandemic,” Raihane added, “but it’s going to take us all working together, as well as a whole lot of kindness, to keep pushing forward.”

Whether the ultimate “uno-reverse” happens, we’re grateful for fall quarter, for the seeds that were sown and any roots we were able to put down in the Stanford culture and community. Hopefully, like trees in a forest, we can thrive together one day without a constant threat of disaster. All we can ask for is the best — or at least a timely email.

The Stanford Daily

12 ! Friday, January 7, 2022

MARRIAGE ing outlets for satisfying carnal desire. In other cases, it is viewed as an insurance policy against marital disaster.

“It’s been amazing to see what this experience does for different people,” McGregor said. After leaving his data science job at Microsoft last year, he has taken on a full-time executive role at the Marriage Pact.

Angus-Sterling is actively a senior business analyst at McKinsey & Company.

Professor Paul Milgrom M.S. ’78 Ph.D. ’79, who taught ECON 136: “Market Design” to McGregor and Angus-Sterling in 2017, said in an email statement that it was “totally amazing” to see the Marriage Pact come to life, adding that “Liam has a great chance of making the Marriage Pact into a business.”

This fall, 5,345 Stanford students once again participated in the Marriage Pact survey online, expressing various levels of agreement to statements like “I would keep a gun in the house” and “Gender roles exist for good reasons” in search of their companion. Roughly 3 to 4% of Marriage Pact survey respondents go on to date for a year or longer, which McGregor called “hitting the lottery.” Only 1 to 2% of matches on traditional dating apps end up meeting each other at all, he added.

The majority of heterosexual couples in the U.S. meet online nowadays, according to research data from sociology professor Michael Rosenfeld. As fewer Americans meet through third-person mediation, roles that families, neighborhoods and houses of worship traditionally would play are falling to the wayside — a trend whose inflection traces back to World War II. Friend-based mediation has also been on the decline, starting in 1995, as have overall American marriage rates.

The Marriage Pact is a “clever innovation,” Rosenfeld wrote to The Daily. However, he also said that it is important not to attribute too much significance to the “magic of the matching algorithm.”

When it comes to matchmaking platforms, the algorithm is not so intricate, according to Rosenfeld.

“It’s mostly who’s like you, which is a pretty simple algorithm, and then it’s up to you to decide whether that other person is really your cup of tea or not,” he said. “The gamification of it is not that different from the gamification of real life.”

Rosenfeld also said that there is no evidence that relationships mediated through friends, family or religious community members are any more fulfilling or enduring than

relationships formed in different or more abstract ways.

“Once you’re in a physical relationship with somebody you met online, it doesn’t matter how you met,” he said, adding that online dating offers opportunities to meet people outside of one’s preexisting social network. “I don’t buy into that particular brand of technophobia.”

It is possible that students now are “even more eager than usual to mix and meet” after months of isolation. In his research, Rosenfeld found that the people who were sheltered in place with a spouse or partner had a “much less negative experience of the pandemic,” whereas many single adults have been yearning for the companionship of which lockdowns deprived them.

How does McGregor think the youth will fare at this juncture?

“The saddest thing is that dating in the 21st century is ... “ McGregor’s voice trailed off, and he spoke again: “It’s very gamified.”

For nearly half of U.S. adults, dating has gotten more difficult over the last decade, according to a 2020 report from Pew Research Center. Women are twice as likely to regard physical and emotional risk as worsening challenges, while 65% of single men cite the shifting public sphere in the #MeToo era.

The sur vey does not ask whether the respondent is looking for a long-term relationship, a fling or something between the two, though McGregor did say that the Marriage Pact is “the single worst product you could invent for finding someone to hook up with.” No information about one’s appearance or motives is collected, but current relationship status is.

“We found that 10 or 20% of people who do the Marriage Pact are in long-term relationships already,” he said. “It’s kind of interesting.”

New features for Marriage Pact are on the way, and the team is seeking beta testers. The roadmap on the company website currently lists its Dialog feature as personalized, data-driven questions for daily reflection, and it is coming this month.

The other feature on the list, Soulmate Radar, notifies users when they have entered the vicinity of a compatible individual, based on their current location. It will begin rolling out to select cities, one by one, sometime in the next one to two months.

“They’re fun questions,” McGregor said in reference to the survey. “At the end of the day, though, I think it’s about creating a great experience that guides you on a little journey of yourself.”

This article has been corrected to reflect that as of December 2017, the Marriage Pact no longer uses the deferred-acceptance algorithm and now has a proprietary one. The Daily regrets this error.

RUSH

Greek life. Financial assistance can be provided for national organization dues, but not for local chapters.

Fraternal and Sororal Association.

Regarding finances, each chapter requires its members to pay dues, which are quarterly fees that go toward University fees, national headquarters and chapter programming. According to the Stanford IFC website, the financial requirements for each chapter varies, typically ranging from $200 to $400 each quarter. Many IFC organizations offer scholarships to help offset dues, and the Fraternity and Sorority Life Office is partnering with the FLI Office to help financially support members of

What is Abolish Stanford Greek (ASG) saying about IFC recruitment?

ASG’s main focus for this recruitment cycle will be to support PNMs during the recruitment process. ASG also hopes “to counter some of the pressure of the recruitment process along with misinformation regarding the true costs of membership,” ASG member Shawn Lee ’16 M.S. ’16 M.S. ’17 wrote in an email to The Daily. Lee added that there have not been any “recent substantive conversations” with IFC organizations regarding the reform of Greek life on campus.

Continued from page 1

Courtesy of Richard Reis

The Full Body Bicycle started as an assignment in Richard Reis’ mechanical engineering class. Now, the 80-year-old professor uses it to get to campus on most days, drawing smiles from onlookers.

CAMPUS LIFE

Full Body Bike takes on campus

By SOFIA SCOTT

By JAMISON DELAINE The Stanford campus has no shortage of bicycles.

On a typical school morning, Escondido Road can look more like a freeway gridlock than a college street, with students pedaling frantically to class. But amid a sea of Stanford bikers, an 80-year-old engineering professor stands, or rather sits, apart. While at Stanford, most students will have come across Professor Richard Reis M.A. ’69 Ph.D. ’71 pedaling along on his original invention, the Full Body Bicycle.

“The idea behind the bicycle is to give me a full body workout,” Reis said, who noticed a regular bicycle did not work out his upper body. The Full Body Bicycle design allows the arms to propel the bike while providing both an upper and lower body workout, he added.

The project, which began as an assignment for Reis’ mechanical engineering class, has become an emblem of his life’s work at Stanford. Reis stresses the importance of exercising in enjoyable ways.

In 2003, the construction of the upgraded bicycle began with two identical bicycles. Reis and his students in the ME 113: “Mechanical Engineering Design” course took one of the bicycles apart and inserted the rear wheel from the first bike into the front of the new bicycle.

Reis quipped that the rest of the finalized Full Body Bicycle consists of “all the other stuff just cut up from the previous bike from the bicycle that was ‘sacrificed.’”

Throughout its 18-year history, the invention has encountered plenty of bumps in the road.

In early versions of the bicycle, Reis found chains popping off and asked that others not ride it for long periods of time. Over the years, though, Reis managed to address the mechanical issues but still decided not to commercialize the bicycle.

“The whole idea was to ride it and not make a business out of it,” Reis said.

In the morning, before driving to campus, Reis

SINGER

Continued from page 7 grew up listening to my older siblings play in their rooms. That’s just where it naturally went.”

He also added that the pandemic made him want to articulate a sort of fantastical and escapist feeling, as quarantine created a seemingly endless mundanity. He’s glad and beyond grateful for his role as an artist creating work that resonates with fans. Platt said that music was crucial to his sanity during the pandemic, providing him with a safety net and a cathartic outlet. He explained that it is incredibly rewarding to see how his art impacts others.

“Whenever you release original music, you’re sort of letting your baby out into the world and releasing your ownership of it. And so when someone else takes real meaningful ownership of it in turn, that’s the closest thing I feel to closure when I put something out,” Platt said.

As a Broadway alum and Grammy performer, he is no stranger to live performance and is as prepared as he is eager to begin his tour.

While he is grateful for musical the-

mounts the bike onto the back of his car. He parks a few miles away from the campus and dismounts the bike to continue his travels.

On his ride to class, Reis draws a wide variety of reactions from onlookers, from “putting their thumbs up as they drive by, to saying ‘It’s really cool,’ to you know, ‘can I take a picture of it?’ Just the whole range of responses,” he said.

“The invention of the bike, riding of the bike, the tireless explaining to curious onlookers about the bike and the absolute joy he gets from all three I think sums up a lot of who my dad is and how he touches others,” said Reis’ daughter, Deanna Baresova.

Since he joined the Stanford community, Reis has workshopped a number of inventions — some for academic purposes and others for personal enjoyment.

The Grandpa’s Take Apart Box, which Reis’ grandchildren inspired him to invent, is one that he said he holds close to his heart.

Items in the box include toasters, bicycle parts and more. Reis provides his grandchildren with wire cutters and scissors, among other tools, to take apart and reconstruct the items — just as he did with the Full Body Bicycle.

Reis’ mentorship of students and family members is motivated by his passion for watching what younger generations can accomplish, he said. The challenges Reis faced during the development of his projects have never deterred him from continuing his work, a value that he said he tries to instill in his students every time he teaches.

“Don’t hold back for perfection,” he said. “Just start doing it and then it will evolve as time goes on.”

Riding to class on his Full Body Bicycle, Reis said he often thinks of B.J. Thomas’ “Raindrops Falling on My Head.” For Reis, the tune is the unofficial theme song of the Full Body Bicycle — encapsulating not only his journey with the creation but also his life at Stanford.

As the song goes, “But there’s one thing I know/The blues they send to meet me/Won’t defeat me, it won’t be long ‘till happiness steps up to greet me.”

ater’s influence on his work, Platt is eager for the greater liberty that comes with performing his own work as opposed to playing a character. He’ll be performing as Ben Platt rather than “Evan Hansen.” While there is ownership in an individual’s portrayal of a character, the experience of sharing your music, thoughts and emotion with an audience is very different.

“You take [performance to another] degree when it’s your own music and you’re performing as yourself,” Platt said, “because there is really no netting other than the netting that you create for yourself.”

Stanford’s Frost Amphitheater is one of the many venues that are excited to host Platt as he journeys across the country.

“We’re thrilled to have Ben open our 2022 summer season at Frost,” said Executive Director of Stanford Live Chris Lorway. “He has such a broad fan base due to his work on Broadway and TV, and we know he’ll put on an exciting show that will have something for everyone.”

Students at Stanford eagerly await the tour as well. Super-fan Shawn Kang ’24 describes himself as “obsessed” with Platt and his work. While Kang enjoyed Platt’s newest releases, he also looks forward to moments in the shows that showcase his first album “Sing to

Me Instead,” which is Kang’s favorite.

According to Platt, performances at different venues will feature different setlists. Fans can expect the repertoire to balance energetic sounds with emotional ballads. Visually, while Platt wants to maintain the element of surprise, he plans to include theatrics within the production elements to give each a special moment in the show.

“I think that a lot of those songs really lend themselves beautifully to the kinds of spaces that we’re getting to play,” Platt said. “But of course, there’ll be some favorites from the last album as well, a [surprise] cover or two in there, maybe like a musical theater moment.”

As live concerts slowly return during the ongoing pandemic, there is still much uncertainty as the COVID-19 situation continues to evolve. Regardless, Platt will hopefully still be able to do his live shows.

Platt loves the vulnerable, uneditable and unique variations that live performance creates, and he looks forward to the feeling of “togetherness” that arises from sharing a space with his audience.

“I think that this has always been this shining beacon at the end of the tunnel of something that I not only love to do the most, but I just feel that it’s what I have the most capa-

Continued from page 2

bility to do,” Platt said.

I actually had the chance to ask Platt about the song he is most ecstatic to perform. Funnily enough, it was my personal favorite from the album, which is “I wanna love you but I don’t,” a song that perfectly captures a bittersweet version of 80s pop bliss.

“I just really love that song,” Platt said. “I think it’s always felt to me like a Springsteen, big arena kind of moment.”

As he prepares for what’s ahead, the panel asked Platt what his past self would think of all his accomplishments. Platt noted he would be shocked yet proud and excited, as he feels like his career took an unexpected turn from theater.

“I think that might really overwhelm [my past self] in a good way, hopefully, and I do hope that in some ways he’s kind of present, whenever I’m performing, given [the album’s] nostalgia.” Platt said. “I certainly try to think of all the places that I’ve been and the ages that I’ve been so hopefully he’s in some way there as well.

With energy drawn from both his memories and his ongoing trajectory, Platt will surely take “Reverie” to new heights with what comes next. “Reverie” is out now and available on all music-streaming platforms.

CARTA

Continued from page 8 the end-of-term course Canvas evaluations). Furthermore, the site’s qualitative data (the reviews) is voluntarily posted by students, typically after they have completed their courses. Since there is no way to measure student opinions on courses in real time, Meg said, it is easy to “overestimate” the burden of more stressful classes or look back on others with “rose-tinted glasses.”

“I think it’s important to [understand and] appreciate that all the data comes from students reflecting on their own experiences,” Meg said.

Meg also said that students should sometimes take the reviews with a “grain of salt” and remember that they might “like things that other people [do not].”

While Meg hopes that Stanford students benefit from what Carta has to share, she ultimately wants students to keep a “holistic” mindset.

Just as a single data point is not representative of a course, Meg said, “there is no such thing as the typical Stanford student.”