The Stanford Daily Vol. 260 Issue 6 (10.29.21)

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The Stanford Daily An Independent Publication

FRIDAY October 29, 2021

Volume 260 Issue 6

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Endowment nets $12.1 billion

By BENJAMIN ZAIDEL DESK EDITOR

Stanford netted a record $12.1 billion in investment gains over the last year through its Merged Pool, through which most of the endowment is invested in stocks and bonds, according to annual results released on Tuesday.

The total value of the University’s endowment — which includes about 75% of the funds from the Merged Pool along with real estate and other holdings — is now $37.8 billion. The 40.1% return on investment marks a significant increase from last year’s 5.6% return and 2019’s 6.5% return, and it comes

amid a year of endowment success for many of Stanford’s peer institutions.

The Merged Pool is now worth $41.9 billion. University spokesperson E.J. Miranda called the returns “very reassuring” and cited President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s comment to Stanford News on Tuesday that the “results have created a tremendous opportunity to advance Stanford’s mission.”

Chief Executive Officer of Stanford Management Company (SMC) Robert Wallace told The Daily that the University’s investment returns over the past year defined a “record year for Stanford, both in terms of the percentage investment increase

and the absolute dollar gain.” Data indicate that these returns far surpass those of previous years, especially following slightly decreasing endowment returns from 2016-2020.

The median return on endowment for U.S. colleges and universities this year was 33.4%, according to Stanford News, placing Stanford’s performance 6.7% above the median. Last year’s median return across U.S. institutions was 1.6%.

This constitutes a year-over-year increase of 31.8%, indicating that this year was a year of booming returns for many institutions.

Duke University and MIT boasted the most success of Stanford’s peer institutions, with returns of

55.9% and 55.5% over the last year, respectively. Out of the 10 schools charted above, Stanford ranked eighth. Wallace added that Stanford’s returns place the University in the top quartile of all U.S. colleges and universities.

Another set of metrics commonly used to evaluate university endowments is the 5 and 10 year annualized net returns, which average a school’s endowment performance over longer periods of time. Stanford’s 5- and 10-year returns are 14.7% and 10.8%, respectively, which rest well over the nationwide medians of 11.9% and 8.4%, according to Stanford News.

As a result of the endowment’s

growth, the Board of Trustees allotted an extra $500 million of the money gained from the endowment for the University’s budget, according to Miranda. This extra funding will supplement the $1.4 billion that was already allotted to the budget from the endowment, a slight increase from last year’s $1.3 billion allotment, to which the University added an extra $379 million to support COVID-19 expenses.

“These funds will be used to support our core academic mission and to accelerate our education, research, affordability, inclusion and outreach activities under our LongRange Vision,” Tessier-Lavigne told Stanford News.

UNIVERSITY

CAMPUS LIFE

Alumni return to campus

Mirrielees residents face higher costs

“This place is truly magical,” alumnus says

Students in residence say financial aid falls short

By MARLI BOSLER

By ILA MATHUR

BEAT REPORTER

Approximately 7,500 alumni and guests attended Stanford’s Alumni Reunion from Thursday through Sunday after a year of postponement, according to Director of Alumni and Student Class Outreach Victor Madrigal ’94.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the University enforced precautions to safeguard the health of the Stanford community.

All reunion attendees were required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and had to show proof of vaccination upon arrival, medical and religious exceptions notwithstanding. Visitors were also required to complete a health check, and masks were mandatory both indoors and outdoors when within six feet of others.

The reunion featured a multitude of events, including both classic and new traditions. Alumni attended the signature Dinner on the Quad on Thursday, learned from fellow alumni at the cutting edge of their fields in Classes Without Quizzes and attended various minireunions. Mini-reunions were based on class year and extracurricular interests, taking place in the form of panel discussions, lunches

CAMILA FERMÍN/The Stanford Daily

Alumni gathered for the first on-campus reunion since the start of the pandemic. The Stanford graduates shared their experiences and offered advice to current students. and parties.

During the weekend, several alumni shared highlights from their Stanford experiences, and offered advice to current students on maximizing their time at Stanford.

Congressman Joaquin Castro ’96 recounted Stanford’s vibrant community and the diversity of thought that he experienced as an undergraduate. Describing Stanford as a “warm and welcoming place,” Castro said that he grew as a person, and learned a lot about the world during his time on campus.

“It was the first place that I really met people that were from different cultures, faiths and backgrounds,” Castro said. “And so in many ways, it opened my eyes up to the world.”

Castro advised students to talk to as many people at Stanford as

they can. He said, “The most valuable thing that happens here is interacting with your classmates.”

For Andy Parker ’11, the best part about Stanford was the people he met. His appreciation for the relationships he built as an undergraduate made his return to campus particularly special.

“Especially this time — when the last two years we’ve been cut off from a lot of people in our lives — it’s such a treat to be able to come back and reconnect with folks that I hadn’t seen in a while,” Parker said.

Outside of mini-reunions and Dinner on the Quad, popular events during the reunion included Alumni Oral Histories, men’s and women’s soccer games at Cagan Stadium and a micro-lecture on “Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain,” which was attended by Jane Phillips ’65.

Phillips said that the open nature of the micro-lecture differed from the mindset of her community at home, where people do not ask as many questions. “As people get older, they tend to cling to what they know, as opposed to what they don’t,” she said. She added, however, that “there are always new things, new issues, new inventions and new ideas. And here, that’s embraced.”

Ronnie Tisdale ’10 shared Phillips’s appreciation for Stanford’s intellectualism and community.

“This place is truly magical,” Tisdale said. “I’m overwhelmed by the renewed, rekindled and reestablished relationships and the feelings, smells and sensations.

Every opportunity to be here is a true pleasure — so I’m overjoyed.”

CAMPUS LIFE

Where is late night?

Staffing shortages to blame

By JACKIE LIU After returning to campus for the first time in over a year, students may have found themselves with a case of the midnight munchies and nowhere to turn.

Craving greasy fries from The Axe & Palm (TAP) after 1 a.m.? Tough luck. Due to pandemic-related staff shortages, late-night dining operations on campus remain shuttered indefinitely.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, students could go to Arrillaga Family Dining Commons and Lakeside Dining for a late-night meal or for a place to work until the two dining halls closed at 2 a.m.

Now, they close at 9 p.m., leaving students with few on-campus food options at night. Retail cafes — such as TAP and Coffee House (CoHo) — have also reduced their hours of operation, and Olives, the beloved sandwich shop located in Main Quad, is closed indefinitely.

The limited hours of operation are due to staffing challenges as the University resumes full operations,

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according to Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE) spokesperson Jocelyn Breeland.

“The hospitality industry has been devastated by the pandemic and this has created significant staff shortages across the nation and at Stanford,” Breeland wrote.

“In some instances, volunteer staff from other areas of R&DE have been used to fill critical mealtime positions in dining halls.”

Prior to the pandemic, many students went to TAP to buy burgers, fries and milkshakes with their meal plan dollars after a long day of studying or after hanging out with friends on the weekend. The campus-favorite used to be open seven days a week, closing at 2 a.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 a.m. on Sunday. Now, its doors close at 1 a.m. on Monday through Friday and remain closed on Saturday and Sunday.

CoHo, which was previously open from 7 a.m. to midnight every day, now closes at 8 p.m. on Tuesday through Sunday and 10 p.m. on Monday. CoHo reduced its hours

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Due to pandemic-related staff shortages, dining halls and retail cafés across campus are closing their doors earlier or altogether. Before COVID-19 hit, on-campus late night dining options were available until as late as 2 a.m. during the 2020-2021 school year because of staff shortages and the limited student population on campus at the time, according to Assistant Manager Mayra Mondragon.

Though the company is working on resuming full operations, Mondragon said that it is unlikely that CoHo will be able to resume prepandemic hours this year.

Despite CoHo’s reduced hours of operation, its revenue and customer demand have not been substantially affected, according to Mondragon. She estimates that revenue has fallen by about two percent in comparison to pre-pandemic times.

Limited dining flexibility has altered the everyday habits of some

students, as food availability plays a large role in students’ plans for activities, study sessions and social gatherings.

Ian Sills ’23 said that he no longer studies as late into the night now that late-night dining options are unavailable. Sills also said his reliance on food delivery services has increased due to the lack of latenight options. The limited hours have “been very bad on my wallet because I started Doordash-ing, which is considerably more expensive than just walking over and buying food,” he said.

For Kevin Martin ’22, the best part about late-night dining options

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Please see EATS, page 2

After Residential and Dining Enterprises (R&DE) placed sophomores in the four-class Mirrielees dorm, students said they have had to pay higher rent and meal plan costs — a financial burden that they feel was not clearly communicated to them.

Within the new ResX neighborhood system, students ranked the housing options available to them based on their neighborhood assignment. Katie Smith ’24, Kaela Verner ’24 and Serena Kravantka ’24 ranked all-sophomore dorm Toyon Hall as their first choice, with Mirrielees somewhere lower than their top five. All three were assigned to Mirrielees.

Verner and Smith share a tworoom triple — a room converted from a two-room double to accommodate an increase in students living on campus this academic year — with a third roommate.

Financial aid is based on the pricing for a standard two-room double and a 15 meal per week meal plan, according to University spokesperson E.J. Miranda. But the housing costs of Mirrielees are roughly $1,300 higher than that of other dorms for the current academic year. This information was listed on the housing portal at the time students were ranking their options, and it was a factor Smith, Verner and Kravantka all considered.

“I put Mirrielees last because it was more expensive than all the other dorms,” Kravantka said.

While Verner was ranking housing options, she said she assumed her status as a student on full financial aid would mean her aid would be adjusted if she was placed in more expensive housing, especially if it was not her first choice. However, this proved not to be the case — Verner, Smith and Kravantka all faced an increase in rent, irrespective of whether or not they were on financial aid.

“It was not communicated through the financial aid office that aid would not be adjusted,” Verner said. “I wasn’t told when I got assigned to Mirrielees, I wasn’t told this when I set my move-in day.”

Verner discovered she owed over a thousand dollars during Week 2 of fall quarter, when she received an email about a balance on her account.

According to Verner, she received notice of her outstanding balance less than two weeks before the bill was due. Verner said she was frustrated with the lack of

Please see MIRRIELEES, page 3

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HEALTH

BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY

University reports 10 new COVID cases

Senior takes on accessibility in space

By LOGAN GAINES CONTRIBUTING WRITER

By ADRI KORNFEIN

The University reported four new student and six new faculty, staff and post-doctoral scholar COVID-19 cases on campus during the week of Oct. 18, according to the COVID-19 dashboard.

This week’s count is a slight uptick from the two student and three faculty, staff and post-doctoral scholar cases reported last week. It is also a slight increase in the University’s seven-day positivity rate, which rose to 0.03% from last week’s 0.01%. The University’s sevenday positivity rate remains lower than Santa Clara County’s 1.0% positivity rate and California’s 1.9% rate.

Through the University’s surveillance testing program, Stanford has completed more than 431,000 student and 241,000 faculty, staff and post-doctoral scholar tests over the past 60 weeks. In total, 351 students and 276 faculty, staff and postdocs have tested positive, ac-

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Graphic: MHAR TENORIO/The Stanford Daily

cording to the dashboard.

In line with new CDC guidelines, Stanford Health Care now offers Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 booster shots to eligible individuals who received their second dose of the Pfizer vaccine at least six months ago. Dropins and appointments are available for the booster shot.

The University still requires weekly COVID-19 testing and indoor mask-wearing, regardless of vaccination status. The University maintains that vaccination, testing and masking can prevent community illness, according to the dashboard.

UNIVERSITY

ResEd removes EVGR-A posters SV Free says removal targeted their protest posters

By SARAH RAZA Weeks after student advocacy group Sexual Violence Free Stanford (SV Free) hung “Stanford Protects Rapists” posters in EVGR-A, Residential Education (ResEd) removed all student-made posters, citing the postering policy in the residence agreement.

The policy states that students cannot hang posters in living spaces unless they are on bulletin boards.

The lack of bulletin boards in EVGR-A other than in laundry rooms prevents students from postering, including in hallways and near elevators — both high traffic areas where student groups usually advertise their events.

At the start of fall quarter, SV Free hung over 500 posters in EVGR-A, according to the group, with messages such as “Stanford Protects Rapists” and “ResEd Protects Rapists” to raise awareness about concerns of ResEd allegedly mishandling of sexual assault cases.

Soon after, the University criticized the flyering, calling it “harmful.”

THOMAS YIM/The Stanford Daily

ResEd recently took down posters hung by Sexual Violence Free Stanford in EVGR-A, citing a policy that only permits postering on bulletin boards.

But unlike other dorms on campus, EVGR-A does not have any bulletin boards in high traffic areas besides laundry rooms.

“Anonymous messaging like this, including fictionalized quotations, is inappropriate and antithetical to the type of supportive environment we are trying to cultivate and sustain at Stanford,” wrote Student Affairs spokesperson Pat Harris in a statement at the time of the postering.

According to Harris, all posters

were taken down due to a postering policy in the residence agreement which stipulates that professional and student staff are allowed to hang posters only on bulletin boards in residential halls or on their personal doors. Harris declined to comment on the specific

Please see POSTERS, page 3

Mary Cooper ’22 was one of 12 Disability Ambassadors who participated in AstroAccess’ first Zero-G flight to experiment with accessible design on commercial space aircrafts on Oct. 17.

AstroAccess is an organization that aims to prove that inclusive design in space technology is not only possible, but safer and more helpful to all users. This was the first of what AstroAccess hopes to be many flights that will allow people with a wide variety of disabilities to test, prototype and create new technology that can be implemented in spacecraft, according to AstroAccess Mission Leader Ann Kapusta.

Cooper, an aspiring astronaut and a below-the-knee amputee, was chosen as a mobility ambassador for the mission to represent people with mobility challenges. She focused on testing new rail systems placed in the cabin that would allow people with different movement abilities to navigate around the space. Cooper also practiced taking her leg on and off in zero gravity — a moment that she described as freeing.

“I had this moment where my leg was floating and I was spinning around it,” she said. “It was just a surreal picture.”

The Zero-G flight ran nearly three hours, completing about 16 parabolic maneuvers in total. Parabolic maneuvers are specific patterns of plane flight that create different gravitational environments.

For each parabolic maneuver, the crew experienced 20 to 40 seconds of weightlessness. The parabolic flight also simulated Martian and lunar gravity.

Haptic Wayfinding navigation was a central technology tested onboard. It uses sensations of touch, like vibration or texture, to communicate alerts and other critical information to a user.

The keys to AstroAccess’ design process are 12 disability ambassadors. “We’re not designing for them, “ Kapusta said, “we’re designing with them.” The organization’s dis-

Courtesy of Al Powers for Zero Gravity Corporation

Mary Cooper wears a black flight suit while holding her prosthetic leg in a white aircraft cabin. Cooper is one of 12 disability ambassadors who participated in AstroAccess’ first Zero-G flight. ability ambassadors design, prototype and test the accessible technology. Kapusta added that “accessible design isn’t hard if you think about it at the beginning and you include the people who[m] you have to design for — that wide range of people.”

And Cooper believes she and other disabled people are well-suited for the challenge.

“Being disabled naturally brings out this engineering mindset,” Cooper said. “You have to be pretty resilient by nature.”

Cooper’s goal is to access space any way she can, and she hopes to

Please see SPACE, page 3

ACADEMICS

Indigenous activist wins Bright Award Award recognizes contributions to environmental sustainabiltiy

By ZOE ELDEMAN

By CHELSEA CHO

I

This report covers a selection of incidents from Oct. 19 to Oct. 25 as recorded in the Stanford University Department of Public Safety (SUDPS) bulletin. Learn more about the Clery Act and how The Daily approaches reporting on crime and safety here.

I

TUESDAY, OCT. 19 I

At 5:30 p.m., a vehicle was stolen from the Oval.

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 20 I

Between 5:45 p.m. on Oct. 19 and 6:45 p.m. on Oct. 20, a bike was stolen from Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute.

THURSDAY, OCT. 21 I

Between 8:05 p.m. on Oct. 13 and 12 p.m. on Oct. 21, a petty theft occurred at Munger Graduate Residences Building 4.

I Between 3 p.m. on Oct. 21 and 9 a.m. on Oct. 22, a theft of over $950 occurred at Residential and Dining Enterprises Maintenance Operations Center.

I At 4:30 p.m., a hit and run that resulted in property damage occurred on Jane Stanford Way and Lasuen Mall.

Between 8 a.m. on Oct. 20 and 5 p.m. on Oct. 22, petty theft occur red at the McCullough Building.

SATURDAY, OCT. 23 A spouse/ex-spouse/date battery occurred at an unknown time on Stanford campus.

I At 2:45 a.m., a hit and run that resulted in property damage occurred at Alpha Phi. I At 4:02 p.m., arson occurred at the Bing Wing of Green Library.

I At 4:05 p.m., a non-firearm weapon was brandished at Escondido Road and Lasuen Mall.

I At 10:08 p.m., someone was found in possession of nitrous oxide at Lot 10 on Campus Drive and Lasuen Street.

SUNDAY, OCT. 24 I

Between 12:15 p.m. and 3 p.m., a petty thef t occur red at Munger Graduate Residences Building 4.

I Between Oct. 22 and 8:35 a.m. on Oct. 24, a commercial burglary occurred at 184 Stock Farm Road.

I Between 6 p.m. on Oct. 24 and 5:20 p.m. on Oct. 25, a bike theft occurred at Branner Hall.

FRIDAY, OCT. 22

MONDAY, OCT. 25

I

I

Between 3:45 p.m. and 4:40 p.m., a petty theft occurred at the IM South Fields.

I Between 10 p.m. on Oct. 22 and 6:45 a.m. on Oct. 23, grand bike theft occurred at a residence at 503 Olmsted Road.

Between 4 p.m. on Oct. 22 and 11 a.m. on Oct. 25, a bike theft occurred at Clark Center.

I At 9:20 p.m., a hit and run that resulted in property damage occurred on Campus Drive and Serra Street.

Stanford awarded Maori environmental activist India LoganRiley with the prestigious Bright Award earlier this month. LoganRiley, is the co-founder of Te Ara Whatu, a group of Indigenous Maori and Pasifika youth working to spur climate action and promote Indigenous sovereignty.

The award comes with a $100,000 prize and is given out annually by Stanford Law School and recognizes exceptional contributions to “environmental preservation and global sustainability.”

Logan-Riley’s group has attended a number of United Nations Climate Change conferences and holds training sessions for Indigenous youth to bring grassroots activism to their communities.

Logan-Riley said that they “caught the bug of making change” after meeting other young people involved in the climate activism scene in college. Their first major moment of climate action was attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2017.

“I think I was the second young Maori to ever go since youth delegations have been going from New Zealand,” they explained. LoganRiley’s desire to attend was driven by “the lack of solutions that would speak to the needs of my people.”

Law professor Barton Thompson, who leads the Bright Award nomination committee, explained that the committee was drawn to Logan-Riley since “they are able to meld climate advocacy ... with an indigenous perspective that we

thought was both relatively unique, and even more importantly, inspirational.”

The nomination committee viewed Logan-Riley as a “uniquely compelling and inspirational” individual, Thompson said.

Logan-Riley will be invited to speak at Stanford in the spring, when an award ceremony will also be held at the law school.

Thompson explained that “the world is increasingly recognizing that many of our environmental and social problems stem from our colonial history,” meaning that indigenous communities must be centered in activism work.

“I think partly because of India’s Indigenous perspective, they understand the linkages among all environmental issues and social issues,” he said.

For Logan-Riley, two critical aspects of activism are that it is intersectional and youth-led. Activism, they said, must be centered around various social ills since “different pieces of oppression ... mesh together and protect each other.”

Furthermore, Logan-Riley said that it is essential that movements push against the status quo.

“It’s about ambition, being repeatedly told by older people to stay more realistic, or be more pragmatic,” they said. “And to me, that just sounds like language that is asking me to be okay with suffering, and I can’t, and I won’t.”

Logan-Riley admitted that it can be hard not to fall into a cynical state of mind: “I think I swing between being really hopeful, and being really in the headspace of we’re all gonna die,” they said.

They are motivated to keep working, however, when reminded that if there is a possibility of surviving the climate crisis, “it better not just be the rich people who helped create this problem in the first place,” they said.

Logan-Riley had not heard of The Bright Award prior to receiving it — news they said is still “sinking in.”

“That kind of thing doesn’t happen to people like me from the communities I’m from,” Logan-Riley said, adding that activist work related to Indigenous rights as opposed to directly reducing admissions tends to be overlooked.

The Bright Award is funded by a gift to Stanford Law School from Ray Bright J.D. ’59 and Marcelle Bright.

“We are proud to be stewards of

CRYSTAL CHEN/The Stanford Daily

The honor includes a $100,000 prize awarded to the recipient, which India Logan-Riley hopes to use to further their advocacy. such a generous gift from Ray and are grateful to the Bright family for continuing to entrust Stanford with locating these unsung heroes of environmental conservation and providing them with an international platform to showcase their critical work,” Stanford Law School Dean Jenny Martinez said in a statement.

Logan-Riley said they hope to use the $100,000 prize money to fund paid roles in their organization, contribute to Indigenous land campaigns and continue to hold training sessions for activists. Next on the horizon for them is attending COP (Conference of the Parties) 26, the 2021 U.N. Climate Change Conference beginning Oct. 31 in Glasgow, United Kingdom.

Attendance at these conferences is as important as ever, “to be there to do storytelling, and to continue to be present, and to be ... the annoying mosquito that is relentless,” they said.

EATS Continued from page 1 was the opportunity to socialize with other students.

“It was just nice to have places to get out and socialize at night,” Martin said. But now, “you can’t go and gather anywhere outside of the dorms late at night, unless you’re trying to be out in the cold.”

More than the food, Martin said he missed “the fact that we can gather and hang out and be dumb kids.”

Friday, October 29, 2021 N 3

The Stanford Daily UNIVERSITY

ACADEMICS

Title IX policies, explained

Ukranian fellows welcomed to campus

By TIANYU FANG CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The Daily breaks down the nuances of rule violations

By KEVI JOHNSON Stanford established new procedures for handling cases of sexual misconduct on campus following the Department of Education’s 2020 release of updated federal Title IX guidelines. Here is a breakdown of the policies that stand today and what they mean for students reporting Title IX-related incidents at Stanford.

What is Title IX? How does it apply at Stanford?

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a federal civil rights law that protects people from unlawful discrimination on the basis of sex, which includes sexual assault and other forms of sexual misconduct or violence. Title IX applies to any school or other education program that receives federal funding.

Stanford launched three new procedures in August 2020 to respond to reported Title IX-related incidents: the Title IX Procedure, the SHARE Hearing Procedure and the SHARE Investigation Procedure.

For Stanford’s Title IX Procedure to apply to a reported incident, the incident must fall within specific federal guidelines that define Title IX-prohibited conduct.

The SHARE Hearing Procedure and SHARE Investigation Procedure apply to cases that fall outside of Title IX jurisdiction but still violate University prohibited sexual conduct as defined by Administrative Guide 1.7.1. The SHARE Hearing Procedure is designed for cases in which the alleged perpetrator is a student or faculty member, while the SHARE Investigation Procedure applies to cases involving a student complainant where the alleged perpetrator is a staff member or postdoctoral scholar.

REBECCA PIZZITOLA/The Stanford Daily

Stanford recently released its updated Title IX policies for the 2020-21 academic year, which takes into account the updated DOE guidelines.

Formal Complaint, which alleges Title IX-prohibited conduct against an alleged perpetrator and requests that the University investigate the allegation.

Stanford will also provide information to complainants about confidential counseling options on and off campus. Supportive Measures vary on a case by case basis, but some examples include changes in work or housing locations, course-related adjustments and a university-issued “No Contact” or similar directive, which prevents direct or indirect contact between two identified parties.

The complainant will also be informed of the importance of preserving evidence and finding witnesses, as well as their right — but not responsibility — to file a police report if the reported conduct could constitute a crime.

How can I report a Title IX-related incident?

Title IX-related incidents can be reported to the Stanford Title IX Coordinator, Stephen Chen, who is responsible for ensuring Stanford’s compliance with Title IX. Note that any person may report an incident — even if they are not the person who experienced it.

Mandatory Title IX reporters, which includes all residential staff, like resident assistants and resident fellows, and non-residential staff who work regularly with students, like faculty and coaches, are required to report incidents to the Title IX Office if they receive notice of a Title IX-related incident.

What is the typical timeline of a Title IX case?

After a Formal Complaint has been filed, the University will attempt to complete a Title IX Hearing within 120 days.

The next step after a Formal Complaint is an Investigation, during which student parties have access to six hours of free time with a University-Identified Attorney and can get help from a Process Support Person, who serves as an advisor.

The Investigation is conducted by an individual chosen by the Title IX Officer or Deputy Title IX Officer. The Title IX Officer will ultimately decide whether the Investigation has found that the reported incident falls within the jurisdiction of the Title IX procedure and can proceed to a Hearing.

Hearings are typically virtual and include an oral cross-examination — unless both Parties choose to opt out, in which case a written cross-examination will occur. Parties are always given access to a Hearing Support Person and can get help from a free University-provided attorney for three hours of pre-Hearing preparation and unlimited time during the Hearing.

If a defendant is found guilty of violating the University’s Title IX policies, their discipline could include community service, probation, suspension or expulsion.

I’ve filed an Initial Report. What comes next? What supportive measures are available for those who report an incident?

After an initial report has been filed, the Title IX Office will reach out to the individual who reported the incident. The individual will be given information on how to file a

Are there options beyond the Investigation and Hearing process?

Yes, there are additional options other than the process of an Investigation and Hearing. These include an Intervention — a non-disciplinary alternative process facilitated by the University — as well as an Informal Resolution, which must be

POSTERS

other dorms on campus, EVGR-A does not have any bulletin boards in high-traffic areas except for laundry rooms. Student groups, including SV Free, have been primarily hanging up posters in and around elevators; however, those posters have since been taken down.

Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE) Executive Director Jocelyn Breeland wrote that the postering policy has not changed in a number of years and “applies regardless of the content of the document being posted.”

Law professor and survivor advocate Michele Dauber said that she always tells her students to follow Stanford’s free speech policies on campus, even though she thinks they are difficult to find and interpret.

“That being said, if Stanford spent half the time trying to stop rapists that it spends trying to stop criticism of Stanford, the campus would be a lot safer,” she wrote.

To SV Free, this is just another example of Stanford attempting to silence survivors, referencing the level of public support it took in 2019 to have Chanel Miller’s plaque installed. They alleged the postering policy is being enforced in a targeted manner, given that posters in EVGR-A only began to be taken down after the University criticized their posters.

“These posters refer to specific incidents that have already been reported to Title IX, but have yet to receive a resolution after 18 months,” SV Free wrote in their statement to The Daily. The lack of appropriate response is what prompted them to speak about this

Continued from page 2 situation regarding SV Free posters.

“Advertising and publicity materials (i.e. fliers, posters and banners) can be posted only on bulletin boards and only by members of the Stanford community,” the policy states.

The leaders of SV Free alleged in a statement to The Daily that the removal of posters is selective enforcement of a postering policy that is not clearly communicated to students. Though the postering policy is in the residence agreement, advocates do not think it is effective enough to communicate the policy to the student body. They said that the primary issue is the lack of transparency regarding the University’s flyering policy.

“They simply removed the posters without public accountability or discourse,” wrote SV Free leaders Ari Gabriel ’23, Kirsten Mettler ’23 and Sofia Scarlat ’24 in a statement. Gabriel has written for The Daily and Mettler is a section editor.

Harris wrote to The Daily that University policies are enforced fairly and that the University takes an “educational approach” to ensure that students understand the policy and why a violation occurred.

Harris did not specify whether the University had reached out to SV Free to discuss the removal.

EVGR-A is home to over 700 undergraduate students. Unlike

mutually agreed upon by both Parties. Complainants can also choose to withdraw their complaint. The majority of cases end in one of these non-hearing resolutions.

Can a student be disciplined for drug or alcohol violations if they are a student party or a witness to a reported incident?

After protests from sexual assault advocates following the release of Stanford’s new drug and alcohol policy, which went into effect on Sept. 1, the University revised its drug and alcohol policy to confirm that students who report Title IX incidents that involve illegal consumption of alcohol or drugs will not face disciplinary action.

Are disability accommodations available through the Title IX Office?

Yes; the Diversity and Access Office, along with the Office of Accessible Education or Human Resources, will work with the individual requesting accommodations and give recommended accommodations to the Title IX Office. Individuals will have the opportunity to appeal these recommended accommodations or note dissatisfaction with accommodations at the conclusion of a Hearing.

How has Stanford’s Title IX Policy changed in the past few years?

In 2020, the Department of Education released new regulations for sexual assault cases under Title IX. These regulations strengthened rights of the accused, lowered the bar for college liability and narrowed the range of incidents that universities are required to investigate. The regulations also narrowed the definition of sexual harassment, added live cross-examination to the Title IX procedure and allowed for mediation or informal resolutions, except if a student brought a complaint against a faculty or staff member.

In response, Stanford formed a drafting committee and released a draft proposal with opportunity for community feedback. Out of 25 recommendations made by student advocates, the University only adopted two, one of which was required by California law. But some advocates remain frustrated with the University’s Title IX process and support for survivors of sexual violence.

Sophomores recently protested what they described as Stanford’s failure to protect survivors at a convocation protest, and members of Sexual Violence Free Stanford postered EVGR-A with ‘ResEd Protects Rapists.’ issue, they wrote.

Harris wrote on behalf of the SHARE Title IX Office that all Title IX cases are less than a year old.

According to SV Free, this is not only an issue of free speech, but also an issue of safety: “Organizations like the YWCA or SHARE often use flyering in order to connect with survivors and provide them with critical resources, like reporting logistics, counseling options and more,” they wrote. “This flyering policy undermines a critical point of outreach for getting support to survivors.”

In light of this, SV Free is now trying a different strategy to spread awareness about sexual violence in EVGR-A by asking students hang posters on their own doors.On Oct. 18, the group announced in a statement that they have filed a report with the U.S. Office of Civil Rights (OCR) against ResEd for “systemic, institutional level problems in their mechanisms for sexual violence prevention.”

The University will “fully cooperate” if contacted by OCR, Harris wrote to The Daily on behalf of Student Affairs.

SPACE Continued from page 2 become an astronaut in the future.

Those close to her say that her aspiration is not far-fetched. Tiffany Lee ’23, Cooper’s teammate and friend on Stanford’s Lightweight

Stanford welcomed its fourth cohort of the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program (UELP) at a Tuesday event during which the new fellows discussed their past work and future plans at the University.

Since 2017, the UELP has sponsored three mid-career practitioners from Ukrainian government, law, entrepreneurship and civil society organizations annually to spend ten months at Stanford. The academic training fellowship aims to address development challenges in Ukraine and the broader region.

The three fellows — Yulia Bezvershenko, Denis Gutenko and Nariman Ustaiev — were slated to arrive on campus in October 2020, but the pandemic postponed the oncampus program until this academic year.

While on the Stanford campus, the fellows “go to classes and they meet people, but we also ask them to work on a project that relates to some issue back in Ukraine that they want to take back with them,” said Francis Fukuyama, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) who advises the program.

Bezvershenko led the Directorate for Science and Innovation at Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science prior to coming to Stanford. Originally trained as a theoretical physicist, she now works on policies that reform the country’s research and innovation sectors.

While Ukrainian scientists are able to choose their scientific directions, interests and pace, they are often confronted with outdated research infrastructure, limited funds and bureaucratic hassles, Bezvershenko said at the Tuesday event, recounting her own experience as a scientist.

“The problem in Ukraine is that we generate young, bright minds, but they have no place in the country,” Bezvershenko said. She hopes to create a “knowledge-based Ukraine” where knowledge is created, shared and utilized by industry, business and government.

Gutenko, like Bezvershenko, was also a Ukrainian government official before becoming a UELP fellow. He served as the head of the State Fiscal Service in Ukraine from 2019 to 2020, and before that he was an official at the Ukrainian Ministry of Economy. Prior to entering government ser vice, Gutenko worked in the private sector as a banker, auditor and agribusiness manager.

At the event, he reflected on why the bureaucratic machine does not work as effectively as it could.

“I understand it’s all about the people who work for it. People design institutions and procedures and implement rules,” he said.

Through the UELP fellowship, Gutenko said he wants to examine how the Ukrainian government bureaucracy could better attract and retain talents. Gutenko also hopes to explore the startup ecosystem in Silicon Valley, as he has worked on entrepreneurship throughout his career in the Ukrainian government.

Ustaiev is the co-founder and director at Gasprinski Institute for Geostrategy, a research organization based in Ukraine. He is a foreign policy and security expert who has focused on Russian policy since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

His project at Stanford will focus on strengthening the Crimean Platform, a diplomatic initiative aimed at reversing Russia’s annexation of the region and creating a democracy ecosystem for Crimea.

The UELP was founded in 2016 by former John S. Knight Fellow Oleksandr Akymenko and former John S. Knight Fellow Affiliate Kateryna Akymenko. The program is hosted by the Center on Democracy, Democracy and the Rule of Law at FSI. The UELP is only one of a number of FSI programs that train foreign political and business leaders.

Others include the Drapers Hill Summer Fellows Program, a threeweek program for global democratic leaders and the Leadership Academy for Development, a training workshop for mid-career professionals from developing countries.

communication from the University and felt blindsided by the bill.

“If you’re on full financial aid, you’re on full financial aid for a reason,” Verner said. “You don’t have the money to just pull hundreds of dollars out of your pocket in a week.”

Students placed in Mirrielees are also not automatically signed up for a meal plan, something Smith, Verner and Kravantka said they discovered after moving in.

This is because the rooms come with a kitchen, Miranda said, and “students can save on food costs by shopping at the grocery store and cooking for themselves.” He also noted that Stanford Dining offers an apartment meal plan that comes at a reduced cost and provides dining dollars and 5 meals per week.

Kravantka and Verner both said that their rooms did not come with kitchen appliances other than a refrigerator and a stove. “If you need a microwave, a toaster oven or even cooking utensils, you have to get all of that yourself,” Kravantka said. Verner said she was told multiple times by the financial aid office that she could reduce her living expenses by grocery shopping and cooking, or taking out a student loan.

“I would have pulled out a student loan if it was necessary and I chose to live in Mirrielees,” Verner said. “But I got placed here, and now I’m being asked to pull out a loan for something I didn’t ask for.”

Smith said she chose to pay extra for a traditional 15 meal per week meal plan. “In-person classes take up a lot more time and energy than online classes did — I just wanted to focus on school and be able to get food when I needed it,” she said. Smith also does not have a car and said that both getting and preparing groceries would have been a large time commitment on top of classwork and adjusting to

her first quarter on campus.

The University encouraged students with concerns about costs to contact the financial aid office, Miranda wrote.

According to emails Smith forwarded to The Daily, she contacted the financial aid office and R&DE to ask for an adjustment in housing prices. Smith said she and her roommate were sharing a room that is smaller than the images provided online and that it cannot fit two beds and two desks, the standard furniture supplied to students. She reasoned that she should not be asked to pay the same amount that students paid in past years when the Mirrielees rooms were two-room doubles instead of triples.

R&DE told Smith they were unable to offer rent reductions, but she could initiate the housing reassignment process.

Verner said she received a similar response from the financial aid office, encouraging her to reassign.

However, Smith, Verner and Kravantka ultimately decided against reassignment. Once the reassignment process is initiated, if students are reassigned, they are unable to pass on their new assignment and must relocate as soon as possible. It is also not possible to enter the process as a group.

Already separated from most of their initial housing group, all three sophomores said they did not want to end up somewhere new with no guarantee of a friend in the dorms.

“My roommate and I did not want to get separated from each other, especially after move in,” Smith said. “And that was the only option we were given.”

Verner said she was able to cover the costs of both rent and a regular meal plan without taking out a loan, but this did not happen until she called the financial aid office herself.

“I had to fight tooth and nail,” she said. “I was essentially placed in Mirrielees, something I didn’t choose, and made to figure it all out by myself.”

Rowing team, emphasized Cooper’s dedication to the team and her commitment to achieving her goals.

“She works really hard at whatever she’s committed to,” Lee said.

Though Lee said Cooper has been very humble about her recent flight, Lee said she thinks “everyone knows it’s super, super cool.”

AstroAccess plans to create a more accessible future for space

technology through reinventing the design process, and Kapusta said that Cooper is at the forefront of this mission.

“If we work together and really, you know, prove that this can be done, it changes the course of her career, and the ability for her to really become an astronaut and do what she wants to do in the aerospace field,” Kapusta said.

MIRRIELEES Continued from page 1

4 N Friday, October 29, 2021

The Stanford Daily

OPINIONS The Stanford Daily

Cricket X. Bidleman Established 1892

Technology can’t solve what ableism creates

Executive Team Kate Selig Editor in Chief

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college education.

People get caught up in the “smart” aspect of technology like the “smart cane”. My cane isn’t smart, but I don’t need it to be. The article and accompanying video talk about a wheel that pulls the user around obstacles, and while I certainly don’t like running into things, it’s nice to know that those things are there. I don’t want to be skating along sidewalks without knowing where those tables outside Old Union are, for example.

Maybe I’m trying to meet a friend, or I’m using a traffic light as a landmark. The wheel on the tip of this cane might interfere with the textural elements of the terrain. People often ask me whether the sound of my cane’s metal tip dragging on the ground is grating to my ears, and while I do find it mildly annoying, there’s more to it than that. It’s nice knowing whether I’m walking on tile, bricks or carpet. A lot of other blind people would agree.

Awareness is good — people shouldn’t take that away from us.

Even Stanford’s videos about the “smart cane” display the ableism and inaccessibility that pervade our society. The videos are not audio-described, so while the developers believe that they are engaging diversity and increasing accessibility, they are not doing so properly. It is extremely hypocritical to brag about accessibility efforts for blind people in videos that don’t contain audio description.

Moreover, the “smart cane” assumes misguided notions of quality of life. The developers cite improvements in walking speed for both sighted and blind users while using this cane, and the video claims that “this can provide a significant improvement in terms of their quality of life due to improvement in mobility.”

This kind of assumption is deeply troubling and offensive, because a person or group of people is projecting their image of “quality of life” onto the disabled. Falling into this pattern can be dangerous. This “smart cane” is perhaps less lethal than other examples of the same behavior. For example, even as recently as this year, people with disabilities have been denied life-saving

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id you read that story in the Stanford Report about the affordable ‘smart cane’ that uses robotics? Wasn’t it cool?” Whenever articles about disability technology come out, I’m asked for my thoughts and feelings on the innovation at hand. People expect me — a blind person — to share their excitement. Most therefore find my frustration and lack of enthusiasm perplexing. They don’t understand that in the midst of the excitement that comes with applying technology to the disability community, the true harm — ableism — is often overlooked.

This “smart cane” is a good example of technology ignoring ableism. The developers intend to help the blind community. However, this product is not necessary for blind people to live and work successfully. In fact, this product can ultimately be harmful. Canes tell blind people what obstacles are in our walking paths and what terrains we’re walking on. The heavier weight of the “smart cane” puts undue stress on users’ wrists and arms. Canes like mine weigh significantly less than a single pound, whereas according to the article, this “smart cane” weighs a whopping three pounds. Repetitive stress injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome often result from muscle fatigue and repetitive motion.

Using a cane that heavy every day could be catastrophic.

This article emphasizes the “affordability” of the “smart cane,” saying that similar products cost $6,000, and this one only costs $400.

Perhaps they don’t realize that blind people can get canes for free here — it doesn’t get much more affordable than that. Almost 10 million Americans received Social Security disability benefits in 2019; that’s the only income that a lot of us get. Many disabled Americans live at home or with caretakers, or they work for subminimum wages or in sheltered workshops. They don’t have $400 to spare, and I don’t find $400 easy to part with, either. I would rather save that money to help with post-graduation moving expenses, donate it to a philanthropic organization or save it for my hypothetical children’s

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healthcare when doctors projected their bigoted opinions about “quality of life” onto disabled patients. Both are examples of ableism. No one should assume that others have a lesser “quality of life” just because they live differently. The developers of the “smart cane” are likely trying to be helpful, but there are better ways to accomplish this aim using products that already exist.

Ableism and inaccessibility have always been huge societal issues.

Developers think that they can solve those issues by creating something new, or that they can get around future issues through innovation. Technology isn’t always the solution, though. Here are some better ones.

In terms of “quality of life”, the disabled do not have equal access to aspects of society due to inaccessibility, and that’s much more damaging than inability to walk quickly or the

existence of disabilities. Despite the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), some buildings don’t have wheelchair-accessible rooms or correct Braille signage — even here at Stanford.

This inaccessibility extends to the internet: there is no legislation specifically mandating web accessibility. There only exists a collection of unenforced guidelines. Making websites accessible could vastly improve “quality of life” for the disabled. We should concentrate less on innovating and more on establishing effective legislation and enforcing it.

Then, the bigger problem: ableism. It exists in every aspect of society, though others choose not to recognize it. Able-bodied people physically manipulate the disabled without asking us for consent. People drag the disabled across streets, or grab us to show us how to find things — the examples are endless.

The disabled are sometimes forced to work in sheltered workshops and/or for subminimum wages.

Workplaces that do pay above minimum wages still sometimes pay the disabled less than our non-disabled counterparts. Assistive technology isn’t affordable, and developers concentrate on high-tech solutions rather than making what already exists more affordable.

There’s a high rate of sexual assault toward the disabled because we’re viewed as inferior, and we’re not taught what consent is. A lot of public transportation in America is not accessible, and ride-sharing services like Lyft and Uber are still refusing passengers with disabilities. These are just some of the endless examples of problems that urgently need solving. Let’s get off those high horses of high tech and instead spend our energy on fixing these issues.

Will Halverson

Revisiting the Fundamental Standard Adapting University rules on hate speech s Stanford students on Instagram brought the University ’s attention to Chaze Vinci’s racist and misogynistic social media posts, many students were frustrated at the University’s lack of transparency about how they were responding to the unfolding situation. As Vinci’s rhetoric escalated in the days that followed, students correctly pointed out that Vinci’s posts rose to the level of material threats against Black and other minority Stanford students.

Why, then, was the University refusing to take a stronger stance against Vinci by expelling him?

The answer can be traced back to a 1995 Santa Clara County Superior Court case, Corry v. Stanford University, in which nine Stanford students sued the University for its “Free Expression and Discriminatory Harassment” Fundamental Standard interpretation. Before Corry, the Student Conduct Legislative Council had interpreted Stanford’s Fundamental Standard to prohibit face-to-face bigoted insults. The court overturned this policy, known as the “Grey Interpretation,” because they found it to be unconstitutionally overbroad in its restriction of free speech. Specifically, the court applied California’s Leonard Law, which requires that students have the same right to free speech on and off campus, to rule that Stanford’s interpretation violated the First Amendment.

Since Corry, Stanford has constrained itself from restricting students’ free speech and even uses the Leonard Law as an explanation for why it does not discipline students for “reprehensible” speech. In doing so, it has hamstrung its ability to respond to individuals like Chaze Vinci.

A

Had Vinci not actively threatened a Stanford professor, it is doubtful that the University would have been able to remove him from campus. While over 600 students turned to Stanford’s new Protected Identity Harm (PIH) Reporting Protocol, that protocol lacks the teeth to respond to the “larger pattern of malice at Stanford,” as Professor David PalumboLiu wrote in a recent op-ed. Except in rare cases of truly abhorrent speech like harassment, the PIH process offers only non-judicial resolutions such as restorative justice to respond to discriminatory incidents. Instead, Stanford must revisit its own Grey Interpretation of the Fundamental Standard, once a paragon of effective “campus speech codes” that prohibited hate speech.

Stanford justified the Grey Interpretation on the basis of the “fighting words” exemption to the First Amendment, which holds that the Constitution does not protect words that actively incite violence.

The Student Conduct Legislative Council argued that because forms of discriminatory harassment like racial slurs conveyed “visceral” hatred, they constituted “fighting words” and could legally be prohibited. The decision in Corry, however, held that Stanford’s policy was still prohibited by the First Amendment because 1) racially motivated insults were not the same as words that actually make people fight and 2) banning “discriminatory” insults while allowing other insults constituted an unconstitutional “viewpoint bias,” where speech is discriminated against on the basis of its ideology.

Because of the Grey Interpretation’s exemplary nature as a campus speech code, prominent advocates of campus speech codes such as Richard Delgado — one of the founders of Critical Race Theory — defended Stanford’s interpretation. Delgado persuasively argued that despite the Santa Clara court’s

decision, Stanford’s Grey Interpretation was still legal under the First Amendment. He argued that forms of speech like racial slurs are such extreme forms of “personal abuse,” causing lasting psychological harm and humiliation, and that they should still be considered “fighting words.”

Furthermore, Delgado argued that prohibiting discriminatory speech was not a form of unconstitutional “viewpoint bias.” The Corry court found Stanford’s policy to be biased only because the policy described exactly which forms of speech were not allowed, which the court took as evidence that the policy was overbroad; in reality, the policy described which speech was not allowed to ensure it was only narrowly applied.

Finally, Charles R. Lawrence III, a professor at Stanford Law School at the time, argued that the Grey Interpretation was constitutional because insults like slurs are like a “slap in the face,” provoking a fight-or-flight response that is protected by the “fighting words” exemption. Additionally, slurs do not encourage more speech, presumably the purpose of the First Amendment, but actively shut down dialogue because speech is “an inadequate response” to such violent attacks on personal identity.

As such, a new speech code at Stanford prohibiting face-to-face racial insults would not be a violation of the First Amendment. Yet just because such an interpretation might be legal, does not mean it would be desirable. There are compelling arguments from both the left and the right against campus restrictions on free speech. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), for instance, firmly opposes hate speech restrictions because of their concerns that such restrictions will be weaponized against unpopular ideas on both the left and right.

Graphic: ERIC LIU/The Stanford Daily

Arguments about the importance of free speech for marginalized groups, however, miss two crucial facts about Stanford’s Grey Interpretation: 1) its narrowly defined application would prevent spillover, and 2) while free speech is important, universities are first and foremost a site of learning and growth. If students’ bigoted speech impedes that function, it should be regulated.

First, while it is true that overbroad speech codes might be used against unpopular ideas, as they were against anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, a new speech code could be worded to avoid such weaponization. Stanford, modeling its policy on the Grey Interpretation, should explicitly prohibit the use of visceral, identity-based insults that constitute “fighting words” while condemning, but still allowing, less extreme rhetoric.

Such a policy would enable Stanford to respond to individuals like Vinci while preventing the University from applying the policy to dissidents as long as they avoid the use of identity-based attacks.

Second, Stanford’s primary role is to serve as a learning environment. Learning at college necessitates peaceful dialogue between individuals with different viewpoints, but racial insults contravene this goal by targeting individuals on the basis of their identity, not their ideas.

Stanford should not restrict students from expressing their opinions — but as soon as those opinions cross the line into attacks against other students’ identities, they can and

should be disciplined.

Black @ Stanford, in their Change.org petition, furthers this argument by laying out how Vinci’s rhetoric made campus more unsafe for many marginalized groups. Even setting aside Vinci’s direct threats of violence, the use of racist cartoons and use of racial slurs on Instagram and Twitter have direct effects on how students of color feel on campus.

Indeed, a 2019 study on campus hate speech, among many others, found a direct link between hate speech on campus and increased stress expression. As Delgado put it, if the University fails to stop forms of hate speech like Vinci’s, “it is violating its moral responsibility to protect that student’s right to equal access to its educational services without discrimination on the basis of race.”

Absent an update to Stanford’s Fundamental Standard, however, the University will lack a crucial tool in preventing future incidents, like the one started by Chaze Vinci, from occurring. While responses like restorative justice and conversations with professional staff authorized by the PIH are important, they cannot deter students from using bigoted insults, and because participation in the resolution process is voluntary, they cannot hold students accountable for those insults, either. By refusing to update its Fundamental Standard to restrict hate speech, Stanford is willingly removing its most effective weapon against discrimination from its arsenal and allowing its campus to remain an unsafe space.

Friday, October 29, 2021 N 5

The Stanford Daily

ARTS & LIFE CULTURE

Flexible art minor launched The program is run by the Stanford Arts Institute

By XIMENA SANCHEZ MARTINEZ

T

he Stanford Arts Institute (SAI) recently launched a new minor in interdisciplinary arts. The program is intentionally flexible so that students from any academic background can take advantage of this opportunity to explore art.

Honors in the Arts Fellow Jessi Piggott Ph.D. ’19 said that SAI “wants STEM students to also have the opportunity to engage meaningfully in art, so that’s really at the heart of this program.”

Those like Kiara Bacasen ’21 M.S. ’22 appreciate that the new minor opens artistic opportunities up to more of the student community.

“I thought that [the minor] was really cool because it just presents another opportunity for students to be able to integrate arts and art practice into their time at Stanford in ways that are hopefully more affordable and more open to new interpretations,” Bacasen said. “The ability to be interdisciplinary was something that I think seemed really important and would open up a lot of opportunity and space for students who might have not felt there was room for them in traditional classes.”

GRAPHIC: CAMERON L-H/The Stanford Daily

Students in the program can take classes from a wide range of disciplines to fufill their requirements: film to literature, dance to music. The minor’s interdisciplinary nature accomodates students interested in STEM or the arts.

The minor is intended to allow students to explore art in a customizable way that fits their interests, Piggott said.

“There’s no one size fits all; there’s no single roadmap,” Piggott said. “It’s really open to whatever the student is interested in, so the kind of students we’re excited about are students who are thinking broadly about their discipline.”

Shridhar Athinarayanan ’23, the first student to declare the minor, is excited that the program encourages students to explore art from different perspectives.

“There’s definitely lots and lots of flexibility, and the choices for all the electives

come from all different departments that are not just art practice,” Athinarayanan said.

The minor allows students from all academic backgrounds, including those in STEM, to pursue projects within their fields of interest. Athinarayanan plans to pursue a capstone project revealing “the scientific and mathematical processes that happen in day-to-day life.”

“In certain classes and art practice, you’ll have to follow certain prompts and think more about art techniques,” Athinarayanan said. By contrast, “Interdisciplinary Arts is more about you bringing in your own flair to

the projects that you want to create.”

Students can count a wide variety of courses towards the minor’s interdisciplinary art electives requirement; options range from film to literature, dance to music. The minor also requires the four-unit foundational course ARTSINST 101: “Introduction to the Arts: Think, Make, Create,” which will be offered during winter quarter. In addition, students will need to complete an Experiential Inter-Arts course that may be fulfilled by either an Arts Immersion trip or by a course in the ITALIC sequence and complete a senior capstone project.

READS

MUSIC

Indie pop

Mohr poet on race and writing

CONCERT AT A RAINY FROST

A. Van Jordan read a wide range of his work

By KYLA FIGUEROA COLUMNIST

Courtesy of Stanford Live

Writer Aaliyah Webster reckons with the tensions of seperating an artist from their art in light of DeMarco’s previous insensitive comments. Despite her discomfort, Webster still enjoyed the lively energy of rock opener.

By AALIYAH WEBSTER This article discusses sexual violence that may be troubling to some readers.

T

his weekend, the Bay Area was caught in the thrall of its strongest storm of the last 26 years. The rain and wind led to road closures, flooding and power outages for residents throughout the region. The adverse weather conditions, however, weren’t enough to stop devout Mac DeMarco fans from showing their support at Frost Amphitheater for the Stanford Live event.

Stanford students certainly had the easiest journey to the concert, but they were heavily outnumbered by residents from across the Bay Area, some of which drove hours in hazardous conditions to make it to the venue. One of the many people caught in the unending downpour flew out from Washington, D.C., solely for the show; another attendee traveled all the way from Colombia to see DeMarco.

With his commanding stage presence and choice of openers, it’s no surprise that DeMarco’s cult following would travel across the country to see him despite the bad weather. The audience was not afraid to show their excitement: a cheer of “We want Mac!” briefly roared through Frost as the

crowd waited for DeMarco.

Mac DeMarco has played at a few festivals around the country as COVID-19 regulations have eased, but his first return to a solo stage was at Stanford. Being stuck in the house for the last year and a half took a toll on the indie powerhouse just as it did on the rest of us, according to the artist. He explained during the concert that quarantine made him question whether he wanted to continue a career in music. Luckily for his fans, DeMarco also said that being able to play shows again reminded him why he began his musical journey in the first place.

He casually strolled onto the stage, cracking jokes with the audience and vocalizing his unending gratitude. He was just as excited to see the fans as they were to see him, adding that his girlfriend said he seemed to be “half a man” without the shows. A piece of him was missing without being able to interact with his audience.

And interact with the audience he did. He paused between songs to tell the crowd about the photograph on the shirt he was wearing (a photo of his one-armed saxophonist grandfather Henry DeMarco), did a walking hand-stand across the stage to compete with his openers’ onstage stunts and thanked the audience over and over for showing up and sticking around despite the poor weather.

O

ver 50 people gathered in the Mackenzie Room at Huang Engineering Center on Oct. 20 to hear Mohr Visiting Poet A. Van Jordan read his poetry.

DeMarco’s vocal delivery was excellent, and his band played wonderfully. He traded out smoothly sung lines with powerful notes that bounced through the audience. The energy in the venue was palpable as the crowd sang along to the addictive lyrics of “My Kind of Woman,” although I don’t consider myself to be a big DeMarco fan.

Hearing a popular indie singer perform in the softly colored rain should have been an idyllic experience — but criticisms of DeMarco’s insensitivities bounced around my head throughout his set. In the past, his stage presence has been anything but benign, and in a previous performance he joked about sexual violence. While this occurred years ago, and he claims to have learned from his actions, the same can’t be said about some of his fans. DeMarco’s past behavior was brought to the front of my mind as I overheard an audience member in the crowd casually joke about raping JD Beck, the 18-year-old drummer accompanying the band for the night. Witnessing how this dangerous thinking still remains among some of his followers left a sinking feeling in my stomach throughout DeMarco’s set.

Thankfully, most fans at the show were warm and welcoming, allowing me to join the crowd’s celebration of the opening acts’

Not only is Jordan a prolific writer, but he also works as a film critic and has taught at various institutions, including The University of Texas at Austin, where he was tenured as an associate professor, and Rutgers University-Newark, where he served as the Henry Rutgers Presidential Professor. Jordan incorporates research in history and film studies into his courses and work in order to foster an interdisciplinary approach to creative writing.

The reading — organized by Stanford’s Creative Writing Program — was introduced by Program Director Patrick Phillips. Phillips stated that Jordan’s work has “the poignancy of the blues,” and, in reference to a quote by William Faulkner, serves as a reminder that “history is always with us.”

With that, Jordan began his reading, happily remarking that it was his first in-person event in two-years. Using a Prezi presentation to structure his reading in reverse chronological order, he started with new work and worked his way back to older collections.

The first group of poems centered on Tamir Rice, whose story Jordan said has served as a “muse” for him. Rice was an Black boy killed by police in Cleveland, Ohio — not too far away from Akron, Ohio, where Jordan is from. Using a video to recount Rice’s murder by police, who defended their actions by claiming Rice had a pellet gun — though he was shot on sight, before the cruiser could have seen a gun — Jordan lamented that Rice “was just a kid.”

Please see CONCERT, page 6

Please see READING, page 6

6 N Friday, October 29, 2021

The Stanford Daily

READS

Poetry reclaiming language A “nerdy kid” calls for social change

By KYLA FIGUEROA COLUMNIST

Graphic: ANGELA WEI/The Stanford Daily

Even though classic “Carmilla” shares themes with gothic and earlier fiction, it also pushes the boundaries of the horror genre by challenging the trope of the heterosexual vampire predator.

READS

‘Carmilla’: Science meets mythology

By FYZA PARVIZ JARZA

I

t has become an annual tradition of mine to read a work of fiction or nonfiction on supernatural themes during the Halloween season. My past picks have been “The Monk” by Matthew Gregory Lewis, “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte, “The Witch” by Ronald Hutton, “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James and “Dracula” by Bram Stoker. After learning that the short story “Carmilla” by gothic master J. Sheridan LeFanu inspired Stoker’s “Dracula,” I immediately purchased the Oxford Classics edition and elected to read this almost-forgotten vampire tale of moral and psychological significance as the nights got longer and the weather turned cooler.

“Carmilla” was initially published in LeFanu’s 1872 short story collection “In a Glass Darkly.” The collection consists of five macabre tales that lie beyond the grasp of conventional rationality, forcing readers to take a leap of faith and suspend their standard judgment.

In “Carmilla,” confessional narrator Laura lives with her father in a remote castle in the dense forests of Styria and becomes mesmerized by a mysterious guest, Carmilla, who happens to be a vampire. Like other works of Victorian Gothic fiction, “Carmilla” includes romantic imagery of haunted architectural ruins; depictions of wild nature; themes of illicit sexual enticements, illness and isolation; exploitation of folk beliefs and tensions between the familiar and the unfamiliar. People once thought the dead were summoned from their graves and haunted their neighboring villages, and nightmares bleed into the day.

Like Bronte’s “ Wuthering Heights,” the horror plot of “Carmilla” also relies heavily on ambiguity; LeFanu neither confirms nor denies the presence of demonic beings in Laura’s town and leaves us to wonder whether Laura’s eerie experiences are merely hallucinations.

Even though “Carmilla” shares themes with gothic and earlier fiction, it also pushes the boundaries of

READING Continued from page 5 He emphasized this in the poems “Bored — Tamir Chooses to Dream” and “Fragments of Tamir’s Body.” The former imagines the moments before Rice was killed, during which he sits under a gazebo head cast-down, appearing bored.

Jordan narrates what Rice may have been thinking and the possibilities that were open for his life before the tragedy. Jordan then captivated the audience with his poem “Fragments,” which contains no complete sentences and juxtaposes violent imagery with childlike images, showing that Tamir “died before his time.”

In the poems “Hex,” “Grandfather the Noun” and “Grandfather the Verb,” Jordan recounts several events of the past year. “Hex” is a “conversation with Shakespearean themes,” through which Jordan intends to “clarify the [social justice movements] of the past couple of years” by cataloguing them in the distant voice of Shakespeare. In the latter two poems, which consider two definitions for the same word, Jordan tries to make sense of and find language for the past year, with its devastating “pandemic and uprisings [for social and racial equity].” Each of the poems fit into the

the horror genre. First, the vampires of the early folktales are beastly, comical and foul-smelling primal predators. But in “Carmilla,” the vampire archetype is transformed into a beautiful aristocrat: a person who possesses all the elegance of high birth laced with sinister evil. Later, Stroker quite successfully incorporated this element into his own fiction, with Count Dracula as a libertine lordly vampire. The second interesting feature of “Carmilla” is that its vampire is a beautiful female who desires other young females. Vampires are generally presented in literature with a heightened sexual drive, but it is almost always heterosexual in nature. Instead, in “Carmilla,” the female vampire forms an intense homoromantic bond with her victim and hungers for her love and attention. Because of this theme of female lust, many scholars have additionally examined the ideas of repressed passion, homo-eroticism and patriarchal values embedded in this story.

“Carmilla” also distinguishes itself by leaning into science to validate its mythology. LeFanu’s short story collection begins with a prologue by a fictional English doctor who works for an eminent and learned German physician, Doctor Hesselius. The Englishman reveals that the stories in this collection are case studies assembled by the now-deceased German, who in some instances also added his notes and analysis to these peculiar incidents. One of the most interesting aspects of LeFanu’s work is his invocation of male scientists to legitimize the existence of the supernatural. Doctor Hesselius and others like him who appear throughout the text are not only men of science but also occult detectives, exploring new and previously unidentified realms. This addition made me think of 20th century German philosopher Ernst Cassirer’s argument that even in our scientific age, our thinking is still rooted in the magical and the mystical.

A footnote in my Oxford edition

Please see VAMPIRE, page 7 bigger picture of art’s importance as a tool that provides insight during turbulent times. With historic events and movements that impact many, we often lose individual stories such as that of Tamir Rice. Jordan ensures we don’t forget.

The next group of poems was from Jordan’s chapbook “I want to See My Skirt.” The collection was a collaboration between Jordan and interdisciplinary filmmaker Cauleen Smith, who created the eponymous original work (a film).

Inspired by the photography of renowned Malian artist Malick Sidibe, this collection’s poems celebrate the life, agency and dynamism of Black men and women of West Africa in the decades following the region’s independence from French colonial rule.

My favorite of these poems were “The Dance” and “The Tailor,” which both have a dreamy and humanizing aspect to their language.

In “The Dance,” Jordan creates an evocative yet touchingly realistic party scene, as if describing a memory. He not only comments on who the people are at “The Dance,” but considers what they mean in that space, calling the peoples’ bodies “art” and the music “language to get them on the [dance] floor.” As for “The Tailor,” the speaker, a tailor, weaves hope for his people into their clothing, saying “you’ve come to me and asked for a dream.”

The last group of poems were

A

ntonio de Jesus Lopez — poet, East Palo Alto City Councilmember and Stanford Ph.D. student in Modern Thought and Literature — begins his latest poetry collection with the definitions of a word he invented and uses as the title of his book, “Gentefication”: 1. “when gentrification becomes personal, and the poet as native subject must invade language itself, when mobility just isn’t enough, and the poet must populate the canon itself from within; 2. “when the poet finally decides to smuggle a metate inside English & por fin beat the shards that’ve barbed his mouth. and out bleeds from barrio stone, this molcajete alchemy; 3. “stained saints of glass, fluent in the language of cut.”

These definitions provide a lexical foundation for the collection’s commentary on the politics of language and the nuanced relationships between home, injustice, education and community. Lopez’s poems exist as antitheses of gentrification and phenomenologically resist it. They expand community and language, rather than regulate them.

In an interview with The Daily, Lopez provided a clear roadmap for his collection. Throughout history, the English language has inflicted trauma, and oppressed and colonized marginalized communities. In his poetry, Lopez aims to expand his readers’ understanding of what gentrification looks like, how being gentrified affects the human psyche and how an individual’s body suffers for it.

“I wanted to see what that meant for me,” Lopez said, “What do relationships with language look like for a first-generation, low-income college student? Someone from a Latino background? A child of immigrant parents?”

Gregory Pardlo, Pulitzer-winning poet who wrote the foreword for the collection and selected Lopez’s work for the Four Way Books Levis Prize, also commented on how gentrification — as well as its absurdities and abuses — is displayed in the collection. “We’ve seen [these forces] descend on our

CONCERT Continued from page 5 energy. Producer John Carroll Kirby was the first to take the stage. He laid down lush elements on his keyboards that effortlessly floated up along Frost’s soaked steps. His mellow piano melodies and gritty synths bled through the amphitheater air, with the pulsing kick drum serving as the heartbeat of the venue. The tranced audience swayed in their ponchos and soaked jackets until pauses left the

Courtesy of Arianna Cunha

Modern Thought and Literature Ph.D. student Antonio de Jesus Lopez is East Palo Alto’s youngest city council member. His newly released poetry collection “Gentefication” explores the politics of language, racial injustice and wealth disparities. neighborhood like weather systems. I found the moral clarity — which is not to say moral purity or rectitude — of ‘Gentefication’ liberating and revelatory,” Pardlo wrote to The Daily.

Amid his reckoning with the maneuvers of language, Lopez tries to make the English language something that can restore us — as poets and as people — through his work. He refers to this process of using language as a vehicle for change as “people-fying,” essentially the direct translation of “gentefication.”

Pardlo notes Lopez’s humanizing voice in his introduction to the book as well — indeed, “Genetification” imagines a world where everyone has the right to exist.

“American literature has a history of erasing and ignoring parts of the population to suit its dominant selfimage,” Pardlo noted. “Not everyone may see themselves in Lopez’s poems, but his poems are so largehearted that, in them, I think everyone can feel seen.”

Growing up in East Palo Alto, Lopez refers to himself as the “nerdy kid in an environment of change.” Reflecting on his upbringing in a working-class family, he said that he disapproves of the romanticization of poverty and the “rags to riches” narrative of the American Dream. In reality, Lopez explains, he and his community rainfall as the only noise breaking the venue’s silence.

The other opener, an experimental rock duo called The Garden, also brought the audience to life, but in an entirely different manner. Made up of twin brothers Wyatt and Fletcher Shears, the performing group turned the slowly swaying front rows into a series of competing mosh pits with their punchy drums and screaming vocals. Drumsticks and mic stands went into the air. One brother did acrobatics while the other launched himself into the audience.

The duo’s presence was electric, jolting the crowd into sporadic

BRYAN MONGE SERRANO/The Stanford Daily

Jordan asserted poetry’s place in the digital age, arguing that the art form holds a unique power to invoke emotion and empathy. read from his poetry collection “Cineaste,” which includes works about Jordan “placing himself in films, [examining] protagonists and antagonists within film, and changing the endings to films [he didn’t] like.” (The last bit earned a laugh from the crowd.) The first poem in this collection, “Metropolis” — which serves as a prologue — discusses what it feels like to walk into a theater, bringing experiences from

one life with you as you indulge in another life. Jordan also noted the beauty of theaters, showing a picture of a particular theater in Akron, which appeared normal from the outside but was like a cathedral inside.

Another poem from this collection, “Do the Right Thing,” was inspired by Spike Lee’s 1989 film of the same name. Lee’s film explores a Brooklyn neighborhood’s hot

made the most of what they had, and he constantly observed the problems that existed in his community.

“There are these shadows, these pockets of poverty. I grew up in Silicon Valley, in a place that did not look like ‘The Silicon Valley.’

And being in that proximity to wealth made me wonder why things were this way,” Lopez said.

Lopez’s background also inspired his current role as East Palo Alto’s youngest city councilmember. He never intended to enter the political sphere, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the wealth and health disparities it has revealed, catalyzed his own youthled, grassroots campaign.

Lopez said that the pandemic “was a call to action — COVID made me uncomfortable.”

His time at higher education institutions also greatly contributed to the composition of “Gentefication.” Lopez, who has earned degrees from Duke, Oxford and Rutgers, is currently attending Stanford, and commented on how education was commended in his Latino family for its relations to generational wealth and socioeconomic mobility. In other words, the poet explores how “Lantindad has not only a question with immigration but also in education.”

Please see POETRY, page 7 frenzies that moved me from the back to the front rows — and another attendee out of the crowd altogether with a bloody (albeit smiling) mouth.

I fed off the energy around me, and for the majority of my night I was able to enjoy seeing a host of talented artists. Even so, it was the first time I experienced genuine discomfort by being in the presence of a performer. It left me asking myself, “Am I really capable of separating art from the artist?” As DeMarco’s mic cut while he let his final notes ring out into the rain, I came to the understanding that I could not. racial tension between its AfricanAmerican residents and the Italian-American owners of a local pizzeria, culminating in tragedy and violence. One character, Raheem, has a fate similar to that of Eric Garner, a Black man who died from police brutality in 2014. In this poem, Jordan explores the relationship between the two men and the many others who have died at the hands of injustice.

In an interview with The Daily, Jordan shared a bit about his writing process. Jordan first thinks of a subject, then considers what he wants to say about the world through this subject and finally decides upon the images he wants to use to communicate these ideas.

The question of form also impacts the early development of his works.

“I’ll ask myself what is important about what I am saying and why am I doing it as a poem,” Jordan said. “Why a poem rather than another medium, such as a tweet?”

His advice for undergraduate students, specifically those of marginalized identities who want to pursue writing, is to think about what’s important to them and read the work of others. “You don’t have to read everything, but read what you can with an annotative mind.”

When asked what he hopes people get from his work, Jordan gave a simple yet powerful answer: “I hope they felt something.”

Friday, October 29, 2021 N 7

The Stanford Daily

HUMOR

Economic crisis Finance recruits eager to cause recession

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.

Edit: BEN LEES/The Stanford Daily

I’m thinking that it’s some type of documentary. I bet the research paper they cite includes a diagram like this.

HUMOR

Hit squid doc... I think

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.

In the past couple weeks, Stanford’s campus has fallen into the tentacles of a new Netflix show. A daring documentary on cephalopod social behavior, the show covers cutting-edge research into oc-

topuses, cuttlefish, and, of course, squid. Or so I assume, anyway — I haven’t actually had a chance to watch it yet.

The title, “Squid Game,” is the name researchers have assigned to a symbolic bonding ritual observed in multiple cephalopod species. Large numbers of squid, often of the Illex genus, gather to perform a specific sequence of coordinated movements. No surprise that this beautiful exhibit of natural harmony has enraptured thousands of students. I mean, that must be it.

The show joins a growing list of Netflix original documentaries (I think), including “Salt Fat Acid Heat” and “Our Planet.” Specifically, it draws on the cephalopod craze kicked off by “My Octopus Teacher,” which explores the previously unknown details of cephalopod pedagogy. Huh? No, I haven’t seen that either; why?

In any case, “Squid Game” is set to be one of the most influential shows ever to be produced about tentacled ocean-dwelling creatures, and shows no signs of slowing down ... I think.

Stanford Finance’s application process begins in November, but students interested in finance are already gearing up for the competitive recruiting cycle. Though the prospective “analysts” seek different roles and occupations, they all share a common goal: developing the skills and connections necessary to bring about the next major financial crisis.

“I’m ready to make my mark,” said Parker Graves ’25, who has dreamt since childhood of destabilizing markets for vital resources like food, water and housing.

“Events like the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis inspire me. I always thought my aspirations were

just a pipe dream, that I would be ridiculed for wanting to make money at the expense of broader society. It was such a relief to learn that there’s a community here that approves of speculating on people’s livelihoods.”

Other students have different focuses: “I’ve always admired great figures like Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke,” said Chris Wiley ’24. “In 2008, when the federal government bailed out the big investment banks while leaving impoverished Americans high and dry — it brought a tear to my eye,” he continued, visibly restraining his emotions. “I’d do anything to be in a position to do the same come the next crash.”

Stanford Finance offers tremendous opportunities, but its exclusive program can only take on so many students. If you’ve ever wanted to cause a major economic crisis yourself, you’d better get started on your application: The next big bubble will burst any moment.

HUMOR

Stanford accepts only 3.95 students Acceptance rate drops to record low

By SOSI DAY 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.

The Stanford Office of Undergraduate Admissions announced last week that the admissions rate for the Class of 2025 dropped to an all-time low: only 3.95 impressive students were admitted to the Class of 2025 cohort.

One student, having recently completed medical school at Harvard, decided to pursue her passion for mechanical engineering at Stanford before beginning her residency. She will also proudly represent Stanford as the first woman ever recruited for the Cardinal football team. With her remarkable sense of humor, her unmatched resilience and her dedication to real social change, we cannot wait to watch her Stanford journey unfold.

Joining her will be Mary Shelley, back from the dead to clear up some of her diction in “Frankenstein.” She will major in Comp Lit, and we expect her time here will transform the lives of generations of high school juniors to come.

The third student comes to us from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He will learn how to man-

POETRY Continued from page 6 “It’s not just a thing for an individual,” says Lopez, “but education is important for your entire family and community.”

For all of its benefits, Lopez finds that education is actually a fraught environment for people of color (POC), overshadowed by an idealized vision of academia. Lopez emphasized that POC must therefore endure the violence inflicted on them by institutions and navigate systems that were not designed for “those who look like him.” In his first poem, “A Chicano’s Self-Help Guide to Racial Trauma,” we bear witness to a Latino student’s feeling of powerlessness caused by a white teacher. The speaker proceeds to run to the bathroom to vomit, a visceral reaction to reject the toxic attitudes that tokenize him and limit his personhood in the classroom.

Ryan Murphy — director of Four Way Books, the company that published “Gentefication” — and

age his trust fund and will somehow dodge the WAY-ED requirement. We look forward to reporting on the growth of his personal wealth.

The last student, who has already expressed that they will not attend classes in person, is truly a mystery to us all. In a performance-art-style act of defiance, they revealed no personal information in their application except for their email address. Their actions draw

attention to the monotony and dehumanization of the college application process. Despite the Office of Admissions’ repeated attempts to mail them an acceptance letter, they refuse to participate in formal communication with the University. We aren’t even sure this student will attend, but we are giving them the benefit of the doubt. Given Stanford’s culture of acceptance, we know they will feel right at home here.

Cartoon: SOSI DAY/The Stanford Daily Graphic: SOSI DAY/The Stanford Daily

The Office of Undergraduate Admission pictured at 3.95% of its usual size. They really called it early this year.

Hannah Matheson, publicist and an editor, believe that “Source E: Conjugations of My Tia’s Back” is a stand-out piece. To them, it “demonstrates the formal ingenuity, linguistic dexterity and rhetorical verve that define Lopez’s poetry.” These traits of his work wield “the rules” of formal poetry to subvert them, highlighting institutional claims of education as an avenue of social change but also a place that instills elitist community structures and the prejudiced criteria for the value of art.

Appreciating the narrative and language in the poem, Murphy and Matheson note that the continually shifting perspective exemplifies the rote exercises of academia. Their interpretation is that the mechanism is used to “interrogate the overarching forces that shape our personal experiences and to demand tangible change.” The poem, ending in the “tu” perspective — the informal Spanish pronoun for “you” — allows for intimate confrontation as the speaker looks right at its audience.

“And you, the poem asks, the student in workshop, the reader holding this book, what are you going to

The “Gentefication” collection’s use of Spanglish is a political choice. Lopez hopes that his poems inspire readers to reclaim space. do? The propulsion of this poem, as that of ‘Gentefication’ as a whole, transcends philosophical critique and lifts off the page, asking its audience to listen, to learn and to not just think, but to do something,” Murphy and Matheson wrote to The Daily.

These poems, like others in the collection, are written in “Spanglish” — mostly English with a sprinkling of Spanish words. Lopez — while he used Spanglish mostly growing up — was at first shy to include any Spanish in his writing but later learned to embrace it, creating colorful and special images with the

Don’t get me started on the types of bikes. Let me just say, if you have a Citizen bike, ya basic.

language.

His use of Spanglish and colloquialisms allows him to replicate his personal struggles with craving wealth and social mobility, pursuing education in dominantly AngloAmerican spaces and learning to prioritize using English. He thereby evokes empathy in his readers for those who learn to exist and operate under the confines of a language not truly their own. Lopez also asserts that his use of a non-English language in his writing is as much an intellectual choice as it is a political one — being holistically himself does not make him any less intelli-

gent than his white colleagues.

With his poetry book, he hopes readers are compelled to reclaim space and use their voices, both in their academic settings and in the world outside of college. Lopez provides commentary on how higher education is “a double-edged sword, and [that he] is trying to show one side.” His audience is not limited to students; instead, he aims for everyone to understand, and creates discomfort to inspire change. Lastly, using literature as a political device, he hopes readers can appreciate his art and use their own art to define and represent their communities.

VAMPIRE

Calmet’s two-volume treatise was published in 1751 and is a manual on investigating the occult. A new Cambridge Press edition states that Calmet wrote this work as a “scientific enquirer seeking to understand the truth behind stories of good and bad angels, vampires, witchcraft, possession by demons and the dead who come back to life.” I have enthusiastically added this book to my list of potential next Halloween reads

Continued from page 6 mentions that LeFanu took some characteristics of Carmilla’s vampirism from the English translation of “The Phantom World Or, the Philosophy of Spirits, Apparitions, etc.” by Dom Augustine Calmet, a French Benedictine monk.

8 N Friday, October 29, 2021

The Stanford Daily

THE GRIND

THE GRIND

I ALWAYS

COME BACK

By KYLA FIGUEROA DESK EDITOR

When I walked into the Casa Zapata lounge for my first in-person speaker event, I already knew it would be among the top events I would attend at Stanford. The room buzzed with excitement, most of the seats were full besides the one in the back corner I managed to snag, and a purple and green PowerPoint was projected on the TV with what would be ahead.

The night featured four Oakland youth community organizers — Dwayne Davis, Mica Smith-Dahl, Denilson Garibo and Natalie Gallegos — who starred in the documentary “Homeroom.” The film discussed their plights and pivots of their work, spanning from getting youth more involved in the community, reallocating Oakland Unified School District’s police budget for student needs and participation in the Black Lives Matter Protests during the summer of 2020. There was a comfortable atmosphere, the audience being all ears to listen to their experiences and perspectives. Every answer the panelists gave earned snaps, cheers and hums of agreement and satisfaction. At one point, Gallegos and Smith-Dahl delved into the problems of gentrification: rather than infiltrating areas like Oakland, we, as Stanford students, should “reinvest into our own communities back home.”

Once the discussion wrapped up — students then took turns to ask inquisitive questions about organizing in their own communities — I left. It was dark outside, autumn finally reaching Stanford with the amount of sunshine inching away each day.

The sky was crystal clear, the stars and rain clouds painting the world with the full moon’s brightness, serving as a beacon for my way back to my dorm. The wheels turned as I unlocked my bike and started pedaling, and as cool air entered my system, I began spiraling too.

Seven months. I have been on Stanford’s campus for the majority of 2021, since March, and haven’t been in my hometown, Stockton, Calif., for more than a month in that time. I have grown accustomed to Stanford’s culture: from not knowing where any buildings were located to being a human GPS, meeting people in person whom I used to only see on screens via Zoom calls and promising new people to “catch up and get lunch” and learning the quirks and acronyms of the campus. (The latest thing I found out about has been the Steam Tunnels.) I found a new haven here, with expected ups and downs, but overall a life-changing experience.

Yet ... this quarter is different.

It’s my first time being one of many in crowded lecture halls, my first time having to bike and face the circle of death when trekking to class and first time being able to go in buildings other than dorms instead of just staring at the captivating architecture. First time for many things. And now I have an unusual yearning for my hometown that can only be described as one thing: homesickness.

My relationship with Stockton has been a complex one. Growing up, adults always told me that college would be the key to my success. Didn’t matter where I went and what I studied; as long as I had a degree, I could help those who couldn’t

Edit: KYLA FIGUEROA/The Stanford Daily

Growing up in Stockton, Kyla Figueroa heard that the only way to find success, help her family and help herself was to leave her community in Stockton behind. achieve greatness, help my family and finally, help myself.

Only, there was this running narrative: I needed to leave. That, if I stayed, I couldn’t grow and make a life for myself. That, if I stayed there, I’d turn out like everyone else. That, if I stayed there, I could never become anything more than what I was now. I’d be stuck in a cycle of hurt, trauma and poverty. Princess Vongchanh ’23, also from Stockton and who attended the same high school as I did, introduced a behavioral term coined by Stockton Scholars called a “brain-drain” in another article with The Daily. Essentially, brain-drain involves the idea that “to achieve success, you have to leave the city,” and, “to maintain it, you have to continue cultivating your success in some other sphere.” Both college and success were intertwined for me and, so, it was almost fate that I would eventually leave. And this mindset that filled every space I entered in Stockton made me resent my home, despising everything there.

High school came soon, and during my freshman year, amidst the 2016 election chaos, there was a spring of hope: Michael Tubbs ’12 was elected mayor. The years that followed were radically important, both to the community of Stockton and myself; along with launching universal basic income, the SEED initiative and the documentary “Stockton on My Mind,” Tubbs also piloted Stockton Scholars, which I became involved with during my senior year. It is a scholarship, support and ambassador program for students in Stockton, most of whom are first-generation, low-income (FLI).

Having the chance to meet many students from across the city as well as work on panels and events I was passionate about made me find a new love for my community. I felt like I had a voice finally. There was a sense of progress that grew and was sparkling new, a rose defying the bounds of concrete and finally blooming.

Then the pandemic happened.

Three weeks of spring break turned into one year of staying home. With milestones like graduation, my 18th birthday and starting college being confined to my house, the 2020 Election (with even more chaos) also happened. And Tubbs lost to Republican Kevin Lincoln. I helplessly watched, not being able to vote in the mayoral race due to living in county limits, as Tubbs received more than 10,000 fewer votes than his opponent. And I was in disbelief when many voters based their perception of Tubbs off a misinformation and hate campaign.

My confusion soon became anger: how can my community, a place that aches to become better, shun part of the solution? How dare we begin to heal a wound, a wound that has been bleeding for generations, only to reinjure it again?

Soon, I was whisked off to Stanford during the spring quarter of my frosh year, leaving my home, my friends and family, hurt, confusion and resentment behind. Stanford was nothing like Stockton. It was quiet at night, crickets and bike gears audible in contrast to loud Spanish music from parties, screeches of tires from cars going too fast and gunshots ringing in distant neighborhoods. People were kind: I

met those from my classes in real life, interacted with upperclassmen I worked with in clubs, got to know new faces and found a group within the safety of Burbank’s walls. Stanford, its campus and life being kept away for so long due to COVID-19, was finally in my possession, only requiring a turn of my dorm’s doorknob to bask in the Bay Area sun and numerous opportunities. Spring 2021 felt magical; the college experience I heard about for years finally was there, at my fingertips. I never forgot Stockton, but it was so distant.

A different life. It felt not as important.

Now, as I am typing this during my sophomore year, a slump in my Stanford career, I yearn for Stockton. I’ve been running away for these seven months and I miss it. I miss my community.

I miss the loud music, the ethnic food, the route I would take to school, La Superior and my abuelo’s house. I miss my backyard, miss my pets: my German Shepherd, mutt cats and turtles. I miss my father’s barbecues, the corner of the couch and light I would use to read, the spot on the kitchen table I would always do my homework at and the block I would ride my bike around. I miss the Stockton Scholars building, the downtown movie theatre and going on top of parking garages to see a view of the port’s waterfront, water from the Sierra Nevada mountains going through Stockton via the San Joaquin River and heading toward Mount Diablo, eventually reaching the Bay. I have been in four different dorms these past seven months, living an almost nomadic lifestyle, and each one has felt less like home. I miss the feeling of home, and in turn, I realize that communities that you’ve made in the past are so important to carry with you.

Recently, after recommendations from Stanford students, I listened to the “Invisibilia” podcast by NPR and the three episodes on the 209Times, misinformation, the disappearance of mainstream local news and the 2020 Election letdown. And man, am I worried about my community. All the problems — rampant homelessness, poverty, gun violence — reaching almost every corner on the South and Eastside, stay in Stockton when everyone leaves, from the outsider experiencing the joint to the students being pushed out. The cycle of trauma, feeling voiceless against the structures of life, oppression and resentment that each Stocktonian harbors persists. It will continue until we, as a community, break the cycle and heal.

As an FLI student, there’s this pressure to be something great with the education I get, something larger than life, and to reinvent the world for the better because I can. While I can’t guarantee that, I can make a different promise: I will return to Stockton. I am not a savior, the fairy godmother who will wave the wand of Stanford money and intelligence and fix every problem there, but I am and will always be a part of the community, a resilient and beautiful community composed of so much love and potential. I am a boomerang, thrown so far that you think it’s long gone, out-of-sight enough to think that it’s missing, but it always manages to find its way back into your palm. I promise you, I will be back.

THE GRIND

Best pizza spots, part three

By MARK HUERTA CONTRIBUTING WRITER

You keep asking for it, so I keep eating it. As a pizzaphile and your Stanford Daily pizza critic, I enjoy indulging in the best pizza spots in the area. This time I am taking on pizza joints in the nearby cities of Menlo Park and Redwood City, expanding beyond my Palo Alto origins.

The rules of pizza review are universally understood: a 10/10 pizza is a pizza I would fly around the world to eat. A 9/10 is worth driving several hours for, and an 8/10 is worth the equivalent of a drive into San Francisco. A 5/10 refers to simply average pizza, whereas a 1/10 would be physically inedible.

So, I am back by popular demand. Here are three more pizza reviews of local pizza joints.

Avanti Pizza This Menlo Park spot on Alameda de las Pulgas serves up what can only be described as children’s birthday party pizza. The abundance of cheese on the pie gives it an overall dehydrated quality. The pizza also has a somewhat funky taste to it, a symptom of their usage of “aged mozzarella.” The dough is on the fluffier side, but this is not a bad thing per se, as there is a crispy and charcoaled crust to complement the pillowy interior.

The pizza has nice structural integrity and is not floppy at all. The sauce is lacking in flavor, and it belongs in the slightly chunky sphere, missing the smoothness of an even puree. The pizza is a bit greasy, probably as a result of the aged mozzarella. The atmosphere of the restaurant is interesting: it mostly offers take-out with a few tables for eating. Overall, this pizza is most reminiscent of Costco

pizza, which is high-quality for pizza on the go from a supermarket. But Avanti forces you to pay a much higher price and go specifically to the restaurant for this kind of pizza.

Rating: 5/10 Price: $15 for a 14’’ pizza Pizza Hut No one outpizzas The Hut, or so claims the marketing of this national chain. But does their location on Middlefield Road in Menlo Park live up to this reputation? Pizza Hut’s pizza is known for having a much thicker crust and dough than its competitors.

While this would generally mean bready, soft pizza, the pie I ate has a nice crunch. But that is not to say that this pie is a cracker. There is a nice fluffiness to every bite. The slices have a little flop, which is nice in con-

Please see PIZZA, page 10

Roads diverge One choice makes all the difference

By ERIC LIU CONTRIBUTING WRITER

There are always choices I must make every waking hour.

Since choosing one would entail losing the other, I am losing all the time no matter what I choose.

But losing is normal — every choice made entails the other un-made. So what matters becomes: Whether the chosen choice is worth more than the un-chosen one?

I could predict the outcome based on my past, which seems reasonable. Though, like statistics where we only know what things “tend” to be — the z score — instead of knowing what they will become, it’s more sensible to have a statement like “it’s probably true” than “I have no idea.”

Take what the great poet Robert Frost once hypothesized: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood”; if there were two roads diverging, or three, even more, taking the one less traveled by, more uncertain, means losing all other options. And if choosing any path necessitates losing the other, going anywhere, even choosing to stay stagnant or turn away from what’s ahead, makes “all the difference.”

OPSletDiv: As the number of texts in our family chats dwindled, I had no idea how to respond.

To be fair, during my senior year at high school, I was “busy” all the time. I wanted to spend all my waking hours with my friends before I never saw them again. So, when my parents asked, “How are you?” in the chat, I always answered, “Busy,” after a day or two. But when I asked for their responses, the answers came immediately, no matter the time difference. My time available with my parents felt unlimited compared to that with my high school friends, whom I only get to hang out with for three more months.

As I became gradually more “busy” as senior-spring dwindled away day by day, the chat became quieter and quieter.

Eventually, it would keep silent for days.

Yesterday lying on my bed in Alondra, when I asked my parents for my return flight back to Boston, there was no response until a day after.

“Let’s call,” I decided later. I dialed her number and waited for her to answer only for it to go to voicemail. A text message pinged my phone a couple of seconds later.

“I am busy,” my mother responded.

My heart missed a beat as I read that. I wanted to yell, but there wasn’t a reason to do so — the anger would seem from nowhere but from my own excessive reading of the situation.

At that point, two roads diverged: 1. Respond with: Does tomorrow work?

2. Respond with: Why are you always busy?

It is probably true that one of them is more sensible than the other, but it did not seem clear to me which one would be.

So I didn’t choose. I stayed silent, leaving my mother’s message un-replied once more.

I guess to stay stagnant or turn away from what’s ahead was the third choice, and that has made all the difference.

OPSletDiv: I enjoy traveling. When I was learning English, the phonetic succinctness of the word “trip” fascinated me. I loved it more when I explored its definitions.

It is mostly defined as a minijourney or a journey with a more direct destination. A “business trip” embraces the “short” connotation, for example. What interests me more is the fact that it also describes a mental journey, the state of hallucination or under the influence of psychedelics. People come back a little differently after each “trip.” The word fur-

ther extends its meaning to illustrate the feeling of profound perplexion.

The western world is obsessed with the notion of trips and journeys. From Homer’s “Odysseus” to poet Walt Whitman’s infamous line “Our fearful trip is done!,” travels brew an exotic dream of self-accomplishment through adventures and dangers. And after the journey, the hero applies their growth to solve the dilemma.

But a trip is never done — the effects of a journey, physical or spiritual, change a person forever. In fact, every encounter — a gust of wind, a book read or a loved one’s departure — initiates a journey, and the person becomes shaped and reshaped constantly from birth to death.

If everything resembles a journey through which a person’s characteristics are formed, does the person who faces the two roads diverging choose their next journey? Or do the pre-existing experiences of the person determine the choice that will be made?

So was it me that responded with: Why are you always busy?

The answer to the question fascinates me.

When I was in primary school, I loved picking wildflowers on the way home from school. As soon as I arrived, I would trim off the stem, stuff the flowers in an ice-cube mold and freeze them overnight. The next morning, I took them out and appreciated their stunning patterns. I kept them out no longer than five minutes, after which I immediately stored them in a freezer drawer dedicated to flowers only. At the end of my primary school years, the entire drawer was filled with flower-stuffed ice cubes.

And one day I threw all of them away.

Not because my parents asked me to do so, but because of their “un-floweriness.” They did not have fragrances. Their colors were lost over time.

Though the patterns were frozen, I couldn’t hold them in my hand and feel the textures of each petal. They were distant and indifferent. Once they were frozen, they ceased to be flowers. They were preserved as ideas of what used to be flowers.

Once the family chat was kept silent, it ceased to be family chats. It was preserved as an idea of a used-to-be family chat.

Does tomorrow work?

Silence.

Nothing can ever be preserved unchanged — preservation in itself defeats its purpose.

Even the two roads can’t stay unchanged. Had I stayed, the trip would still go on. The surroundings might not change, but I would.

The family chat did not change.

“Let’s call,” my mother said one morning. Then the phone rang.

Though familiar sentences were exchanged, the exchange was everything but familiar.

After we hung up, I lay on my bed. I was a little different after going through the silence — staying stagnant and turning away from what’s ahead, in fact, had made all the difference.

I used to miss my parents.

When I was alone at night, I would look out the window and see the bright moon. They would be looking at the same moon, I would have thought. I would have recalled my fifth birthday where my parents held me up in the sky and sang “Happy Birthday” with 20 more family friends. I would have missed my first family vacation to Australia where we took pictures with koala bears. There would have been so many would-haves.

But there was none. The moon was the same moon, and I am not the same.

A trip can never be undone.

And that has made all the difference.

Friday, October 29, 2021 N 9

The Stanford Daily

SPORTS HOME AT LAST CARDINAL RETURN AFTER TWO ROAD GAMES

By DANIEL WU

battle just for bowl eligibility, and they won’t get there if they can’t correct troubling declines in offensive line play and rushing production. A UW team that’s struggled to stop even Stanford’s lackluster run might be the best chance to right the ship.

“I think we’re capable of better,” Shaw said on Tuesday. “Every coach and player on our team thinks we’re better than our record.”

To sit at 3-4 is disappointing for a team that looked so confident after marquee upsets of USC and Oregon earlier in the season. Injuries and a brutal road schedule can certainly explain some of Stanford’s woes, but what feels more inexplicable is the decline of an offensive line and running game that was supposed to headline this year’s offense. The Cardinal sit at dead last in the Pac-12 with just 95 rushing yards per game, and the Tunnel Workers’ Union gave up three sacks in the final two drives of the one-score loss in Pullman.

That might be cause for some bye week adjustments. Shaw indicated on Tuesday that he might continue to rotate players around the offensive line after sliding junior guard Branson Bragg to right tackle and inserting junior guard Jake Hornibrook at right guard in the fourth quarter against Washington State.

“The offensive line is kind of a microcosm for our entire team right now,” Shaw said. “We’re striving for consistency with that entire unit.”

On the injury front, sophomore

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Stanford football has endured a rollercoaster over the last two years.

Decade-long winning streaks were shattered and The Axe was lost, but one thing remained constant — somehow, the Cardinal beat Washington.

And not just beat them.

In each of the last two meetings between Stanford and Washington, the Cardinal posted season highs in rushing yardage and dominated the trenches with the suffocating, trademark David Shaw brand of football that has continued to elude Stanford against other opponents.

In 2019, running back Cameron Scarlett ’19 burned over five minutes of clock in the fourth quarter with nine straight runs through the gut of an overpowered Huskies defense. In 2020, then-sophomore running backs Austin Jones and Nathaniel Peat combined for three rushing scores on Stanford’s opening three possessions, and Jones iced the game with a burst through the Washington defensive line on fourth down.

With the past two years in mind, there’s reason for optimism as Stanford (3-4, 2-3 Pac-12) hosts Washington (3-4, 2-2 Pac-12) on Saturday night off the heels of two tough losses and a much-needed bye week. Forget dreams of a Pac-12 Championship berth — the Cardinal are now in a

running back EJ Smith, fifth-year tight end/defensive end Tucker Fisk and junior inside linebacker Tristian Sinclair are probable to play. Junior tight end Bradley Archer and sophomore running back Casey Filkins are out, and fifth-year safety Noah Williams and sophomore wide receiver John Humphreys are questionable. Senior wide receiver Michael Wilson is also questionable, but Shaw said he’s getting close to making his long-awaited return after a season-ending foot injury last year.

Stanford might not need to be at full strength to stop a lukewarm Husky offense that was shut down

by FCS team Montana and stonewalled for an entire half against Arizona. Washington’s dismal season has been one of the more shocking developments in the Pac-12 this year and their resume — with only wins against Arkansas State, Cal and Arizona — hardly inspires confidence.

But in true Pac-12 fashion, there’s a bizarre caveat to the Huskies’ struggles. UW somehow boasts one of the top passing defenses in the nation, allowing fewer passing yards per game than No. 1 Georgia. The Huskies have talent up front with game wrecking outside linebacker Zion Tupuola-Fetui and in the secondary with preseason All-Pac 12 cornerback Trent McDuffie. But Washington’s performance against opposing quarterbacks might be more of a reflection of how bad the team is at stopping the run. The

BOB DREBIN/isiphotos.com

Sophomore quarterback Tanner McKee (18, above) has 14 touchdowns on the season, but the Cardinal’s run game will be crucial on Saturday.

Huskies have given up 194 yards per game on the ground, good for 11th in the Pac-12 — above only Stanford.

It makes for a simple matchup: neither team has been able to stop the run, but the Huskies have the talent to spend most of the game locking down sophomore quarterback Tanner McKee and his receivers, who have sustained the Stanford offense. They will dare the Cardinal to beat them on the ground.

For the third time in as many years, Stanford might have to win by resuscitating a struggling run game.

Do that, and the outlook for the rest of the season becomes much rosier.

“Last year, we all just happened to know what we were doing,” fifthyear fullback Houston Heimuli said.

“We were all on the same page. We were all in the flow of things. And that’s what I want to see this year, especially out of myself and a lot of us in this ground game.”

Stanford kicks off against Washington at 7:30 p.m. PT on Saturday.

The game will be televised on FS1.

Per the new attendance policies of Stanford Athletics, spectators at Stanford Stadium will be required to present either proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative test result within 72 hours of the game.

MEN’S TENNIS

FOOTBALL

Fery takes two in Seattle

WASHINGTON UP NEXT FOR CARDINAL

By ELLS BOONE DESK EDITOR

Stanford men’s tennis had a successful weekend at the ITA Northwest Super Regional Championships in Seattle, with sophomore Arthur Fery capturing the singles title before teaming up with senior Alexandre Rotsaert for the doubles championship. In total, the Cardinal had six players participating in the event.

Sophomore Aryan Chaudhary won the singles title at the ITA Regionals tournament the weekend before, qualifying for the Super Regional in the process, and he won the doubles crown with senior Tomas Kopczynski at that competition.

Ranked the No. 48 singles player in the country, Fery won five matches en route to his singles title. The first four were won in straight sets, including a 7-5,

7-5 semifinal victory over No. 124 Yuta Kikuchi from Cal. He faced some adversity in the final match, dropping the first set to No. 72 Clement Chidekh of Washington, but recovered to win the next two for a final score of 3-6, 6-3, 6-1. Chidekh had dispatched Kopczynski in the round of 32.

Besides Fery, the furthest a Cardinal player went in the main draw was Rotsaert, who bowed out at the quarterfinal stage to Portland’s Sema Pankin. Chaudhary lost in the round of 32, but made it to the consolation final where he lost to Santa Clara’s Mann Shah 6-0, 7-5. Other Stanford participants included freshman Max Basing and fifth-year Timothy Sah. Both won their opening matches before losing in the round of 16.

On the doubles side, the highlight of course was the pairing of Fery and Rotsaert, who are

By ELLS BOONE DESK EDITOR

By CYBELE ZHANG DESK EDITOR

By DREW SILVA

By NOAH MALTZMAN LYNSDAY LIEPENS/isiphotos.com

Sophomore Arthur Fery (above, right) and doubles partner senior Alexandre Rotsaert (above, left) teamed up for the title in Seattle. rated the No. 59 partnership in the nation. They won each of their matches in straight sets, winning a low-stress final 6-2, 6-1 against a pair from Gonzaga.

Basing and Sah played together, reaching the semifinals. They then lost, however, to the same Gonzaga doubles partners who would later fall to Fery and Rotsaert. Stanford’s final doubles

group — Chaudhary and Kopczynski — fell in the quarterfinals by a score of 8-5.

With their wins, Fery and Rotsaert qualified for the ITA Fall Championships set to be held Nov. 4 through Nov. 7 in San Diego. Before then, however, the team will head to Los Angeles this weekend for the SoCal Championships.

WOMEN’S TENNIS

Cardinal claim singles, doubles titles

By MAYA SOMERS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

In its 14th consecutive season hosting, Stanford women’s tennis won both singles and doubles titles in the ITA Northwest Regional Championships. The Cardinal dominated the draws on all sides of the brackets — both finals at Taube Family Tennis Center on Tuesday featured only Stanford players.

Freshman Connie Ma captured the singles title before teaming up with No. 87 junior Angelica Blake for the doubles championship. Their opponents in second place were senior Niluka Madurawe and freshman Alexandra Yepifanova, who also stood against Ma in the singles final.

In singles, Ma continued her streak of straight-set wins when she defeated Yepifanova 6-4, 6-1. Her closest match of the tournament was a 6-4, 6-4 semifinal victory over Mariia Kozyreva of Saint Mary’s College.

Yepifanova recorded exclusively straight-set wins before the singles final.

Coming in as the fifth seed, she successfully upset the No. 1 seed Vanessa Wong of Washington 6-4, 7-6 (3) in the quarterfinals to

NIKOLAS LIEPINS/The Stanford Daily

Sophomore India Houghton (above) was part of a Cardinal squad that dominated all sides of the brackets at the ITA Northwest Regional Championships over the weekend. reach Ma in the championship.

Blake fell in the quarterfinals of the singles draw to Cal’s Jessica Alsola, who later went on to lose to Yepifanova in the semis.

After winning the first set 6-1, Blake went 26, 0-6 in the next two to give up the match.

On the doubles side, playing only one set to six in the first three rounds, Ma and Blake gave up just three games total. In the later pro-set matches, they won the quarterfinal match 8-6 before narrowly defeating Alsola’s Cal team 8-7 (7) in the semifinal.

Madurawe and Yepifanova played a close quarterfinal win to upset the number four

seed 8-7 (7). They then won their semifinal match 8-6 before falling to their Stanford teammates in the final.

In total, the Cardinal entered seven players in the singles draw and four doubles teams. Beside the four championship players, the furthest player of the draw was freshman Valencia Xu in the round of 16 in the singles and doubles draws, when she partnered with senior Sara Choy.

Stanford women’s tennis will be back in action at Taube Family Tennis Center on Nov. 5 for the Stanford Invitational, which will run through Nov. 7.

Back from a bye week, Stanford football needs to deliver. With a negative record both overall and in conference play, the Cardinal (3-4, 2-3 Pac-12) face an uncertain future and the prospect of a bowl-less postseason. Meanwhile, Washington (3-4, 2-2 Pac-12) enters Saturday’s game on a one-game win streak after only narrowly beating a winless Arizona team — for the entire first half, the Huskies were unable to put up points on the board.

Which 3-4 team wins out to level their overall record? Noah Maltzman, Drew Silva and Ells Boone explore the offensive line’s inconsistency, red zone stands and home field advantage.

Cybele Zhang [CZ]: In this week’s press conference, head coach David Shaw referred to the offensive line as the “microcosm of our team right now.” The Cardinal offense begins here in the trenches, but the position group has had its ups and downs — Shaw noted, too, that they’re “striving for consistency.” What needs to happen so that Stanford can reestablish the run game and bounce back from its dismal 2.2 yards per attempt average at Washington State? Does the probable return of sophomore running back EJ Smith change things?

Noah Maltzman [NM]: Unfortunately, reestablishing the run game is not as simple as getting Smith back. The run game starts and ends with the offensive line, and, as Shaw said, the group very much represents the team as a whole. Some games the O-line is dominant; for example, against Oregon, probably the best defense on the schedule, Stanford’s offensive line only allowed four negative-yard plays. However, other games are abysmal — like against Arizona State, where the offensive line could only help muster 40 total rushing yards. In order to reestablish the run game, Stanford needs to ensure it wins the battle of the trenches against Washington. Smith can only help so much, but it is up to the offensive line to create holes for him and other rushers like junior running backs Nathaniel Peat and Austin Jones or even sophomore quarterback Tanner McKee. However, this is a great match up to reestablish the rushing game. Washington so far has given up 1,495 rushing yards to opponents this season (213.57 rushing yards per game) on 4.8 yards per attempt. Stanford needs the offensive line to play well in order to run well, and Washington is a good test to see how the offensive line can recover from

Please see FOOTBALL, page 10

10 N Friday, October 29, 2021

The Stanford Daily

MEN’S WATER POLO

Cardinal go 1-1 over weekend

By CYBELE ZHANG

mentum changed in the final period.

USC broke ahead and did not look back, scoring five goals in the final period. Meanwhile, the Cardinal did not find the back of the net once. USC ultimately won 15-11.

“We gave up a lot of easy opportunities to the other team,” sophomore goalie Nolan Krutonog said of the fourth quarter. “We definitely

could have done a better job defensively, especially in the counterattack.”

One notable absence, which head coach John Vargas called “unfortunate,” was senior driver Quinn Woodhead. The Marin County native — who led the team in goals coming into the weekend — missed both the USC and UC Irvine games

for undisclosed reasons, but was on the pool deck to cheer the team on.

Despite the gap in score, Stanford actually outshot the Trojans 38to-34, but USC’s impressive shooting percentage, .441, proved to be the difference. The Trojan goalie, Nic Porter, also saved an impressive 58% of shots on the opposite end to stall the Cardinal’s chances.

“I am happy with the way our boys battled,” Vargas said after the USC game.

Graduate student driver Tyler Abramson and redshirt sophomore driver Walker Seymour scored three apiece on Saturday, leading the team in goals.

Just 23 hours later, the Cardinal took the pool again — this time facing UC Irvine. Unlike the day before, the weather was unusually rainy and cold at Stanford. Following the previous afternoon’s theme, the teams were initially evenly matched, trading goals in the first half. Entering halftime, the score was 5-4 in the Cardinal’s favor.

But the second half was a different story for the Cardinal. Seymour kicked off scoring in the third quarter, opening the floodgates for Stanford, which then went on a 6-1 scoring run. By the end of the third period, the Cardinal had a comfortable 12-5 lead.

The Cardinal continued this dominance both offensively and defensively into the fourth quarter, winning 17-7.

Abramson was again impressive, accounting for four goals and one assist to lead the team in scoring.

Next up, Stanford will play No. 6 University of the Pacific at home on Sunday at 1 p.m. PT.

Cardinal need to make sure he never gets into the red zone. Stanford also should be able to get pressure on quarterback Dylan Morris. Morris has been sacked 18 times and has thrown eight interceptions in the team’s seven games this year. Don’t be surprised if junior CB Kyu Blu Kelly comes up with another big play.

EB: The key of course is to stop the Husky offense before they reach the red zone, but sometimes it is inevitable that they will make it that far. When Washington does find itself in the red zone, Stanford needs to put pressure on Morris and lock down the check-down routes.

Sometimes you have to live with field goals, but this is not an explosive offense coming into Stanford Stadium on Saturday, as Drew alluded to.

CZ: The Cardinal now resume a home-heavy schedule to close the season, which features four games at Stanford Stadium in the next five weeks. Shaw said that “we have to take advantage of being home.” Can the Cardinal go undefeated at home to close the season? What factors (pros and cons) come into play when the team plays in Stanford Stadium?

NM: Stanford definitely has a good chance of closing the season undefeated, especially at home. Having four out of five of the last games in Palo Alto is a huge advantage for the team. The biggest challenge will be to close the season when No.

11 Notre Dame visits Stanford on Thanksgiving weekend. Can Stanford win? Absolutely. However, it is not likely. Playing at Stanford Stadium does not give as much of an advantage as most college teams experience when playing at home, especially against colleges with big fan bases like Notre Dame. This phenomenon was seen earlier this season during the UCLA game, where, despite it being the home opener for Stanford, the crowd probably had as many Bruins fans as there were Cardinal fans. Expect Stanford to be bowl-eligible, but going undefeated for the rest of the year may be too much to expect.

DS: After the Oregon game, I almost would have expected the Cardinal to go undefeated at home to close the season. However, following the back to back losses to ASU and Washington State, I am not sure that the Cardinal can win their last four home games, especially against Oregon State and Notre Dame. As Noah mentioned, when Stanford hosts a football program as popular as Notre Dame, it almost feels like an away game. For the Oregon and UCLA games, Stanford fans were significantly outnumbered by opposing fans excluding the student section. However, after having been on the road for almost the entirety of last season and starting this year with three away games, it will be nice for the Cardinal to play in front of their fans.

EB: Stanford can go undefeated at

home the rest of the way, but Notre Dame to close the regular season looms large. The Cardinal cannot afford to look ahead on their schedule, however, as every game represents a challenge. This weekend is a winnable game against a Washington team that has greatly underachieved this season. As for the factors that come into play at Stanford Stadium, the usual home field advantages of the opposing team having to travel and play in an unfamiliar setting still hold true, but the Cardinal do not get a big enough home crowd to intimidate their opponents. Nevertheless, Stanford still should feel comfortable playing at home, which has to be a positive.

CZ: Washington has not allowed an opponent to score more than 35 points in a game since 2014 — a 82-game streak. No other team in the FBS has a current streak longer than 41 games (San Diego State). Can Stanford finally put substantial points on the board?

Score predictions?

NM: Stanford 34, Washington 27 — Washington’s defense has not been as dominant as it has been in the recent past. However, while they are far removed from the days of safety Budda Baker and nose tackle Vita Vea, they still have solid defenders like sophomore linebacker Jackson Sirmon (leads the team with 52 total tackles) and sophomore defensive Kyler Gordon (leads the team with four passes-defended and two interceptions)

that may be able to stop the Stanford offense. While Washington’s sub-35 point streak will most likely not be broken this weekend, I still anticipate a Stanford win. The bye week gives the Cardinal needed rest, and getting a win against Washington, a formerly ranked team, could set the tone for the back half of the season.

DS: Stanford 27, Washington 24 — This game will feature both the two worst rushing defenses and the two worst rushing offenses in the Pac-12. After Washington was ranked at the start of the season, and after Stanford upset Oregon, neither team thought they would have a losing record through seven games. While I don’t quite see the Cardinal scoring 35 points, I do think that Stanford has the slight edge. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some extra energy in the stadium in the Cardinal’s first home game since defeating Oregon. I expect this game to be close and would not be surprised if it was decided by a late field goal from sophomore kicker Joshua Karty.

EB: Stanford 24, Washington 17 — This is a must-win for both teams, and from a talent perspective, these teams are very close to each other. I give the Cardinal the edge thanks to superior quarterback play and think that Tanner McKee can make a play that will give Stanford a touchdown advantage. I don’t see this being a track meet, but crazier things have happened this season.

DESK EDITOR

By NOAH MALTZMAN Last weekend had its ups and downs for the No. 4 Cardinal men’s water polo team (15-4, 0-2 MPSF), which competed in two home games.

On Saturday, Stanford lost to No. 3 USC (14-1, 1-1 MPSF) 15-11, but on Sunday, the Cardinal rebounded to win 17-7 versus No. 14 UC Irvine (710, 0-2 GCC).

The game against USC was especially important for the Cardinal, given the long-standing rivalry between the programs and the fact that Stanford only narrowly fell to the Trojans, 15-13, under a month ago. On top of that, the Cardinal are yet to claim their first conference win. Naturally, tensions were high during the game, with coaches on both sides yelling.

Saturday was Stanford’s chance to right the ship in the MPSF, but the Cardinal ultimately failed to go the distance for all four periods.

Things started out well; 65o Fahrenheit and partly cloudy, the two teams traded goals for the first half, and the Cardinal went into the break with a 6-5 lead.

The tight-matched game persisted into the third quarter, which saw five goals for each team — but mo-

FOOTBALL Continued from page 9 bad games (and a bye week).

Drew Silva [DS]: At first glance, the game versus UW looks like this is the perfect opportunity for the Cardinal to reestablish the run, as the Huskies rank second to last in the Pac-12 in rushing yards allowed per game. However, the Washington State defense was not much better, and Stanford struggled heavily in that game. The return of EJ Smith will certainly add another weapon to the running game, but ultimately the offensive line needs to have the greatest impact. After shuffling up the offensive line in the Wazzu game, some consistency in both the personnel and the performance should allow Peat, Jones and Smith (if healthy) to attack a weak Washington defense.

Ells Boone (EB): As we’ve been talking about for weeks now, and, as Noah astutely noted, Stanford can’t reestablish the run until the offensive line play improves. The coaching staff made some changes against Washington State on the offensive line, which is still being solidified. Sophomore offensive tackle Myles Hinton in particular has struggled. If the offensive line can figure themselves out, the Cardinal have the horses necessary for a strong ground game. The return of EJ Smith only adds more firepower to the backfield.

CZ: UW, along with LSU and TCU, is one of just three FBS teams that has scored every time it has reached the red zone this season. What does Stanford need to do defensively to stop Washington?

NM: As said in the question, the Cardinal can not let them into the red zone; however, if Washington gets into the red zone, then it is imperative that Stanford make the Huskies attempt a field goal instead of a touchdown. Washington down the field is not as efficient as it is within the red zone, so special teams coverages (after kicks and/or punts) is crucial to ensuring the Huskies are contained before reaching the red zone. In general, covering kicks and punts will be the key to getting an advantage against Washington, but it all comes down to the defense to stop the Huskies from making too much progress down the field.

DS: Despite Washington’s red zone success, it does not have a particularly explosive offense. While the Huskies have had no problems with converting in the red zone, they have struggled to make it there.

After all, this is the team that only managed a single touchdown in their season opener against an FCS team, the Montana Grizzlies. Nevertheless, Stanford will have to attempt to limit the Washington’s run game, particularly senior running back Sean McGrew, who has six touchdowns on the season. McGrew is not the most efficient runner, averaging 3.7 yards per carry, but the

PIZZA Continued from page 8 trast to the crispiness of the bottom crust. There is nice leopard-spotting on the cheese, which is good, solid pizza cheese. The pie has a very sweet sauce, but not in a distracting way. No dine-in is available at this lo-

WILLIAM MENG/The Stanford Daily

Graduate student driver Tyler Abramson (above) led the Cardinal in goals against both No. 3 USC and No.14 UC Irvine, helping Stanford rebound from a 15-11 loss to the Trojans to defeat the Anteaters in a 17-7 result.

BOB DREBIN/isiphotos.com

Junior RB Nathaniel Peat (8, above) is averaging 5.6 yards per carry this season and has recorded two touchdowns. Peat could be instrumental in reviving Stanford’s run game against Washington and helping the Cardinal secure their first win since an upset victory over Oregon on Oct. 2.

cation, which neighbors a gas station.

Sticker prices promoted on the website can be quite high, but coupons and other deals can be easily found online to reduce the price.

Rating: 6.5/10 Price: $18.35 for two medium pizzas, with a 2-for-1 deal on the website Chuck E. Cheese This national chain, “where a kid can be a kid,” has an outpost on

El Camino Real in Redwood City.

While the pizza at this kid’s birthday party locale is much maligned by online critics who claim the restaurant recycles uneaten pizza from table to table, the pie they made was good. The sauce is gently seasoned with Italian herbs and is just a tad bit sweet, and the puree of the tomato blend is smooth. The pizza is exactly the kind of pizza I would want to eat on

a lazy Sunday while watching football or attending a five-year-old’s birthday party. The dough of the pizza is moderately crunchy and under-aerated, while the edge of the crust is dusted in too much bottled parmesan cheese. A warning, perhaps: the pie has slices of drastically different slices. Still, this is a solid pie. But let’s be real: you’re not going to Chuck E. Cheese just for the pizza. You’re

going for the experience of taking a picture with an animatronic rat, dancing the “Cha-Cha Slide” while waiting for your pizza and trying to get lucky at the arcade.

The pizza is nothing to write home about, but experiencing Chuck E. Cheese is something that all people should do.

Rating: 6/10 for the pizza (the whole experience is a 7/10) Price: $20.99 for a large pizza