The Stanford Daily Vol. 260 Issue 1 (09.24.21)

SPORTS/9

OPINIONS/4

MAGAZINE

HOMEWARD BOUND

VOL. 260 INTRO

ISSUE 1

Football to take on No. 24 UCLA on Saturday, but short several starters.

Scan the QR code to the right to access our digital magazine.

The executive team shares their priorities for the current volume.

The Stanford Daily An Independent Publication

FRIDAY September 24, 2021

Volume 260 Issue 1

www.stanforddaily.com

“Stanford Protects Rapists”

CRYSTAL CHEN/The Stanford Daily

More than 150 students protested at Frost Amphitheater. Protesters presented a banner with “Stanford Protects Racists” in red paint to the student and parent seating sections.

Advocates protest drug and alcohol policy at sophomore convocation

By KAUSHIKEE NAYUDU DESK EDITOR

By KATHRYN ZHENG BEAT REPORTER

More than 150 sophomores protested Stanford’s new drug and alcohol policy and what advocates described as the University’s failure to protect survivors of sexual violence in a demonstration led by Sexual Violence Free Stanford (SV

Free) at Sophomore Convocation in Frost Amphitheatre on Sunday.

Protestors raised a banner with the words “Stanford Protects Rapists” in red paint and handed out flyers articulating a range of concerns about the University’s inadequate response to sexual violence. Concerns in the flyer included disciplinary measures in the original version of the new drug and alcohol policy that advocates feared

would disincentivize survivors from reporting incidents of sexual violence. They stood silently with the banner in front of the student section before moving to present it to parents.

Students joined the protestors throughout the demonstration, which lasted the entirety of convocation. Other students remained in their seats but expressed their support for the protest with applause.

Sofia Scarlat ’24, co-chair of SV Free and co-director of the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Sexual Violence Prevention Committee, said students chose to protest the University’s positions on sexual violence at convocation “because it’s one of the only events during the year where we have admin with students and parents.”

“And we really thought that this is an issue that we need to raise

awareness about not just to students, but also to admin and parents,” she said, adding that the protestors “felt it was necessary to stand up and disrupt the ceremony in this way.”

Protestors were primarily met with a lack of response from the administrators who spoke at the event, including University Presi-

Please see PROTEST, page 5

HEALTH

UNIVERSITY

36 COVID-19 cases reported

Chaze Vinci in custody out of state

Cases come as students return in full force for fall quarter

By MATTHEW TURK DESK EDITOR

The University reported 36 total new COVID-19 cases on campus, including 22 student cases, during the week of Sept. 13, according to its COVID-19 dashboard.

The rising cases coincide with the return of all enrolled students to campus after over a year of remote learning, though the kits take a few days to process and some of the results may not be represented in the latest metrics.

Though an increase from the week prior, the number of positives amid move-in is not as high as in previous quarters. Student cases spiked to 43 at the beginning of winter movein earlier this year, and that was when only a fraction of students had arrived.

Amid student move-in, the number of COVID-19 tests increased from roughly 5,500

to 10,500, according to the dashboard. Every student, regardless of vaccination status, received COVID-19 self-testing kits and masks as they moved into their residences for fall quarter. Per University policy, all students are required to get tested weekly or twice weekly, depending on vaccination status.

To prevent the spread of the virus, Stanford continues to adhere to Santa Clara County’s mask mandate. While California’s case rate is now the lowest in the U.S., the University continues to strongly recommend that masks be worn outdoors and masks remain required indoors. Indoor student parties are also prohibited until Oct. 8.

Approximately 95% of users indicated in Health Check they had been vaccinated, according to the dashboard measurements.

The seven-day positivity rate sits at 0.21%, compared to 1.7% for the county and 3.4% for the state.

Unvaccinated people were eight times more likely to get COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people, according to the State of Cali-

Vinci violated bail and is no longer enrolled at Stanford MHAR TENORIO/The Stanford Daily

Cases rose after all students returned to Stanford for in-person classes last week. The University has continued to follow Santa Clara County’s mask mandate.

founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Gebru announced that Google fired her on Dec. 2, 2020, after she criticized the company for blocking her from publishing her latest studies on bias in AI systems. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, in an email to employees on Dec. 9, acknowledged that “we need to accept responsibility for the fact that a prominent Black, female leader with immense tal-

Please see TECH, page 10

Please see VINCI, page 10

fornia’s observations from Aug. 29 to Sept. 4.

The University continues “to reinforce that vaccines, especially when combined with wearing a face-covering, provide strong protection against serious illness,” according to the dashboard.

Some students say no to Silicon Valley DESK EDITOR

Nine years after The New Yorker magazine labeled Stanford “Get Rich U,” Silicon Valley’s allure remains powerful for many students.

The number of undergraduate majors in computer science at Stanford has nearly quadrupled since 2010, and hackathons are almost as easy to come by as fraternity parties. When Facebook, Mi-

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crosoft or Google pay over $12,000 for a table at a Stanford career fair, the return on investment is assured. Their famous brand names — not to mention their six-figure starting salaries and amenities-rich work environments — are certain to attract large crowds of talented job candidates.

But there are also students whose appreciation for the technology industry is tempered by concerns over ethics and corpo-

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rate cultures in the Valley.

Hannah Mieczkowski, a rising fifth-year Ph.D. student in communication, recently declined an offer to interview with Google for a research internship, citing the firing of artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Timnit Gebru ’08 M.S. ’10 Ph.D. ’15, which she described “as indicative of a larger pattern of unjust behavior.”

Gebru, a pioneer in the field of ethical AI, came through the Stanford pipeline, as did Google

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I Opinions/4 • Culture & Lifestyle/6 • Sports/9

MANAGING EDITOR

Chaze Vinci ’23, who authored a series of “threatening and racist social media posts,” is in custody in another state for a violation of bail conditions after a previous incident with law enforcement and is not enrolled at Stanford, according to a Friday email from Vice Provost for Student Affairs Susie Brubaker-Cole and Vice Provost for Institutional Equity, Access and Community Patrick Dunkley.

This email comes after Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne denounced Vinci’s posts in an email to students on Aug. 29. The University has since banned Vinci from entering Stanford’s campus or facilities.

“As we settle into campus for the start of fall quarter, we want you to know that our community’s safety, security and wellbeing are paramount concerns for the university,” Brubaker-Cole and Dunkley wrote.

The two acknowledged the concerns and anxiety that many community members feel about their safety on campus as a result of Vinci’s posts, writing that they “hope to provide some reassurance” by sharing an update about his case.

Vince remains in custody in the state in which he was recently arrested after violating bail conditions, according to Brubaker-

TECHNOLOGY

By MATTHEW TURK

By MALAYSIA ATWATER

@StanfordDaily

Recycle Me

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The Stanford Daily

UNIVERSITY

Alcohol policy raises concerns Title IX advocates worry the policy will harm survivors

By VICTORIA HSIEH BEAT REPORTER

By KATHRYN ZHENG BEAT REPORTER

Stanford is facing continued criticism from survivor advocates over its revised alcohol and drug policy, which they worry will chill sexual assault reporting and harm survivors.

Advocates protested the policy at Sunday’s sophomore convocation, urging administrators to ensure that those who report sexual assaults that occurred in situations involving underage drinking would not face disciplinary action. Resident Assistants (RAs) also went on strike in early September and included a revision of the new alcohol and drug policy in their demands.

The new policy, which requires the reporting of underage drinking, is a major shift from Stanford’s unofficial “open door” policy, which essentially shielded underage students from being reported for alcohol consumption if they left their doors open when drinking and informed their RAs beforehand.

The policy currently states that victims and witnesses will not face disciplinary action if they report a sexual violence incident involving underage drinking. While this section was not included in the initial policy, the University made the addition following communication with

advocates.

“The prevention of sexual violence is of utmost importance to the University, and nothing in the alcohol and other drugs policy is intended to chill victims’ willingness to seek help or report such matters,” University spokesperson Pat Harris wrote in a statement to The Daily.

Still, advocates said that the change is insufficient to protect survivors.

Co-Directors of the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Committee for Sexual Violence Kirsten Mettler ’23, Sofia Scarlat ’24 and Ari Gabriel ’23 are calling for additional revisions to the new policy. Mettler and Gabriel are also members of The Daily’s staff.

The co-directors are urging the administration to include a footnote stating that if a sexual assault victim reports an assault, any ongoing alcohol violation processes related to them will be halted and any negative consequences from completed processes be rescinded. According to the co-directors, this addition would affirm that “the University’s priority is the survivor’s safety, not shaming and punishing them for their substance use.”

Stanford law professor Michele Dauber also expressed support for the footnote, writing in a statement to The Daily that the addition would protect survivors who may have experienced consequences for alcohol or drug usage prior to reporting their assault.

“Since we know that many if not

AXELLE TALMA/The Stanford Daily

Stanford’s Title IX Office is facing criticism from survivor advocates, including ASSU co-directors for sexual violence prevention, over its alcohol and drug policy. Policy changes and negotiations are still in the works. most victims do not immediately report sexual assault, a victim might have already experienced consequences under the alcohol policy prior to reporting the assault,” Dauber wrote. “I felt such consequences should be retroactively removed from any student record.”

Mettler, Scarlat and Gabriel told The Daily that Vice Provost for Institutional Equity Access and Community Patrick Dunkley agreed to add the footnote in a Zoom meeting on Sept. 14. However, the University has not yet added the footnote and did not immediately respond to The Daily’s request for comment regarding when the footnote will be added.

Dauber also expressed additional concerns over the way in which

the new policy was created. “ In my view, many, if not most, of Stanford’s policies are a confusing hash of poorly drafted, vague, sloppy internally contradictory provisions and this is just one more example — in this case one that will harm survivors, “ Dauber wrote.

Dauber previously raised concerns about Section E(3) of the new policy, which focuses on the “Good Samaritans” clause and is partly intended to encourage community members to support their peers by seeking out medical treatment and support on their behalf. Section E(3) initially stated that “The Good Samaritan provisions of this policy do not preclude disciplinary action regarding other violations of University standards” — including sex-

ual misconduct or abuse — “but may be considered a mitigating factor in any disciplinary action.”

In an email exchange with Dunkley, Dauber wrote that in the initial policy, “a rapist or abuser could receive mitigation of consequences if they sought medical attention for their victim’s intoxication,” and requested that the language be removed. The policy was subsequently updated to reflect this concern. It now states that “no such mitigation will be available in cases involving sexual violence.”

While advocates’ efforts to include the footnote related to sexual violence are underway, Mettler, Scarlat and Gabriel said that in gen-

Please see ALCOHOL, page 10

UNIVERSITY

Scrutiny over the Fundamental Standard intensifies

By TAMMER BAGDASARIAN DESK EDITOR

Stanford’s Fundamental Standard, an internal code of conduct setting out behavioral expectations for students, has remained relatively unchanged for over a century since it was first established.

But recent controversies have put the standards to the test as to whether it can effectively govern campus conduct in an increasingly online world.

In May, Emily Wilder ’20 was fired from the Associated Press following an online hit campaign orchestrated by the Stanford College Re-

publicans for statements made in college. One month later, Stanford threatened to revoke a law student’s diploma following a Fundamental Standard complaint over a politically satirical email he had sent. And in September, students cited the Fundamental Standard in calls for Chaze Vinci, a former member of the Class

of 2023, to be expelled for racist and violent social media messages.

Some students and community members see inconsistencies in the way the Standard is applied, not to mention it’s perceived lack of application in cases of hate speech or online harassment. If Stanford is unable to find a way to consistently apply its

Fundamental Standard to online discourse in the future, students worry that unacceptable and threatening speech may go unchecked.

“Right now, there’s one standard for all of these really different types of potential misconduct,” said

Please see STANDARD, page 5

ERIN WOO/The Stanford Daily

As students and faculty reevaluate the Fundamental Standard, community members hope for meaningful change. Recent controversies have sparked worry among students that the longstanding code does not cover all forms of potential misconduct.

The Stanford Daily

Friday, September 24, 2021 N 3

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The Stanford Daily

OPINIONS VOL. 260: DIGITAL, DIVERSITY

The Stanford Daily Established 1892

Executive team: Introducing Vol. 260 e’re Kate, Jeremy and Lana, the editor-in-chief and executive editors of The Stanford Daily’s 260th volume.

We’re excited to take the lead as students return to campus in full force after one and a half years away. We’re looking forward to bringing the Stanford community timely and important journalism through our website, print edition, magazine and yearbook.

As the executive team, we hope to make progress on two fronts: improving our digital presence and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in our coverage and among our staff. These are changes that reflect lessons learned during the pandemic and ongoing shifts in the journalism landscape.

Let’s start with our digital presence. Already, in a good month, our website can draw over 400,000 visitors, a number that pales in comparison to our print readership. To that end, we’ll be cutting print production from five days to one day a week, freeing staff time and money to focus on projects for our website.

We’ve also created two new roles to further this work. Lana Tleimat ’23 will serve as the executive editor for digital, and Cameron Ehsan ’24 will be our first audience engagement editor, responsible for keeping an eye on readership metrics and developing a team of engagement reporters who are responsive to the trends and needs of the community.

Additionally, we’ve dedicated $30,000 in much-needed tech upgrades so that our digital sections — tech, photo, video, podcasting, graphics and cartoons — can produce their best work and those without the means to access such technology can take part in these sections.

We’re also making strides to improve the diversity, equity and inclusion of our newsroom. We launched the “100 People in 100 Days” listening tour over the summer, during which time we met with community members to ask how we can better serve them. A report on our findings is forthcoming. We also just wrapped up hosting our inaugural Summer Journalism Insti-

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OP-ED

tute, a two-week internship program for more than 60 incoming frosh and current students from backgrounds underrepresented in journalism. We hope to follow these initiatives during the school year with greater funding for our Opportunity Fellowship, $1,500 stipends for staffers with financial need; further development of our affinity group and mentorship opportunities; and a reexamination of newsroom policies with the potential for harm, such as the way we cover policing on campus.

Throughout this process of growth and change, we want to hear from you, whether that’s by submitting a tip, an article or even joining our team. We take everyone who applies, and the time commitment is as little or as much as you’d like it to be.

Here’s a bit more about us: Kate is an aspiring reporter from central Massachusetts, studying philosophy and political science.

Before taking on the editor-in-chief role, she led The Daily’s news section for two volumes and co-chaired the diversity, equity and inclusion team for one. She’s a member of Asian American Journalists Association and NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists.

Jeremy hails from New York City, and, before becoming the executive editor for print, was a twotime sports editor at The Daily. He majors in Human Biology with specific focuses in environmental policy and sustainable development.

Lana is from Columbus, Ohio, which is cooler than it sounds. She wrote and edited humor articles and produced satirical news videos for The Daily before becoming the inaugural executive editor of digital. She will eventually get around to studying English with a focus in creative writing, hopefully before she graduates.

We’re looking forward to the volume ahead!

KATE SELIG ’23, Editor in Chief JEREMY RUBIN ’23, Executive Editor for Print LANA TLEIMAT ’23, Executive Editor for Digital

Tridelt Team & Board

Tridelt to boycott fall ISC recruitment For those unfamiliar with ISC recruitment, it is a process of three to four days during which each Potential New Member (PNM) meets every Intersorority Council (ISC) sorority at a designated “party.” Preferences are submitted nightly by each side to determine to which chapters each PNM will be invited to return and, ultimately, to which one they will receive a bid. Each “party” consists of back-to-back conversations, some as brief as three minutes, between PNMs and active members, allowing the PNM to get to know the chapter and vice versa. These days can last up to seven to eight hours for PNMs, and even longer for active members and recruitment teams. hen we first came onto Stanford’s campus, none of us anticipated joining a sorority, much less becoming a leader in one. As we are from BIPOC and/or FLI backgrounds, venturing into predominantly white and wealthy Greek life felt like showing up at a party meant for someone else.

Leading up to that third weekend of our frosh spring, ISC recruitment dominated dorm discussions. The recruitment process itself perpetuated painful conversations, where we found communities and individuals alike fallaciously associating rush results to one’s worth.

When we joined our community Delta Delta Delta (better known as Tridelt), we found solace after recruitment. Like any college student organization, we love to have fun, from themed mixers to glittery special D’s to midnight Mario Kart tournaments. Yet what convinced us to take the helm of leadership was

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something entirely different. It was the fact that we were able to bring our whole selves into this space and be celebrated, cherished and heard — that other people in this community truly cared about our wellbeing, identities and lived experiences. But we also know that our experience in Tridelt is inextricably intertwined with privilege — and that the ISC recruitment process in and of itself gatekeeps our community from much of Stanford’s population.

Despite returning to a full campus for the first time since the pandemic began, ISC has decided to proceed with formal fall recruitment (to be held as early as week three) for incoming sophomores (Class of 2024), despite our chapter’s efforts to push for reconsideration and postponement. When it came down to a final vote, only two other chapters voted with us to postpone recruitment, and the motion to postpone did not pass.

All five other ISC sororities have decided to host formal fall recruitment, though this was not every chapter’s first choice and other chapter representatives expressed sentiments similar to our own.

In order to prioritize our values, the wellbeing of our community members, and the wellbeing of incoming sophomores with gendermarginalized identities, our Tridelt chapter has voted to boycott formal fall ISC recruitment. We will instead design and conduct our own more equitable, accessible recruitment process at the start of winter quarter.

During these ISC deliberations, we expressed concerns for the wellbeing of both our members and of sophomore PNMs, the majority of whom will be akin to on-campus

Please see TRIDELT, page 7

Executive Team Kate Selig Editor in Chief

Jeremy Rubin Executive Editor for Print

A N I N D E P E N D E N T N E W S PA P E R Malia Mendez, Kirsten Mettler Arts & Life Editors

Lana Tleimat

Cameron Ehsan

Executive Editor for Digital

Audience Engagement Editor

Board of Directors Kate Selig Eleni Aneziris Andrew Bridges Kevin Zhang Tracey Jan R.B. Brenner Emma Talley Tim Vrakas

Incorporated 1973

Managing Editors

Abeer Dahiya Cartoons Editor

Sam Catania Chief Technology Officer

Sophie Andrews Data Director

Lorenzo Del Rosario

Camryn Pak, Georgia Rosenberg, Malaysia Atwater

Podcasts Editor

Ron Rocky Coloma

News Editors

Social Media Director

Emma Talley

Savanna Stewart

Newsroom Development Director

Sports Editor

Sharon Du, Caroline Spertus

Spotlight Editor

Esha Dhawan

Opinions Editors

Andy Huynh, Crystal Chen Photo & Video Editors

Krystal Navarro, Ray Aguirre Yearbook Editors

Malaysia Atwater, Sarina Deb, Jared Klegar

Sam Catania

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Co-Chairs

Desk Editors

Business Team

Daniel Wu

Ananya Karthik

Kaushikee Nayudu

Eleni Aneziris

Digital Storytelling Director

Anuka Mohanpuhr

Kyla Figueroa

Athena Xue

Matthew Turk

Benjamin Zaidel

Mikayla Tillery

Betty He

Nadav Ziv

Cameron Ehsan

Nadia Jo

Carissa Lee

Nestor Walters

Chief Operating Officer

Terry Hess

Zora Ilunga-Reed

Distribution Manager

Editorial Board Chair

Hiram Duran Alvarez

Sarina Deb, Smiti Mittal

Production Manager

Equity Project

Ron Rocky Coloma

Jessica Lee

Cybele Zhang

Sofia Scekic

Graphics Editor

Ellie Wong

Tammer Bagdasarian

Christine Delianne

Ells Boone

Tom Quach

Grind Editor

Gavin McDonnell

Uche Ochuba

Om Jahagirdar

Jordan Lee

Humor Editor

Julia Lee

Anastasiia Malenko, Mhar Tenorio

Copy Editors

Financial Officer

Contacting The Daily: The Advertising Department, including Classifieds, can be reached at (650) 721-5803 during normal business hours.

Send tips and letters to the editor to eic@stanforddaily. com and op-eds to opinions@stanforddaily.com

Magazine Editors

Nicholas Welch Head Copy Editor

Alexa Gold Jessy Zhu

To contact our section editors, email News at news@stanforddaily.com, Opinions at opinions@stanforddaily.com, Sports at sports@stanforddaily.com, Arts & Life at arts@stanforddaily.com, Humor at humor@stanforddaily.com and The Grind at thegrind@stanforddaily.com.

From The Community

Alcohol policy misses the mark ow does alcohol intertwine with the college experience?

A January 2021 publication from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism estimated that 53% of college students had consumed alcohol in the past month, and 33% had engaged in binge drinking (five or more drinks for men in a single event, four or more for women). Those numbers mean that alcohol is a major part of college. Even for students who don’t drink themselves, it’s likely they will have friends or classmates who do.

When it comes to alcohol consumption, Stanford’s numbers are even higher, despite interventions Stanford has been implementing, including a 2016 ban on hard liquor from campus parties, asking RAs to report students for incidences of “high-risk drinking” and prohibiting hard liquor in containers larger than 750 mL. From the 2012-2020 alcohol trends report (frosh-only), 66% of frosh had consumed alcohol within the past year, and 51% within the last two weeks. And of students who had consumed alcohol within the last two weeks, 52% had engaged in binge drinking. As of this year, Stanford has undertaken the most drastic change yet: eliminating the socalled “open-door policy,” transforming RAs into mandated reporters who are required to report any incidents of underage drinking (as well as “high-risk drinking” for students over 21). For context, Stanford’s open-door policy refers to the unofficial policy that RAs are not required to report underage drinking, but students in dorms are required to give RAs information about where they’re drinking and leave their doors open while doing so, which allows RAs to keep track of students and their alcohol consumption.

Some may believe that draconian measures are the only way to curb binge drinking. Stanford’s administration certainly does. But I’m going to argue a different side: turning RAs into sources of fear and discomfort is going to cause far more longterm harm than the open-door policy ever did. Stanford’s peer schools, like Cornell University, have implemented similar policies where RAs are mandated reporters. Not only has it not curbed drinking (40.5% of Cornell students reported engaging in high-risk drinking in the past two weeks in a 2015 study), it hasn’t changed the number of students who are transported for overconsumption of alcohol.

The first question Stanford needs to ask is: What is its long-term goal? Is it to stop underage drinking altogether? Or, is it to limit the number of students who do drink underage, and ensure that of those who do, they do so as safely as possible?

If the goal is the former, Stanford is well out of luck. Around 32.8% of

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high school students in the United States already have consumed alcohol by the time they get to college, and 57.8% of that third have engaged in binge-drinking (2015 CDC report) — and all that is despite the fact that high school students have far less access to alcohol than on college campuses, as well as limited access to space with which to consume alcohol. Drinking culture is so ingrained that there is essentially no way to stop students from drinking entirely. Even completely “dry” campuses (complete bans on alcohol) still report problematic levels of drinking.

So, one would assume that Stanford’s goal is instead to (1) limit the number of students who consume alcohol underage, and (2) of those who do, ensure they do so safely.

If we focus on (1) first: Stanford has already begun doing the work needed to give students valid alternatives to drinking culture. Cardinal Nights, now a decade old, provides fun activities on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights that are alcohol-free. Examples include trips to San Francisco Giants games, screenings of movies like “Inside Out,” and dozens more events that provide great alternatives to parties. In 2015, Cardinal Nights had 26,000 attendees in over 117 events, a roaring success however you look at it. Cardinal Nights could continue to expand programming and partner with other organizations on campus to offer diverse and varied alternatives — but in terms of alternatives to drinking, Stanford’s already done the legwork.

So now we turn to (2). If, as we’ve established, around a third of freshmen will come into school having already consumed alcohol, and some percentage of students who have not will end up trying it, then the question now becomes how to ensure students drink responsibly. This area is where the truly devastating effect of Stanford’s policy becomes clear: it is going to harm students who are victims of sexual assault. At least 50% of sexual assaults on college campuses involve alcohol, and in 97% of the assaults that involve alcohol, both the perpetrator and the victim consumed alcohol. In Stanford’s own 2012-2020 Alcohol Trends Report, 8% of students who reported drinking the past two weeks experienced sexual assault. If RAs are mandated reporters under the new alcohol policy, this means that underage students may be afraid to seek help for an assault if they were drinking at the time. While Stanford has promised that victims and witnesses will not be subject to reporting, they have nevertheless taken away trust between residents and RAs: RAs are known to students as reporters, and RAs could write up victims if they were drinking at the time, even if Stanford claims they won’t. Stan-

“That’s ridiculous: RAs are just students,too.” ford’s policy can function only if it assumes the unquestionable goodness of RAs, but that’s ridiculous: RAs are just students, too.

To be fair, Stanford has maintained a “Good Samaritan” law, meaning that if a student has consumed too much alcohol, those who call 911 or emergency services will not be disciplined for consuming alcohol. Even so, Stanford explicitly states that students may still be required to undergo “educational” training — as a consequence, many students may decide to wait longer to call emergency services. And because students may no longer trust their RAs, intoxicated students will be forced to make judgment calls themselves over whether a peer has consumed too much alcohol.

I’ll end with a brief story from the fall of my freshman year. We had hosted a small dorm pregame (open door) before attending a larger allcampus party, and while most of us had limited our alcohol consumption, one of our friends had forgotten to eat. When we returned to the dorm, it was clear that they were becoming unresponsive, and we had no idea what level of responsiveness was normal. So the first thing I did was pick up my phone and call the RA, who came immediately to help us, and was able to make a sober judgment that we should call the paramedics, even though my friend seemed to be getting better. The paramedics came, gave them some water, and determined that my friend was not in need of a transport.

They then gave us advice on how to arrange our friend’s sleeping position so that they could sleep in a safe position without fear of asphyxiation. We all woke up unharmed the next morning.

Stanford might look at that story and criticize our drinking, or say it wouldn’t have been a problem if we hadn’t pregamed. They’ll tell us the way to solve it is to ban hard liquor, or ban liquor all together. But I know better. I know that having that trust between myself and my RA meant that my friend was okay. Feeling safe enough to call the paramedics, and knowing I wasn’t going to get in

Please see DRINKING, page 5

Friday, September 24, 2021 N 5

The Stanford Daily

PROTEST Continued from page 1 dent Marc Tessiger-Lavigne and Dean of Students Mona Hicks, both of whom did not directly acknowledge the protestors when speaking.

But the event’s first speaker, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Sarah Church, briefly acknowledged the protestors, saying that all voices and perspectives are welcome at Stanford, but adding that she hoped the protestors would not block parents’ views during the ceremony.

Protestors criticized the original lack of an explicit acknowledgment in the University’s new drug and alcohol policy that students who report incidents of sexual violence that involve underage drinking or drug use would not face disciplinary action. The new policy went into effect on Sept. 1 and has since faced backlash, including from Resident Assistants (RAs), who cited the policy as one of their reasons for going on strike.

The University has updated the policy and made changes that address some of the advocates’ concerns, though it is not clear when the updates took place. The policy now states that except when students are reporting sexual violence all violations of the drug and alcohol policy must be reported.

The policy’s section on sexual violence currently states that “students who report experiencing Sexual Violence” and “witnesses who aid any report of Sexual Violence will not be subject to any reporting or disciplinary action under this policy.”

Still, advocates are calling for an addition to the policy stating that “should a sexual assault victim report an assault,” any ongoing displinary action related to the victim’s drug or alcohol use will be halted and “any negative finding or consequences will be rescinded,” Scarlat said.

University spokesperson Pat Harris wrote that “the prevention of sexual violence is of utmost importance to the University, and nothing in the alcohol and other drugs policy is intended to chill victims’ willingness to seek help or report such matters,” in a statement to The Daily.

Advocates’ concerns also go beyond the drug and alcohol policy.

According to Scarlat, co-director of the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Sexual Violence Prevention Committee, the protest was spontaneously planned a few days before convocation due to time-sensitive concerns about the University’s lack of protections for survivors of sexual violence.

Stanford is entering a quarterlong “deep red zone,” when two classes of students — frosh and some sophomores — are on campus

DRINKING Continued from page 4 trouble for it, meant that professionals, not scared freshmen, looked at my friend.

The new alcohol policy means that the pregame wouldn’t have been open-door. More of us might have consumed liquor more quickly because we were afraid of getting caught. I wouldn’t have felt safe calling my RA, and I would have had to weigh getting myself in trouble

for the first time and particularly vulnerable to sexual assault, Scarlat said.

Scarlat said that while the Row is traditionally composed of upperclass students, half of students on the Row this year are sophomores.

Scarlat added that historically, the majority of sexual assaults have occurred on the Row, and advocates are concerned that the majority of Row residents are particularly vulnerable to assault given their lack of on-campus experience.

The University did not immediately respond to a request to confirm and comment on SV Free’s statistics on row housing and assaults.

Chaidie Petris ’24, who helped organize the protest, said that they hoped the protest would help inform new students about the threat of sexual violence at parties. Petris also said the protest was also motivated by the University’s failure to protect survivors in previous quarters.

The flyer distributed by protestors particularly raised concerns about the 2019-20 annual Title IX report, which found that of the 187 incidents of sexual violence, no student perpetratorsfaced expulsion during that academic year.

The flyer also pointed to the recent RA strike, which, protestors said, left RAs unprepared to handle reports of sexual violence. It stated that “many RAs are refusing to report instances of sexual assault disclosed to them,” despite being mandatory reporters under the University’s Title IX policy. “They don’t trust the administration. And, they don’t necessarily understand the purpose of mandatory reporting and that’s very dangerous,” Scarlat said of RAs. Student Collective Action Against Residential Education (SCAARE), the group that led the RA strike, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Harris did not respond to how the University is enforcing the role of RAs as mandatory reporters.

Currently, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), The Bridge, the Confidential Support Team (CST) and the Sexual Health Peer Resource Center (SHPRC) provide confidential support for survivors.

But according to Petris and other advocates, some survivors have not received follow-up information on reports they filed last year. ProtestorsUniversity “to take direct action against the people with sexual assault charges against them,” preferably through expulsion or disciplinary action rather than non-hearing resolutions, Petris said.

The Sexual Harassment/Assault Response & Education (SHARE) Title IX Office office “strives to complete the review and hearing processes as expeditiously as possible,” University spokesperson E.J. Miranda wrote in a statement to The Daily. The SHARE office at-

tempts to complete the Title IX Procedure investigation in 120 days and the SHARE Hearing Procedure in 90 days, Miranda wrote.

Miranda wrote that “many complaints do not go through the full investigation and hearing process — usually a mediation-like process that SHARE oversees,” because they “are resolved through an informal process,” “resolved through an intervention that we [the University] hold with the responding party” or “dismissed due to various circumstances.”

“Cases may be dismissed for different reasons, such as the complaining party decides not to pursue the complaint further; there may be a lack of jurisdiction; or the initial investigation shows that the matter doesn’t exceed the threshold for a policy violation,” Miranda wrote.

Ayanna Minnihan ’24 stood with the protestors during convocation.

While Minnihan was not involved with planning the protest, she said that she was motivated to join the protest because she was proud that the protestors were raising concerns around the University’s response to sexual violence and that their call “was so loud and clear.”

“I was really happy to stand with them,” Minnihan said.

Oliver Pe, the parent of a sophomore, said that he appreciated the issues raised during the protest. “As much as convocation was a shared event for all the families, we also understand that the reason we’re here anyway is for the students,” he said.

“And knowing this, being transparent about what’s happening on campus is one of the things that I think we believe is also important, for not only the families but also the students.”

Scarlat called on community members to reach out to administrators about their plans to prevent sexual violence and said that she hopes the administration will actively seek out the opinions and perspectives of student advocates.

“We really just want admin to talk to us,” Scarlat said. “We’ve reached out in a lot of different ways, but all their responses have been very inconclusive, very inconsistent, and very passive-aggressive and ignorant in general. We just want to talk to them and we don’t think that that’s a big ask.”

But Harris wrote that the administration remains committed to engaging with advocates.

“Administrators continue to engage with students who have expressed concerns about the policy, and have both exchanged emails and connected on Zoom with students this past week,” Harris wrote.

Victoria Hsieh and Lorenzo del Rosario contributed reporting.

The article has been updated to include statements from University spokespeople and another confidential resource for survivors, the Confidential Support Team.

against how drunk I thought my friend was. My RA might have been hesitant to call the paramedics. My friend might not have been checked out by a professional, who wouldn’t have given us the advice of how to position them to sleep. Everything would have been more dangerous, more fraught and more worrisome.

The difference between me and Stanford is that I look at that freshman-year story and think of it as a success — because my friend was fine. Because I trusted my RAs and the paramedics. Stanford looks at it as something to punish, perhaps without understanding that drink-

ing on college campuses is a much bigger problem than any one university could solve. Stanford’s new policy erodes trust between residents and RAs, and hasn’t even worked to curb drinking at other universities. Stanford should ask itself what it wants to prioritize: grandstanding about the dangers of underage drinking, or a genuine interest in student safety. I know which one I would choose. Does Stanford?

The author is in the class of 2022 and is being kept anonymous due to the subject matter.

STANDARD Continued from page 1 Nicholas Wallace J.D. ’21, the student whose diploma was temporarily revoked. “As a law student, I can’t help but think about how our actual legal codes work. We don’t have one law that applies to all these different types of misconduct, and there is a really important reason for that.”

In today’s digital age, community members have far more avenues for misconduct than they have in the past. Discourse that occurs off campus creates blurry boundaries between what is in Stanford’s jurisdiction and what is not. When online, it is also easier for students to hide behind aliases and student organizations that mask individual identities.

The character of online attacks is also more vicious — students have repeatedly reported doxxing, and attacks can easily spread beyond the Stanford community.

The advent of social media has “created a whole set of new forums, not restricted to the Stanford community, that facilitate behaviors inconsistent with the spirit of the Fundamental Standard but largely protected from sanction under the First Amendment,” said Tom Wasow, a linguistics professor who serves as Academic Secretary for the Faculty Senate.

Wasos have said that the changes intend to clarify and position Stanford’s goal of free exchange of ideas as central, and remove and replace outmoded language with an eye toward clarity of expectation.

“The goal that we’re really wanting to push forward is that this is a community and it’s all of us working together,” Jamie Fine, a fourth-year modern thought and literature Ph.D. student and member of the C-10, said during a Graduate Student Council meeting on June 16. “What we want to do is raise, grow, develop and educate student-citizens who are going to leave Stanford and take values with them that are going to help them and help the society they go to.”

But while the changes are still being finalized behind closed doors, preliminary signs indicate that the bulk of the changes will concern the interpretation, rather than the letter, of the Fundamental Standard. Indeed, the original charge asked the committee to only examine whether the Standard needs “interpretative refinements.”

Nicholas Wallace J.D. ’21, the student whose diploma was temporarily revoked, is looking for more. He said he hopes the University will view his situation as a wake up call that there need to be transformative changes to the community standards processes.

The University specifies that the Fundamental Standard has been “applied to a great variety of situations,” with a set of unspecified penalties that range from a formal warning to expulsion from Stanford.

On its website, Stanford clarifies what types of speech are protected by state and federal laws, and offers resources for students impacted by hateful speech.

But when Wallace started receiving “vaguely threatening” emails from the Office of Community Standards notifying him that he was under a Fundamental Standard investigation in May, just weeks before his scheduled graduation and amid final exams, he knew nothing about the potentially life-altering process he was facing.

“Before then, I had literally never heard of the Fundamental Standard, so when I got the complaint I initially thought it was an Honor Code violation,” Wallace said. “I had no idea what the Fundamental Standard was and what kind of conduct it would allow or prohibit.”

The lack of specificity within the Fundamental Standard and the minimal awareness on campus of the code itself are not the only areas of concern. To some, the trouble with the Fundamental Standard goes hand-in-hand with the fact that it is

such a top-down policy.

To prepare for his case, Wallace convened a team of Law School colleagues who specialized in First Amendment law and could back him up in discussions with the University.

For students without the same connections, however, going through the Fundamental Standard process may be even more terrifying than it was for Wallace, he said.

“I think it’s very likely that an undergrad, or someone who is not a law student in the same situation would have gone through the entire process without even realizing that the University was violating their rights,” Wallace said. “There’s just a massive imbalance in the kind of understanding and ability to navigate this process that I think could be really unfair for a lot of students.”

Faculty do not seem to be united on whether significant changes to the Fundamental Standard’s process are necessary, however. To former Stanford provost John Etchemendy, who now serves as a representative on the Faculty Senate, the Fundamental Standard effectively articulates “timeless principles,” whose applications have not materially evolved over the years. In the cases of Wilder and Wallace, Etchemendy said that the right decisions were clear, and that the University “ultimately did the right thing.”

“In the first case, my understanding is that the attack was orchestrated by an alumnus (using an SCR account) against an alumna, so neither of the parties were current students,” Etchemendy said. “In the second, the message strikes me as a transparent case of satire. The fact that it was not immediately dismissed as such simply reflects the fact that the university is a very large organization, and not all decisions are well considered.”

Other faculty members hold a different view of the state of discourse on campus. In 2018, the Faculty Senate convened a subcommittee chaired by comparative literature professor David Palumbo-Liu to consider ways to improve the campus climate without replacing or altering the Fundamental Standard. According to Palumbo-Liu, part of the solution may lie in community introspection at Stanford.

Recently, the subcommittee concluded that, “no code of conduct will be effective if it does not emanate from students themselves,” according to Palumbo-Liu. As a result, the subcommittee will recommend that the University move forward with a community-formulated code of conduct intended to be independent of the Fundamental Standard.

“We want students to be able to debate, discuss, and decide what kind of community they want, and then to articulate the values and behaviors they wish to promote,” Palumbo-Liu said. “We have already begun discussions with the President and the Provost. They agree that messaging and leadership from above is very important, but that students are the ones who have the best insights into what they would want most, and least, in a community.”

This type of community-written conduct policy may not be necessary if it wer--en’t for the shortcomings of the Fundamental Standard, however.

Despite graduating in June, Wallace has been advocating for changes to the OCS processes since his case was dismissed, proposing changes to how the University screens for protected speech, deals with bad-faith complaints and communicates the policy to students.

“I'm concerned that the lesson the University is going to draw from my situation is going to be a really narrow one around satirical emails specifically, or law students specifically, for example,” Wallace said. “I'm afraid that the University in a few months is going to make some little tweaks and say ‘look we fixed it.’ I want part of the conversation around all this to be about what actually needs to happen to solve the problems at hand.”

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The Stanford Daily

CULTURE & LIFESTYLE ARTS & LIFE

Cardinal alums vie for Emmys Sterling K. Brown ‘98 and Issa Rae ‘07 both nominated for awards

By KIRSTEN METTLER MANAGING EDITOR

S

terling K. Brown ’98 won the “Outstanding Narrator” Emmy award on Sunday for his work in the CNN documentary series “Lincoln: Divided We Stand.” The show explores Abraham Lincoln’s life and the civil war.

In a New York Times interview, Brown explained that he was inspired to join the mini series due to current American polarization.

“When people say, ‘Has the country ever been more divided than it is right now?’ it’s like, well, we were divided to the point where we actually divided,” Brown said.

Brown was also nominated for

“Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series” in honor of his portrayal of Randall Pearson in “This Is Us,” but the award instead went to Josh O’Connor of “The Crown.”

Another Stanford alum was represented at the Sunday award show: Issa Rae ’07 received two nominations — “Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series” and “Outstanding Variety Sketch Series” — for her role in “A Black Lady Sketch Show.”

Attending Stanford was undoubtedly a formative experience for both nominees. When Brown entered college, he planned on studying economics, but Harry Elam, former Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and then Theater and Performance Studies

TUAN NGUYEN/The Stanford Daily

professor, encouraged him to pursue acting. Brown also met his wife at Stanford.

In his 2016 Emmy acceptance speech, Brown thanked his “extended family at Stanford University” and “Chocolate Cardinal,” the Black student and alumni association.

Rae experienced similar breakthroughs for her entertainment career while at Stanford. In addition to writing and producing a number of theatrical productions on campus, Rae created “Dorm Diaries” — a mockumentary series, filmed in Ujamaa, about the Black experience. She majored in African and

African American studies with a minor in political science, while taking drama and creative writing courses along the way.

“Trust and believe that your Stanford community will show up for you in unexpected ways,” Rae said when speaking at the 2021 Commencement. Brown was the speaker for Stanford’s 2018 graduation ceremony.

The two alumni have quite an impressive professional history. In 2018, Brown won the Golden Globe for “Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series — Drama,” making history as the first Black man to win the award. Brown has

won three Emmys and received nine nominations. Rae is also an Emmy powerhouse, having received six nominations during her career.

Rae is known for her work as both star and executive producer on the HBO show “Insecure” and the web series “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.”

Brown is most often recognized for his performances in “This Is Us,” “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” and “Black Panther.”

“I got the best job on TV,” Brown said of his role in “This Is Us.”

ARTS & LIFE

GRIND

d.school features creativity

Hey, frosh!

The release features exercises and readings on design thinking

By KRISTEL TJANDRA

Get out of your rooms!

By VIVEK TANNA STAFF WRITER

Courtesy of Ten Speed Press.

d.school Executive Director Sarah Stein Greenberg hopes the new book, which features contributions from program faculty, will help readers develop their creative skills.

Hi! To start off on a cheesy note, my name is Vivek Tanna (he/him). I’m a rising senior from Texas, and I refuse to give you two truths and a frickin’ lie because I only speak the truth. Today I have a message for the frosh, but also for the sophomores since they’re also children this year: GET OUT OF YOUR ROOMS (to make friends and get involved in a manner compliant with COVID-19 safety protocols)!

During the last three quarters, I staffed three residences with three different staff teams. In practice, this meant breaking up prohibited gatherings and trying to magically make friends out of it. Thanks to Stanford’s last-minute housing assignments, I also relocated across campus five times in

nine months. While I’d say I did my job successfully, my sanity was hanging by a thread by the end, so I declined the staffing position I was offered for this year. Stanford wants me everywhere, but she didn’t realize I have boundaries! While I’m no longer an RA, I’ve still opted to share my “senior wisdom,” specifically by screaming it at The Stanford Daily.

You hear that pack of 15 to 20 people walking in the hall past your room? Feeling intimidated or left out? Guess what? Me, too! Over the summer in EVGR, ResEd was late to tell my team that we were staffing mostly freshmen, and then the large packs finally made sense. They barely know each other! Over the next few quarters, that group will scatter into half-hearted lunch promises and full-

Please see FROSH, page 7

STAFF WRITER

W

hat is design thinking, and how can it improve creative problem solving? Crack open d.school Executive Director Sarah Stein Greenberg’s new book for answers.

Released on Tuesday, “Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create and Lead in Unconventional Ways” is intended to share insights into the d.school’s approach to problem solving. The Stanford d.school is an interdisciplinary institute that promotes design thinking, a human-centered problemsolving strategy, to produce creative solutions.

Stein Greenberg said that she hopes “the book will be useful for really anybody who is trying to develop and build their own creative skills and use them to work on the problems and the challenges that are meaningful to them.”

“Creative Acts for Curious People” features a series of short chapters written by various authors, many of whom are faculty and instructors at the d.school. Each chapter presents a particular perspective on a design project.

Readers can also explore a curated list of assignments that have been developed over the years at the d.school. Such assignments, like coming up with an analogue for solving a problem or reflecting on a brainstorming experience, are designed to let readers channel their creative energy.

“Design is a way of responding to an opportunity or a problem where there isn’t a clear answer,” Stein Greenberg said. Creating the book in itself was an exercise in design thinking reliant on creativity, collaboration and experimentation.

“The way that we practice design at the d.school is very much about people,” Stein Greenberg said. “It’s about both the people that you are designing for and also the people you’re designing with.” She worked to highlight the importance of diverse perspectives by basing the content for the book on over 100 interviews with different people.

This robust collaboration is also exempli-

fied by the work of illustrator and University of Utah assistant professor Michael Hirshon, who matched the book’s text with colorful artwork. Hirshon developed approximately 130 illustrations for “Creative Acts for Curious People.”

“I think it’s by far the largest project I’ve ever worked on. It took about 14 or 15 months to do,” Hirshon said. Despite the magnitude of the project, the artist made sure to create playful, creative images for the book.

“Creative Acts for Curious People” may be a strong introduction to design thinking, but why should you care about this problem-solving methodology in the first place? According to Stein Greenberg, the impact of design is widespread, from healthcare to education, engineering to media.

For example, design thinking has been the blueprint for a number of d.school spinoff organizations, such as Noora Health, Substantial and Civilla.

Students at the d.school attest to the importance of design thinking. Aishwarya Venkatramani, M.S. ’21 was involved in solving the issues of glaucoma as part of the Design for Extreme Affordability course. She and her classmates partnered with the Himalayan Cataract Project to develop wearable bracelets to maintain patient health records in Ghana.

According to Venkatramani, what the d.school teaches is unique in that it is both very creative and very applied.

“The d.school really helped us with learning to communicate with people on the ground, working remotely, and preparing for interviews or questionnaires,” she said.

Stein Greenberg’s hope is that through this book, more people will be willing to work through problems using design tools.

“None of us are fully equipped to deal with the range of challenges that we’re all facing in the world today. There’s a lot of uncertainty, there’s a lot of ambiguity about what the future is going to look like,” she said. “And I think design is a way that we can prepare ourselves to be able to navigate that kind of ambiguity and tackle the kinds of challenges that we don’t even have names for right now.”

HUMOR

Op-Ed: 22 units, doing just fine

By UCHE OCHUBA DESK EDITOR

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.

Hello, my name is Sam, and I am writing to the community from my desk in Crothers to inform my fellow Cardinals and the rest of the Stanford community that I am doing just fine.

When I requested special permission in June to enroll in CS107, CHEM 33 and EE 114, they said I was crazy. But I did 15 APs and you know what I wanted after that?

More. I assure you all that I am perfectly sane and also this was completely my decision. I do not feel superior to you because I’m taking more units, and I am not being influenced by anyone. Definitely not my parents.

Well, I went to my five lectures today, and you know what? It was great. Awesome even. This is exactly what I envisioned when I thought about coming to college: soaking up that juicy, juicy info ... and nothing else ... until you’re saturated and bloated beyond recognition. I absolutely did not fall asleep, not even once, crumpling over and banging my head on my laptop perched on the foldout desk, causing half of the lecture hall to turn and look at me. I did not skip breakfast,

Pxfuel

I went to five lectures today, and you know what? It was great. I did not skip breakfast, lunch and showers for the past week. And I definitely did not cry six times. lunch and showers for the past week. And I surely did not cry six times today.

In conclusion, this has been a great experience, completely worth it and there is nothing I would change about it. If you would like to chat about how incredibly well I am doing right now, feel free to message me on GroupMe and we can grab dinner or play volleyball at Arguello at some point. Just not Friday, or Saturday, or Sunday, or Monday through Thursday. Also no afternoons.

Evenings are also not great.

Friday, September 24, 2021 N 7

The Stanford Daily

HUMOR

Vax or No: I still want you at least six feet away

By OM JAHAGIRDAR MANAGING EDITOR

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.

Over the summer, the CDC announced that the public can resume many in-person outdoor activities without wearing a mask if they are vaccinated. Many people, however, have continued to wear masks, social distance and take additional precautions due to immunocompromised individuals in their households and the increased transmissibility of the Delta variant. I suggest you also remain cautious — but mostly just because I want you to stay away from me.

You got your second dose, you felt sore and tired for a few days — and now you feel entitled to socialize. I get it. I’ve been vaccinated, too. But hearing your whiny

FROSH Continued from page 6 hearted Instagram likes. Pardon the spoiler, but we all know how this ends (taxes and death, yadda yadda)!

If you join them, you’ll find that everyone is pretending to laugh at comments that barely have the cadence of a joke. The pack’s loudest member is either amazing, annoying or has deep insecurities that everyone else will figure out before they do. Inevitably, one of them will bring up CS 106A — but spoiler alert, 95% of the class is behind on the p-set. Another member will confusedly refer to West Campus.

But, another spoiler: the very millisecond you understand how things work at Stanford geographically, it’s time to graduate.

So why not insert yourself into the conversation now?

Here’s the tea about FOMO — everyone is literally so lame, so there’s no reason to be a coward. We’re all getting lost on the way from EVGR to Wilbur, getting winded after one flight of stairs and getting locked out to the point of robbing the Facilities Emergency team of their coffee breaks (and also everyone sharts so deal with it). If you think you’re so special that your Duck Syndrome is more justified than

voice within six feet of me is going to give me a splitting headache for the next month.

Another reason that you should social distance from me is to reduce rates of potential viral transmission through aerosol particles. Although social distancing, wearing a mask and getting vaccinated seem a foolproof way to prevent any contagion, I’d prefer if you shut your mouth when you’re around me just to play it safe.

I hear you loud and clear. You swab your nose, drop off your sample and receive negative results for SARS-CoV2 every week. But until you test negative for being an insufferable buzzkill, please keep your distance.

Sure, studies have shown the risk of transmission is minimal outdoors. But until there is a study investigating whether COVID is spread through cookie-cutter Instagram bios and inside-joke captions, please don’t contact me on social media either. You know what, I’ll block you, just to be sure. You’re welcome.

everyone else’s: get over yourself! On the other side of everyone being lame, it’s okay to take your alone time when you need it — you’re not missing out on anything at all.

If you’re gay, try to meet at least one other gay person and not date or bang them. Also, grow up and make eye contact when you walk past your Tinder matches! Many will pretend not to notice you (they also shart).

I’m one of the awesome gays, but if you’re a frosh, think of me as more of a reclusive camp counselor than a friend. No matter how many friends you make, if not enough of them are gay, you might end up like me: exposing your vulnerabilities for the wider community in a three-part ethnography of Grindr, hoping that your future employers appreciate nuance.

Why do I bother, you ask?

What’s in it for me, other than an opportunistic plug for my threepart series? Nothing but the goodness of my heart, I say, as I smile through the tears of nostalgia and amusement. Also, ResX assassinated the four-class dorm, where I could have tried to help you save your sanity in person.

GET OUT OF YOUR ROOMS! Also, GET OUT OF YOUR ROOMS! Love, Vivek

OM JAHAGIRDAR/The Stanford Daily

I dont care if you’re vaccinated! Stay away!

TRIDELT Continued from page 4 frosh. Coming back to Stanford will not be easy — many of us have experienced immeasurable grief and loss since we were last on campus.

To add the weight of formal ISC recruitment to this period of adjustment and transition is something we cannot, in good faith, ask of our community members and of PNMs. Moreover, unlike many other colleges, Stanford traditionally delays Greek recruitment for students until their spring quarter on campus, allowing them time to adjust to college, form communities and make informed decisions on whether or not to rush. To bypass this waiting period and ask sophomores to rush so soon into their campus experience is incredibly disturbing. It privileges those who can easily envision themselves within a sorority — those who are white, class-privileged, cisgender and/or who have family that went to U.S. colleges or participated in Greek life themselves — and disadvantages those who cannot.

Please, do not be mistaken: we love our community and the people within it. But in the name of honesty, the truth is that formal recruitment inflames the ugliest parts of ISC — and Stanford as an institution overall. It forces those

of us who have been marginalized in systems such as predominantly white Greek life to struggle headon with the internalized racism, elitism and classism that we work to unlearn our entire lives. It is a taxing process that is nearly impossible to undergo without robust support systems, communities and a strong sense of who you are, what you believe in and what you hold close to you.

To incoming sophomores of gender-marginalized identities: know that you should not have to feel pressured to participate in ISC formal recruitment this fall.

No sorority gets to define who you are. You do. For many of you, this will be your first full experience of Stanford — so we urge you to go forth and explore all that it is, and all that you are, without Greek life first. Build communities and forge relationships within your residences, clubs, service organizations, cultural groups, academic classes and everywhere you go.

Learn what you love about this place — but also what makes you angry with it. Recognize and challenge the injustices woven into the fabric of this institution, stand in solidarity with one another and work to reform systems in hopes of leaving it better for the next generation of students. And when you are ready, make the decision for yourself — not just based on what everyone else is doing — on whether you want to join a Greek organization, whether it is ours or another. Our community is always

open to all looking for a home at Stanford, regardless of formal membership, and we cannot wait to meet all of you.

To everyone returning this fall: we ask that you be kind to yourself and to each other. Remember everything we have learned from the past year and a half during our time apart: that it is worth the repercussions of standing up rather than staying silent, and that empathy is everything.

Sincerely, The Tridelt Recruitment Team and Executive Board Sarah Lee ’23, Collegiate Chapter President Brentley Sandlin ’22, Co-Vice President of Membership Experience Sabrina Raouf ’22, Co-Vice President of Membership Experience Lauryn Johnson ’23, Vice President of Operations Emily Elliott ’22, Vice President of Chapter Programming and Development Ruth Ling ’22, Vice President of Community Relations Annie Nguyen ’23, Director of Member Selection Isabella de Vlieger ’23, Director of Recruitment Events Chloe Chow ’23, Director of Public Relations and Marketing Follow us on Instagram at @stanfordtridelta. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions about our community, recruitment, and upcoming events. You can reach us at sarlee@stanford.edu, bsandlin@stanford.edu, and raoufs@stanford.edu

ENVIRONMENT

Lab recycles sewage Water recycling tech could combat ongoing drought

By EVAN PENG SENIOR STAFF WRITER

As the American West faces unprecedented drought, one promising solution is the expansion of water recycling programs and technology. Stanford’s William and Cloy Codiga Resource Recovery Center (CR2C) has been buoyed by the demand for solutions, and continues to expand as it carries out its mission of researching water and energy resource recovery and recycling.

In recent years, water systems in the American West have come under more and more strain, culminating in the today ’s severe drought. Water resources are scarce in the West, and yet the population continues to grow, leading to an urgent search for sustainable solutions.

“The fact that we are back in a drought a couple of years after we were in a severe drought — it is problematic, and it’s a real issue,” Newsha Ajami, director of Urban Water Policy at Stanford’s Water in the West program, said. “It is a really problematic issue, especially because we are experiencing drier and hotter droughts than we used to.”

But because of the history of drought, most jurisdictions in California have addressed “the lowest hanging fruit” in terms of water conservation, CR2C Executive Director Sebastien Tilmans M.S. ’10 Ph.D. ’15 said. So the solution is not simply cutting more water use, as

ANDY HUYNH/The Stanford Daily

The William and Cloy Codiga Resource Recovery Center is a collection of walkways, colored pipes, tanks and meters on Stanford’s campus. The work done at the center could help alleviate the strain on the American West’s water systems. much of the current water demand is fairly rigid; instead, water recycling, Tilmans said, is critical for a sustainable water system in the long-run.

But funding and regulations are lagging. Many current water recycling systems in California, including many which were built around the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, are nearing or exceeding the end of their life cycles. More importantly, they use technology that

consumes a significant amount of electricity to run. And this shortcoming is where CR2C’s research initiatives come in.

CR2C is an active research facility on Stanford’s campus, tucked away behind a police station and a bank. It consists of an unassuming collection of walkways, colored pipes, tanks and meters all shielded from the elements by a metal canopy. The tanks and pipes allow for active experimentation on real

wastewater that is siphoned from Stanford’s wastewater output.

Any resulting material from the experiments is then inserted back into Stanford’s regular wastewater stream, which flows to Palo Alto’s wastewater treatment plant to be treated as normal sewage. Although everything CR2C currently produces in its tanks is strictly for research purposes, its eventual goal would be for treated wastewater to be reintroduced into the drinking

water system.

The research conducted at CR2C varies, but the shining star of the program is a project testing new anaerobic biological wastewater treatment methods. Currently, such biological treatment is commonly aerobic, done using types of bacteria that require oxygen to be pumped in constantly. This process uses a massive amount of energy

Please see WATER, page 8

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The Stanford Daily

UNIVERSITY

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ trial begins

By NICOLE CORSO CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The highly anticipated trial of Stanford drop-out Elizabeth Holmes, a “case about fraud, about lying and cheating to get money,” according to federal prosecutors, began with opening arguments in a San Jose federal courtroom on

Wednesday morning. Holmes is charged with an alleged scheme to defraud investors and patients of Theranos, her former biotechnology company.

Theranos, a now-defunct healthcare technology start-up, aimed to revolutionize blood testing by making it cost-effective and accessible, allowing patients to use a single

drop of blood to conduct a host of tests ranging from basic assays to advanced genetic testing.

The prosecution, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Leach, aimed to convince the jury that Holmes knowingly intended to mislead investors and patients about the accuracy and efficiency of Theranos’ technology for personal finan-

NICOLE CORSO/The Stanford Daily

The proceedings are taking place in a federal courthouse in San Jose, Calif. Federal prosecutors allege that Holmes engaged in a multi-million-dollar scheme to defraud investors, doctors and patients.

WATER Continued from page 7 and produces undesirable byproducts, including carbon dioxide.

Anaerobic treatment, which does not require oxygen, is typically viewed as being too slow for commercial, large-scale use. But the anaerobic system CR2C is testing, called the Staged Anaerobic Fluidized Membrane Bioreactor (SAFMBR), not only requires no oxygen pumping, but it even produces methane, which can then be used to produce energy.

According to Tilmans, in contrast to today’s common electricityguzzling treatment plants, the modeled energy output from burning the produced methane in a SAFMBR facility is greater than the energy that is needed to run the system at full scale.

“You could see a future in which these treatment plants could be converted into green power plants,” Tilmans said. “So not only are you producing clean water, but you’re also producing renewable energy.”

As an extension of the SAFMBR testing, CR2C recently partnered with Silicon Valley Clean Water, a wastewater treatment group in the Bay Area, to build a secondary test treatment site in Redwood City. This second site is essentially a larger version of the one on Stanford’s campus, built to run further experiments at a larger scale.

That Redwood City system came online earlier this year, and the SAF-MBR has had promising results. Running at full capacity since last month, resulting water quality has hit target level.

Right now, the wastewater is recovered only to a point where it is safe to release into the environment. The next phase in research is to test technologies that CR2C hopes will be able to bring the wastewater all the way to drinkingquality.

The current drought in the West is uniquely accelerating the ur-

gency of the type of work CR2C is doing. Though drought is a common occurrence in the region, this time around traditional water reserves such as snowpack, groundwater basins and reservoirs did not have a chance to recover between droughts as they normally do, according to Ajami of the Water in the West program.

“Because we were in a drought, got out and then a couple years later we’re back in it again, our system hasn’t recovered fully,” Ajami said.

“It’s definitely testing the resiliency of our environment, our system as a whole.”

Testing that resiliency is where wastewater recovery comes in, and CR2C is hoping to show its potential. “We’re trying to sort of transform people’s perspectives on wastewater away from it being a hazardous waste that needs to be mitigated toward thinking of it as an ore that needs to be purified,” Tilmans said.

“I view water recycling as critical to our strategy in California, and I think it’s not a question of if we’re going to recycle the water, but when and how,” he added.

The University, too, is not immune to the drought, and is thinking critically about these questions of water conservation and management — especially as the University has plans to expand. Water use has decreased from 2.5 million gallons per day in 2000 to 1.5 million gallons per day now, thanks in part to newer buildings being built with toilets that use gray water (wastewater from sources other than toilets, such as sinks and washing machines) and adjustments in irrigation.

But like Tilmans said of municipalities across California, “the ‘easy’ savings have been achieved,” as Tom Zigterman, the senior director of Water Resources and Civil Infrastructure at Stanford, wrote in an email. “But we can do even more,” he added, listing plans ranging from stormwater capture to using non-potable lake water for irrigation as paths the University is pursuing to further mitigate drought conditions.

Tilmans and CR2C hope they can make it onto that list; there have been discussions with the University about a partnership to construct a full-scale water recycling facility on campus. But so far, the University has not made any commitments.

Tilmans is hopeful that Stanford will make the leap eventually.

“In today’s world, it’s kind of necessary — it’s the prudent thing to do,” he said of implementing robust water recycling programs.

“We think that this is without question the right way to go, and would basically allow Stanford to continue to lead on questions of sustainability by demonstrating a path forward.”

cial gain.

“Out of money and out of options, Ms. Holmes decided to mislead,” Leach said.

While Holmes told investors and patients that Theranos’ technology was fully functional and capable of running more than 1,000 blood tests, in reality, the device was not fully functional and Theranos only ran a total of 12 assays in its clinical lab, according to the prosecution.

Holmes has pleaded not guilty.

Only one of the case’s 12 jurors needs to side with Holmes in order to render a not-guilty verdict. If convicted, Holmes faces up to 20 years in federal prison.

Holmes founded Theranos at age 19 after dropping out of Stanford at the end of her first year. The alleged conspiracy not only led Holmes to make billions in personal revenue, but also served as an outlet for her rise to fame, with Holmes most notably being featured on the cover of Fortune magazine, which at the time hailed her as “the next Bill Gates” and “one of the most powerful women in business.”

The prosecution procedurally laid out ways in which Holmes misled Theranos patients and investors, including Walgreens and Safeway, both companies with which Theranos had established partnerships.

They alleged that Holmes used her presence in the media and the connections she had claimed to maintain with both U.S. military personnel and powerful pharmaceutical companies to illustrate the company’s promise and success.

The prosecution alleged that Holmes induced journalist Joseph Rago of the Wall Street Journal to falsely endorse Theranos’ technology and collaborated with him on his piece about Theranos prior to its publication. According to the prosecution, Holmes also presented forged reports from pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer claiming that Theranos technology had “superior performance” and “robust functionality.”

But the defense, led by Lance Wade, an attorney for Holmes, argued that Holmes’ desire to solicit media coverage of Theranos was not an indication of her “vanity project,” but rather intended to propel the company’s growth.

Holmes’ defense urged jurors to view her with a sense of realness and humanity — not as a “villain,” but rather as a “living, breathing, human being who tried her best and failed.” Further, the defense asserted that Theranos failed not due to a fraudulent scheme, but rather because a young CEO confronted obstacles that she “naively underestimated.” And, they said, Holmes was not defrauding Theranos investors.

“If she wanted their money, why not cash in?” Wade said. “She never did. She passed on every opportunity.”

The defense said that Holmes was aware she lacked the experience and skills needed to create the innovative technology that the company promised, so she surrounded herself with experienced individuals, including former Theranos executive Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani, with whom Holmes had a romantic relationship.

Balwani will be tried separately for the same offenses as Holmes. He, too, has pleaded not guilty.

The defense then outlined the difference between the investor and the patient, despite the prosecution suggesting that the two were equally misled by Holmes. Theranos’ investors, who included high-profile individuals like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, were sophisticated billionaires with expertise, the defense said. They signed a “speculative investment,” and were aware of the difficulties that a startup faces when up against regulatory bodies like the FDA. According to the defense, Theranos investors acknowledged that the potential financial gain outweighed the risks.

The defense also sought to contextualize the allegations against Holmes, citing inaccurate test results as something that all laboratories aim to avoid but that are nonetheless generated daily. While poor lab operations were one of Theranos’ biggest mistakes, the defense argued that Holmes had every reason to believe the laboratory tests were accurate and reliable because as CEO she was not directing patient testing, nor did she have the expertise to. Under state and federal regulations, it is the lab director who manages quality control and validation tests, all of which at Theranos were documented on signed validation reports by Balwani and other qualified staff, according to the defense.

Jurors with notebooks were encouraged by the defense to tally each of the prosecution’s witnesses next to the number 8 million. According to the defense, 8 million test results were generated by Theranos. The defense’s 20 witnesses — all of whom allegedly received false lab results from Theranos — represent an error rate of 0.00025%. The defense pressed jurors to ask themselves whether such data represents meaningful evidence of fraud.

The defense concluded by telling the jury that Holmes remains “steadfast” in her beliefs, saying that she “didn’t commit crimes, but committed her life to a mission.”

Friday, September 24, 2021 N 9

The Stanford Daily

SPORTS RETURN TO THE FARM CARDINAL FACE NO. 24 UCLA IN FIRST HOME GAME OF 2021

By DANIEL WU SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Stanford’s unthinkable sevengame streak of games away from home finally comes to an end on Saturday. Since COVID-19 restrictions kicked the team out of Santa Clara county in November 2020, the Cardinal have lived on the road, practiced in public parks and, to start this season, crossed timezones twice.

“It’s been a long time,” head coach David Shaw said after Stanford’s win last week in Nashville.

“We’ll have to give the guys a map to the game day locker room. They haven’t been there in so long.”

It’s been an odyssey for the Cardinal. Fittingly, they face the toughest test of their journey on their return home. Stanford (2-1, 1-0 Pac12) hosts No. 24 UCLA (2-1, 0-0 Pac12) at Stanford Stadium on Saturday afternoon in a showdown that will reveal much about the Cardinal’s ability to contend with the top of the Pac-12.

The Cardinal have momentum on their side after comfortable wins against USC and Vanderbilt, but the Bruins are among the frontrunners in a competitive Pac-12 South division. They were one play away from beating Stanford in double overtime last season and, this year, appear to be a class above the competition Stanford has faced so far.

Shaw certainly thinks so.

“In general, [UCLA head coach] Chip Kelly teams are just dangerous, right?” Shaw said on Tuesday.

“He has the one thing that I hate a Chip Kelly team to ever have, and that’s an athletic quarterback.”

UCLA senior quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson runs an offense that, on paper, should be a

BOB DREBIN / isiphotos.com

Sophomore running back Casey Filkens (above) is one of several Stanford players unavailable for the team’s matchup against UCLA on Saturday. The game will be the first at home since students returned to campus.

Stanford-killer. Thompson-Robinson is a threat as both a runner and a passer, with a rocket arm that can stretch the field for a talented group of pass-catchers including star tight end Greg Dulcich. He’s also an extra runner to account for in a high-powered rushing attack led by Michigan transfer running back Zach Char-

bonnet. The Bruins rode their explosive offense to a program-defining win against then-No.16 LSU two weeks ago.

Thompson-Robinson and company will be a brutal matchup for a Stanford defense that looked porous against the run just last week against Vanderbilt. Containing mo-

bile quarterbacks has been Stanford’s Achilles heel for several seasons. In each of its last three losses, the Stanford defense gave up rushing touchdowns to a quarterback — two against Kansas State in the season opener and three in total against Oregon and Colorado last year. Fans need no reminder that

Cal quarterback Chase Garbers’ scramble into the endzone ended the Cardinal’s nine year grip on the Axe in 2019.

In their last two games, Stanford has shown the firepower to keep up with UCLA’s offense. The Cardinal secondary has picked off a pass in each game this season and could punish Thompson-Robinson’s sometimes inconsistent accuracy. But the Cardinal have lost playmakers on both sides of the ball. Shaw ruled out a slew of impact players for the UCLA game on Tuesday, including starters junior running back Austin Jones, sophomore running backs Casey Filkins and EJ Smith and fifth year safety Noah Williams.

Stanford Athletics declined to answer if any players’ absences were due to COVID-19 protocols.

With three of the Cardinal’s top four RBs sidelined, Stanford needs another strong performance from sophomore quarterback Tanner McKee. He won’t have to look far for inspiration. Last week, Fresno State quarterback Jake Haener threw for 455 yards against the Bruins secondary in a shocking upset win, including a 75-yard touchdown drive in the final minute of the game while hobbled by injury. McKee, on the flight back from Nashville, was watching.

“It was crazy,” McKee said. “[Haener]’s a fighter, he’s gritty.

We’re going to need all of that to beat UCLA on Saturday.”

They’ll need the crowd, too.

Stanford’s last game with fans in attendance was a blowout loss in the rain to No. 12 Notre Dame in November 2019. The game before that, Cal fans stormed Stanford’s field after retaking the Axe.

Please see FOOTBALL, page 10

WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL

CARDINAL CAPITALIZES IN CONFERENCE OPENER Stanford goes 3-1 against Cal at home

By GAVIN MCDONELL DESK EDITOR

No. 14 Stanford women’s volleyball (6-3, 1-0 Pac-12) hosted Cal (7-5, 0-1 Pac-12) on Wednesday night in its Pac-12 opener at Maples Pavilion. After dropping a close first set, the Cardinal bounced back to defeat the Golden Bears 3-1.

The first set was neck-andneck until the finish. The two teams were level at 11, 14 and 23 before a kill by redshirt sophomore outside hitter Caitie Baird gave Stanford a 24-23 lead. On Stanford’s ensuing set point, Cal

responded with a kill to even the score. Two points later, the Bears eked out a 26-24 victory.

Overall, Cal outperformed Stanford offensively in the first set. The Bears hit .395, compared to the Cardinal’s .270 hitting percentage. However, the first game was the high point for Cal’s offense; the Bears hit below .200 for the remainder of the match, including registering a dismal .094 performance in the fourth set.

In contrast, Stanford’s offense improved throughout the match.

Junior opposite Kendall Kipp and freshman outside hitter Sami Francis capitalized on their size advantage and dominated Cal on the front line.

In the second set, Francis was

Please see BEARS, page 10

BOB DREBIN / isiphotos.com

Missing a number of key players, Stanford football will face UCLA on the Farm on Saturday. Whether or not the Cardinal can earn their third straight win amidst the vaguely-explained absences is yet to be determined.

FOOTBALL

STARTERS OUT FOR BOUT WITH BRUINS Cardinal lacking key veterans

By DANIEL WU SENIOR STAFF WRITER

BRANDON VALLANCE / isiphotos.com

Freshman outside hitter Sami Francis (above) recorded a career-high 19 kills on Wednesday against Cal. Stanford earned the 3-1 victory.

When football finally returns to Stanford Stadium on Saturday, the team will have to defend their home field shorthanded.

Junior running back Austin Jones, sophomore running backs Casey Filkins and EJ Smith and fifth year safety Noah Williams have been ruled out for Saturday’s game against No. 24 UCLA (2-1, 0-0 Pac-12), head coach David Shaw announced on Tuesday.

Smith will be out at least two or three weeks, Shaw said. Jones and Filkins “hopefully” will be back in time for next week’s showdown against No.3 Oregon.

Additionally, fifth-year tight end/defensive end Tucker Fisk is questionable, while cornerbacks

senior Ethan Bonner and junior Zahran Manley are doubtful. Fisk and Manley appear on this week’s depth chart, while Bonner and, strangely, sophomore tight end Benjamin Yurosek are absent.

The Cardinal has dealt with injuries all season. But it’s unclear what sidelined the players ruled out early this week — two starters in Jones and Williams and almost the entire depth of a once-loaded running back room. Smith limped off the field late in the fourth quarter of last Saturday’s game against Vanderbilt. He seemingly injured his leg after landing hard on a leap into the endzone for his first career touchdown. Jones, Filkins and Williams appeared to finish the game.

Stanford Athletics spokesperson Scott Swegan declined to answer The Daily’s inquiry if any players’ unavailability was due to COVID-19 protocols and what percentage of Stanford’s roster is fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Around 85% of Stanford’s roster

was fully vaccinated as of August, according to the vaccination rates of Pac-12 football teams gathered by the Mercury News. Shaw also confirmed that number in a press conference. The percentage is among the lowest vaccination rates in Pac12 football.

Last year, Stanford played its entire season without recording a positive COVID-19 test (save for three positives in the first week found to be testing errors) despite playing and practicing entirely on the road for the latter half of the season.

Few teams could comfortably survive the absence of three of their top four running backs. But the Cardinal will have a more than adequate starter for UCLA in junior Nathaniel Peat, who leads the team in rushing yards. Behind him, though, the position is suddenly razor-thin. Sophomore Caleb Robinson will back up Peat in his first career appearance.

Please see LINEUP, page 10

10 N Friday, September 24, 2021

The Stanford Daily

TEN STRAIGHT MEN’S WATER POLO BESTS LONG BEACH

BEARS Continued from page 9 nearly unstoppable. She recorded seven kills and was an integral part of the team’s 20-9 start.

Although Cal responded with an 8-1 run, the Stanford lead proved to be insurmountable — the Cardinal cruised to a 25-20 win.

Kipp and Francis continued their offensive barrage in the third set, combining for 12 kills.

Francis connected for a kill off an assist from freshman setter Kami Miner, making the score 21-20.

Two points later, sophomore defensive specialist Alex Lougeay placed her serve perfectly for an ace. Then, a pair of kills by Baird and Kipp clinched a 25-22 third set victory for the Cardinal.

Unfortunately for Cal, the fourth set was less of a contest than the previous two. Stanford opened on a 10-5 run and never looked back, ultimately winning 25-14. On match point, Baird connected for a

FOOTBALL Continued from page 9

SCOTT GOULD / isiphotos.com

Junior 2M Beck Jurasius (above) has been integral to the success of Stanford men’s water polo this season.

Four goals from Jurasius helped the No. 3 Cardinal topple No. 6 Long Beach State in overtime Wednseday.

By JORDAN JOHN LEE DESK EDITOR

Riding a nine-match win streak, No. 3 Stanford men’s water polo was tested on Wednesday by its highest-ranked opponent this season in No. 6 Long Beach State. In fact, two goals by senior driver Quinn Woodhead and junior 2M Beck Jurasius in overtime were needed to seal the Cardinal’s 10th straight victory of the season.

Jurasius led all Cardinal with four goals with Woodhead and sophomore 2M Ike Love just behind with three goals apiece.

After being down 2-1 in the first

LINEUP Continued from page 9 Sophomore wide receiver Bryce Farrell will fill in for both Peat and Filkins on special teams, where the duo has excelled so far this year returning kickoffs and punts, respec-

TECH Continued from page 1 ent left Google unhappily,” and promised to review the circumstances that led to her departure.

Like Gebru, Mieczkowski has observed the adverse effects of algorithms throughout the evolution of Silicon Valley. She referenced public backlash surrounding Twitter’s recently discarded image cropping algorithm, which would crop photos with a white person and multiple Black people in a way that, nine times out of 10, would only show the white person in the image preview, according to Mieczkowski.

She added that there were repeated instances in which Twitter would crop women’s chests without user input. After immense criticism, Twitter removed the automatic cropping feature.

But what Mieczkowski called the “most invigorating aspect of change in Silicon Valley, and across the country,” are attempts of labor organizing inside technology companies. She cited the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) — named for the parent company of Google — as a rare creation in an industry historically resistant to the unionization of its white-collar workforce. She described these labor unions as part of “solidarity-centered” change in the industry, which is “hopefully going to make big waves.”

Similar to Mieczkowski, Alyssa Romanos ’22 declined opportunities from Big Tech in search of an environment that more closely aligns with her belief systems. Romanos is preparing to intern as a software engineer with Gusto, a San Francisco-based startup known for its modern approach to providing payroll, benefits and human resources to small businesses. Romanos said she was drawn to Gusto because of the company’s “mission-driven” nature and commitment to “helping small businesses, especially at a time like this.”

quarter, Stanford charged ahead, scoring four straight. However, Long Beach State was able to halt the Cardinal’s momentum and close the three-goal deficit to just one at the end of the first half.

The second half seemed to be a repeat of the first half with Long Beach State forging ahead early and taking an 8-7 lead. But the Cardinal were able to recover once again with goals from Love, graduate student driver Tyler Abramson and junior 2M Andrew Churukian.

The fourth quarter was a rollercoaster for the Cardinal. With just over six minutes left, Stanford held a 13-10 advantage. However, their

lead started to dwindle rapidly, and Long Beach State eventually scored its 13th goal of the match with 16 seconds left on the clock. Stanford could not fire a game-winning goal at the end of regulation.

The Cardinal finished the overtime thriller with an efficient 0.500 shot percentage over Long Beach State’s 0.378. Sophomore goalkeeper Nolan Krutonog helped the Cardinal’s offense by saving 11 goal attempts from their opponent.

Stanford will now travel to Berkeley on Friday to face No. 17 Loyola Marymount at the MPSF Invitational. The Cardinal will look to extend their win streak to 11.

tively.

Williams’ absence continues the devastation of Stanford’s secondary. If Bonner and Manley are also unable to play on Saturday, five of the Cardinal’s top defensive backs (also including junior safety Jonathan McGill and junior cornerback Salim Turner-Muhammad, who have been injured since the season began) will be watching the

UCLA game from the sidelines.

True freshmen Jimmy Wyrick, Jaden Slocum and Mitch Leighber are among the newer players who will have to replace them.

“A couple years ago, we were really thin, and injuries like that would have been really brutal for us,” Shaw said on Tuesday. “Right now we have good depth. [We] feel good about who we have.”

An entry-level software engineer at a top Internet company can expect an annual salary of $140,000 upon graduation, often with perks such as free food in the office by Michelin-starred chefs, walking trails, massage specialists and juice bars. To Arnob Das ’22, when he recently visited Google’s Mountain View headquarters as a prospective intern, something about this all seemed too good to be true.

“They have their showers, their beds and dinners set up and everything — and you never leave,” he said. “There’s no separation between productivity and your life. I think there’s more to life than working all the time.”

Das participated in a program at Global Good, a social-impact startup accelerator backed by the Gates Foundation and Intellectual Ventures. Upon receiving capital from Beverly Hills-based firm Kairos Ventures, he co-founded Hex Labs, a startup designed to develop new database technologies for medicine, quantum computing and energy, in June 2016. Das continued the company as he entered college.

Hex Labs was successful enough to be deemed one of the top-50 emerging companies in 2019 by Inc. magazine. But even then, Das had conflicts about what he was doing.

As he continued to develop the startup, he noticed some fellow entrepreneurs “cutting a lot of corners” and making morally questionable choices. He was a junior in high school when he learned that one project he had worked on could be weaponized for railgun technology.

“So I was seeing how even philanthropic efforts are not clean,” he said.

In January, Das dissolved Hex Labs and is now working toward an individually designed major in molecular engineering, as well as a minor in feminist, gender and sexuality studies. He said that, in the process of creating Hex Labs, he learned a lot about the value systems that drive a company’s culture.

Computer science major declarations at Stanford started to rise significantly in 2007, according to

dents will get their first introduction to Stanford football on Saturday. They could bring some sorelyneeded energy to Stanford Stadium, and the Cardinal are eager to prove themselves.

“The first one, that’s going to be special. We’re excited to be playing

VINCI Continued from page 1 Cole and Dunkley. The University is in touch with the authorities about his case. They added that Vinci is not currently enrolled at Stanford.

While privacy laws limit the University’s ability to provide ongoing updates and information about Vinci, Brubaker-Cole and Dunkley emphasized that the University is paying close attention to his case and that “care and concern for each of you, as Stanford students, remains deep and fervent.” They added that their “administrative procedures resulting from the incident are proceeding.”

They also thanked the estimated 600 students who reported Vinci’s social media posts through the University’s newly updated Protected Identity Harm Reporting process — formerly known as the Acts of Intolerance protocol. The new process was developed to “provide a mechanism for hearing and addressing

kill off Miner’s 60th assist of the night.

In the end, Kipp led all players with 21 kills on a .441 hitting percentage. Baird notched 17 kills of her own, while senior middle blocker Holly Campbell had six.

Defensively, redshirt sophomore middle blocker McKenna Vicini had a game-high five blocks and sophomore libero Elena Oglivie recorded a team-high 15 digs.

On a night of several strong individual efforts, Francis’ performance stood out. The 6-foot-6 freshman came off the bench for a career-best 19 kills.

Francis seemed to thrive in the spotlight and fuel off the energy from the rowdy student section at Maples Pavilion.

“I love hearing a really cheerful crowd,” Francis said. “That definitely helped with not just my own energy, but also the rest of the team.”

Stanford women’s volleyball will look to continue its winning ways at home, as it takes on No. 19 UCLA (81, 1-0 Pac-12) on Sunday. First serve is scheduled for 2 p.m. PT. in front of our fans,” sixth year outside linebacker Jordan Fox said.

“It’s our house. You gotta protect our house at all costs.”

Stanford’s first home game will kick off at 3 p.m. PT. The game will be broadcast on Pac-12 Networks.

Per Stanford Athletics’ new attendance policies, 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.

bias incidents that adversely and unfairly target an individual or group based on protected characteristics,” they wrote. Student Affairs reached out to everyone who requested to be contacted as part of the process and to the individual students threatened, according to Brubaker-Cole and Dunkley.

“Our Office of General Counsel, Threat Assessment Team, Department of Public Safety, Division of Student Affairs and other university offices continue to be engaged in this matter to provide for the protection of our community,” they wrote.

ALCOHOL Continued from page 2 eral, the new policy wrongly punishes and shames substance abuse.

“We urge the university to reconsider this policy in its entirety and to listen to input of survivors, RAs and mental health professionals in these discussions,” they said.

JORDY RATSIRARSON/The Stanford Daily

While a number of students are interested in maintaining Stranford’s status as an innovatino hub, some are also becoming increasingly focused on diversity, inclusion and creating more technology with ethics and the public interest in mind. an April report from the Tech History Project. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of conferred bachelor’s degrees in the department swelled from 86 (5% of the senior class) to 307 (17%). The number of conferred master’s degrees in computer science doubled, and the number of doctorates increased slightly. Among types of classes, those related to data science and interdisciplinary technology saw the greatest growth in popularity.

In the 250-page Tech History Project report, a team of students led by Nik Marda ’21 and Julia Ingram ’21 (also former editor-inchief of The Daily) narrates the good, the bad and the ugly of Stanford’s role in technology and public policy over the past decade. The report includes several recommendations to the leaders of tomorrow.

They are centered around maintaining Stanford’s status as an innovation hub, increasing diversity and inclusion, and creating more technology with ethics and the public interest in mind.

Marda came into college thinking he would get a degree in CS, maybe explore some politics and then pursue a career in Silicon Valley — “the classic Stanford path,” as he put it. Then came the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal of 2018. Marda said that he remembers watching Mark Zuckerberg testify before Congress. “It was also very clear from that hearing that we have a lot of work to do, not just to properly regulate technology, but to have the right conversations around it in the halls of Congress and in civil society,” he said.

Marda’s interests eventually started to crystallize at the intersection of technology and government. In the middle of his pivot, he encountered Constanza Hasselmann ’21, the founder of the Public Interest Technology (PIT) Lab, a student organization centered around public-interest technology at Stanford. The next year, he joined her in co-leading the organization.

“The number of students I see that are interested in, for example, technology policies, at least empirically, is much larger now than I thought it was in 2017 or 2018,” Marda said. “And I think now there’s a lot more support, whether it’s from organizations like PIT Lab, or from the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, or all sorts of organizations for students to start engaging with work.”

The popularity of Big Tech jobs is still strong, but conscientious objection is becoming more common among youth, with echoes of the past, according to Katie Creel, an Embedded EthiCS fellow at Stanford. “If you go back to the 1960s and 1970s, it was extremely common for applied mathematicians and early computer scientists to be very public and vocal about projects they wouldn’t work on,” Creel said.

Likewise, today there are more and more professionals in Silicon Valley who are thinking about their values and the big-picture impact they want to have on the world.