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The Stanford Daily FRIDAY February 21, 2020
An Independent Publication www.stanforddaily.com
Volume 257 Issue 14
‘Techlash’grazes Silicon Valley Stanford students still favor tech jobs, but consider ethics, too By JASMINE KERBER SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Stanford students tend to view large tech companies more critically today than in the past, students and professors say. Still, tech giants offer valuable job opportunities that continue to appeal to young Silicon Valley engineers. The New York Times has reported that interest in jobs at major tech companies is decreasing among today’s computer science majors. An Economist editorial coined the term “techlash” in 2013 to refer to a perceived backlash against major tech firms like Facebook, Google and Amazon.
Since 2016, concerns about data privacy and election interference have added to criticism of Silicon Valley powerhouses. “10 years ago, [students] may have looked at Facebook as, ‘Oh, it’s a social network, it’s a way to connect with friends,’” said computer science professor Mehran Sahami ’92 M.S. ’93 Ph.D. ’99. “Now they look at it with a more critical eye of, ‘Well, it can also be a platform, potentially, for the spread of disinformation or the creation of information bubbles.’” Brandon Cui ’19, who now works for Facebook, described his coworkers as “concerned internally” about ethical issues like
election interference. When he and his peers looked for jobs, however, “a lot of it came down to the opportunities a company provided,” Cui said. Cuit took a job researching artificial intelligence at Facebook partly because he’s interested in getting a Ph.D. related to the field in the future, he said. Smaller companies wouldn’t provide him with the same research opportunities as Facebook. Many Stanford students consider it a smart career choice to spend time at well-known companies. “You have that little thing that
MALIA MENDEZ/The Stanford Daily
Large tech companies still see strong interest from young engineers, including Stanford students, although job recruiting may look murkier for firms that have provoked more controversy on campus.
Please see TECHLASH, page 2
ACADEMICS
HEALTH
CS TA removed for sharing student data
Weightcontrol class to go virtual
By UJWAL SRIVASTAVA DESK EDITOR
A computer science teaching assistant (TA) was removed from the staff of CS 224N: “Natural Language Processing” after using its course enrollment list to recruit for a private company, a potential violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). FERPA, which prevents schools from disclosing students’ education records without prior consent, does have an exception regarding “directory” information, a category that includes students’ names, addresses, telephone numbers, dates and places of birth, honors and awards, and dates of attendance. Stanford’s definition of directory information, however, does not include course enrollment. University spokesperson E.J. Miranda told The Daily that Stanford is reviewing the incident. The TA, who confirmed to campus publication the Fountain Hopper that he had been removed from the
course staff, declined The Daily’s request for comment. Students in CS 224N — a natural language processing class that currently contains 531 students, according to ExploreCourses — became aware of the potential violation after receiving an email from an employee of a machine learning startup. The employee identified himself as a CS 224N TA and invited the students to apply because they were “currently enrolled in CS224N at Stanford.” In response, a student posted on Piazza, a platform used for discussions between students and instructors, that they did not consent to having their personal contact information made available to private companies, calling the incident a violation of Stanford privacy guidelines. In a Piazza comment, the instructors confirmed that the sender was a TA who had reached out to the students via his corporate email address, but they wrote that they are “most certainly not
Stanford Children’s Health to develop online curriculum By ESHA DHAWAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
EMMA TALLEY/The Stanford Daily
The teaching assistant for CS 224N: “Natural Language Processing” used its course enrollment list to recruit for a private company. Diclosing student information may have violated FERPA. selling [students’] personal information to third parties.” A follow-up note on Piazza from CS 224N professor Chris Manning, though, acknowledged that “something incorrect and improper happened here and we apologize for it.” Manning added that the TA in question is a community TA employed through SCPD and has access to student information but
“should not be using it for non-class purposes, especially commercial purposes.” In a separate Piazza thread, Manning responded to an anonymous comment alleging that the TA’s actions violated FERPA. “Agreed!” he wrote. Contact Ujwal Srivastava at ujwal@stanford.edu.
DA SILVA’S DOUBLE DIGITS MEN’S BASKETBALL ENDS LOSING STREAK
MEN’S BASKETBALL UP NEXT WASHINGTON STATE (14-13, 5-9 PAC-12) 2/23 | 5:00 PM | PULLMAN, WA COVERAGE: TV ESPNU
By SAVANNA STEWART DESK EDITOR
Stanford men’s basketball (17-9, 6-7 Pac-12) was swept at home last week by Arizona State and Arizona, but a trip to Seattle was just what the team needed to snap its fourgame losing streak. Junior forward Oscar da Silva led Stanford’s offensive efforts as the Cardinal handled the Huskies on their home court and secured a 72-64 victory. Thursday night’s contest marked just the second game since da Silva returned to competition following an undisclosed injury suffered at Colorado earlier this month. The junior was absent from the lineup for the first time this season when the Sun Devils visited the Farm and clinched a tense 74-69 win over the home team on Feb. 13. Though his homecoming to the court came against Arizona just two days later, da Silva fulfilled his familiar role as a powerhouse in the paint and added 13 points. Against the Huskies, however, he upped his contribution to 16, perfectly in line with his 15.9 points per game average. A 6-for-11 showing from the field by da Silva helped the Cardinal post a 47.3% success rate
BOB DREBIN/isiphotos.com
Please see BASKETBALL, page 2
Junior forward Oscar da Silva (above) added a team-high 16 points in Stanford’s Thursday night win over the Washington Huskies in Seattle. The victory was just the second for the Cardinal in the last nine games.
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Stanford Children’s Health is developing a new virtual curriculum intended to make its weight-control program accessible to individuals and families outside of the Stanford community. In its current form, the Pediatric Weight Control Program, developed over 20 years ago, uses behavioral interventions to address childhood obesity by helping families create balanced diet plans and focus on exercise habits. The program functions over a six-month period that involves 90-minute weekly visits by both the parent and child in a group setting and 20-minute personalized sessions with behavior coaches every six to seven weeks. The program has helped over 80% of participants reach a healthier weight — although, the program and many others like it tend to exist at academic medical centers only, which are often not widely accessible to low-income populations. “Unless you’re lucky enough to live near one of these programs, the whole rest of the country doesn’t have access to care like this,” said project leader Thomas Robinson ’83 M.D. ’88, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine. Children and teenagers from low-income populations are the most likely to be affected by obesity, studies have shown. Overall, pediatric obesity rates have tripled over the last 50 years. Driven largely by social problems, obesity has serious medical consequences, serving as a risk factor for diabetes, early heart disease and even cancer. “The current CDC estimates are that one in three of today’s young adults who were born in the first decade of the 2000s will have typetwo diabetes in their lifetime,” Robinson said. The new curriculum, funded by a five-year grant by the CDC’s Childhood Obesity Research Demonstration Project 3.0, intends to make the program deliverable by any instructor, ranging from pediatricians to employers to the YMCA. While the release of the program has not been determined, Robinson projects that the new curriculum will not be available for at least a couple years. The first two years will involve further development and the creation of materials, the third year will involve beta testing of varying prototype lessons, and the fourth and fifth years will involve implementation trials with
Please see WEIGHT, page 2
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UNIVERSITY
Center fellows join Academic Council Faculty Senate votes to grant membership, privileges By MICHAEL ESPINOSA DESK EDITOR
The Faculty Senate voted on Thursday to grant Stanford center fellows membership of the Academic Council, giving them the privileges of serving as a principal investigator — the lead researcher on a project — and serving as the principal advisor on Ph.D. dissertations. Some professors opposed the decision, citing concerns over granting center fellows additional privileges. Political science professor Judith Goldstein argued that center fellows might not have the proper interests or training to be principal thesis advisors. “Until we can figure out the guardrails between someone who was appointed one way and slips into the teaching world, I find it very difficult to support [the motion],” she said. Jeremy Weinstein, a political science professor and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, addressed Goldstein’s reser-
vations: “Our guidance tells us that the departments are in a position to make judgments about who can be a principal thesis advisor.” “If that remains in the discretion of the department,” he continued, “there’s zero risk that we would find ourselves in a position where people are the principal thesis advisor for a thesis granted in the department without the approval of the department.” Weinstein also said that granting these privileges to center fellows could help them attract better talent. “Imagine putting yourself in the position of trying to recruit excellent people having gone through a whole process that goes up to the [advisory] board, but then denying them the ability to run grants, which are central to the research that they want to do as part of a policy-focused research institute, or to engage with students,” he said. Goldstein later said that Academic Council membership is also “a tool that comes with a bundle of privileges.” “Someone who is excellent at maybe doing some kind of physics, because they have Academic
ANDREW BROADHEAD/Stanford News Service
Physics professor Patricia Burchat presents recommendations from the Committee on the Professoriate to the Faculty Senate. Stanford center fellows are now able to serve as principal investigators and principal advisors. Council membership, can serve on any one of our Academic Council committees and make decisions that have huge implications to things very far out of their domain,” she said. The motion was approved along
LOCAL
Coronavirus patient recovers County resident released from isolation upon his recovery By CAMRYN PAK DESK EDITOR
The first individual in Santa Clara County who was confirmed to have coronavirus has now fully recovered, according to a statement from the Santa Clara Public Health Department (SCPHD). The resident, an adult male, was released from isolation upon confirmation of his recovery.
“He was never sick enough to be hospitalized,” wrote SCPHD Public Health Communications Officer Marianna Moles in a statement to the media. “He isolated at home and was monitored by public health staff for the duration of his isolation.” The unnamed individual, who was revealed to have the virus on Jan. 31, is one of two people within the county who have been infected with the coronavirus. The other individual is a woman who came from Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus, on Jan. 23. “The Public Health Depart-
ment continues to work closely with healthcare providers, hospitals, and its partners to address novel coronavirus,” Moles wrote. “Currently, there is no evidence that novel coronavirus is circulating in Santa Clara County, and risk remains low.” The University continues to restrict all travel to China and encourages those who have recently returned to the U.S. from China to self-isolate for 14 days. Contact Camryn Pak at cpak23 @stanford.edu.
WEIGHT Continued from front page partner clinics and providers. While this business model is still in development, the idea is that a health educator would deliver the weight-control program in a group setting. The curriculum intends to keep the credibility that comes from hearing another family speak about their experience with weight loss intact. The program will include online materials to help educators deliver the program, and will likely incorporate certification to train educators. According to Robinson, additional education has been a huge barrier to extending weight-control programs in the past because instructors are less likely to incorporate parts of the curriculum with which they have the least experience or feel the least comfortable. Another barrier that this new curriculum seeks to address is the lack of consistency among insurance companies in covering obesity treatment for children. In its current form at Stanford Children’s Health Menlo Park location, the lack of coverage by insurance companies means that the Pediatric Weight Control Program has functioned largely through grants to serve families who need financial assistance, according to Robinson. The program’s organizers took inspiration from Silicon Valley to address these obstacles and discover how to scale a program like this one to a greater level. “When you’re developing the program, you’re thinking about
BASKETBALL Continued from front page for the night — its third-highest since Stanford suffered a shocking overtime loss to USC on Jan. 18 after leading the Trojans by 20 at the half. Complementary to da Silva’s skills on offense were his stats on the opposite side of the ball, where he posted two blocks and two steals, one of which was immediately dished to freshman Tyrell Terry who converted on a layup to add two points to his own 14-point total. It was Washington’s shooting struggles, however, that helped da Silva reel in eight defensive boards on the stats sheet and the Cardinal tally a W on its record. Only eight of the Huskies’ 30 attempts fell in the second half, while just four of their
MELISSA WEYANT/The Stanford Daily
The Pediatric Weight Control Program, developed over 20 years ago, uses behavioral interventions in order to address childhood obesity by helping families create balanced diet plans and focus on exercise habits. your children and families as your customers,” Robinson said. “Whereas if you’re thinking from a scaling perspective, your customer is the person who’s going to purchase it from or deliver it to you.” The program has been licensed by the startup Kurbo, which is using much of the program’s content in a direct-to-consumer program over apps and video calls. Kurbo was acquired by WW (previously known as Weight Watchers) and offers guidance directly to consumers through food choices that are categorized as “red,” “yellow” and “green,” measurement tracking and optional live coaching. For the online curriculum delivered by Stanford Children’s Health, though, the group format of the weight-control program will remain an integral part of how it functions. “There’s something special about the group, because you get support from the other members of the group,” Robinson said. “You’re
not just dealing with an expert or someone who has all the answers — you’re dealing with other families.” Robinson hopes that the online curriculum will be as effective as the current face-to-face program. The challenge is that a large part of the effectiveness of the program will rely on how motivated the group leader or educator is in its implementation. Granted, technology makes data collection easier than in the program’s current face-to-face form. Once the program is created, Robinson says there’s no limit to where Stanford Children’s Health wants it to go. “We’d love to have it available anywhere in the country and probably most parts of the world,” Robinson said. “At this point, English and Spanish is our goal, but there’s no reason this program couldn’t go beyond the U.S.” Contact Esha Dhawan at edhawan@stanford.edu.
A 6-for-11 showing from the field by da Silva helped the Cardinal post a 47.3% field goal percentage. 24 heaves from behind the arc followed suit throughout the entire game, a reflection of being faced with a scrappy Cardinal defense — one that donned the title of No. 7 scoring defense in the country as late as Jan. 15. Unfortunately for Stanford, the same pressure that forced the Huskies to rely on a 16-for-21 mark from the charity stripe to keep the Cardinal within reach sparked only 12 Washington turnovers; the 12 errors, however, were transformed into 20 points by a Stanford team
looking for its first win on the road since Jan. 15. A steal by Terry with five minutes left before the break was perhaps most memorable — it left the 6’2” freshman all by himself for an unchallenged dunk on the other end. A second opportunity for a road win comes on Sunday when Stanford travels to Washington State. Cardinal-versus-Cougars action tips off at 5 p.m. PT. Contact Savanna Stewart at savnstew @stanford.edu.
with measures to create two additional titles: “Assistant Professor (Teaching)” and “Advanced Lecturer.” The Faculty Senate also voted to remove academic titles that are no longer in use and received two memorial resolutions honoring
TECHLASH Continued from front page you could point to on your resume,” said Kevin Yang ’19, who majored in computer science (CS). Yang interned at Facebook one summer, but went a different route after graduation, founding a startup that makes web-automation tools. He has watched his father, who has a visual impairment, spend a lot of time on online tasks like replacing a lost credit card, and thought he could speed up the process with automation. “I’ve always felt like if I had the chance, I would love to build some tool that could help people get the most out of technology,” Yang said. The Stanford student group CS + Social Good, founded in 2015, aims to help students apply their technical skills for social impact. Sasankh Munukutla ’22, the group’s vice president, said the CS + Social Good Summer Fellowship program received a record number of applications this year. “I think students in general are starting to feel that they would like to derive more meaning from their lives through doing impactful work,” Munukutla said. He also said he thinks CS majors can make a positive difference in the world, wherever they work. “I think the most important thing for us as students is to be thoughtful about our own actions and values,” Munukutla said. “People can be agents of change in their companies.” Sahami, who is currently coteaching CS 182: “Ethics, Public Policy and Technological Change” with political science professors Rob Reich and Jeremy Weinstein, said the matter of ethics at large tech companies “is not a black-andwhite issue.” “One of the things that I tell students is that, just because a company is a big tech company and there are issues with what it does, doesn’t suddenly mean it’s a place that you shouldn’t work,” Sahami said. “If you take the stance that anyone with a strong sense of ethics shouldn’t go work for one of these big companies, then who’s left to work in those companies? People without a strong sense of ethics,” Sahami said. Like Munukutla, he said ethically minded students can become internal change-makers at their workplaces.
Donald Carpenter, professor emeritus in electrical engineering, and Luis Fajardo, professor emeritus in pathology. Contact Michael Espinosa at mesp2021@stanford.edu.
Tech recruiting at Stanford Large tech companies still see strong interest from young engineers, including Stanford students, although the future of job recruiting may look murkier for firms that have provoked more controversy on campus. “Interest in working at Google was higher than ever in 2019,” wrote Google spokesperson Katie Hutchinson in an email to The Daily. According to her, Google received 18% more job applications and 17% more internship applications in 2019 than in 2018. Palantir, a Palo Alto-based software company which has attracted criticism for providing technology to ICE, stopped tabling at the Stanford Computer Forum in 2019. The company’s head of recruiting, Bonnie McLindon ’14, attributed the move to new hiring strategies. “Between 2018 to 2019, we found we were having higher quality interactions by engaging with students in smaller groups,” McLindon said. “I would not say it has materially affected our ability to recruit top grads.” McLindon said the percentage of new Palantir recruits coming from Stanford has decreased, but she did not provide specific numbers. In November, members of the campus activist group Students for the Liberation of All People (SLAP) protested Stanford connections to Palantir, which was founded by Stanford alumni and, until recently, tabled at on-campus career fairs. Students at Duke, UC Berkeley and other universities have also staged anti-Palantir protests. In March 2019, Phi Kappa Psi (Phi Psi) canceled an event with Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale ’03 following backlash from students concerned about 2012 allegations of sexual assault against Lonsdale. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment about potential changes to its job application rates and recruiting strategies. “The greatest driver of change in the way tech firms recruit is technology itself,” wrote Bill McIndoo, the branding and marketing manager at Stanford’s BEAM Career Education center, in an email to The Daily. “We respond to changes and trends in employment and the workplace.” Contact Jasmine Kerber at jkerber @stanford.edu.
Friday, February 21, 2020 N 3
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SPORTS
PASSING
PAINS MIKE RASAY/isiphotos.com
Junior opposite Jaylen Jasper (above) paced the Cardinal with 20 kills in Thursday’s 3-1 loss to USC. Jasper, who hit the 20-kill mark for the fourth time this season, hit at a 0.429 clip.
TROJANS UPSET NO. 12 MEN’S VOLLEYBALL IN MAPLES By JAMES HEMKER SPORTS EDITOR
Everything in volleyball boils down to the pass. Passing the serve to the setter allows the team to perfectly run its full offense, while poor passing can lose the point before it’s barely begun. No. 12 men’s volleyball (5-8, 1-3
MPSF) failed to pass on Thursday night, and USC (3-11, 1-4 MPSF) walked away from Maples Pavilion with just its third win of the year. After a 4-1 start to the season, the Cardinal continue to slide, having lost six of their last seven. “They were the better serving and passing team tonight,” said head coach John Kosty. “That’s the
bottom line.” Depending on the statistic, the 21-25, 25-18, 23-25, 21-25 loss appeared as an even tug-of-war, with the two teams hitting within .002 of each other. The difference came at the service line, where eight Trojan aces represented USC’s hot serving and Stanford’s inability to pass. While the hitting efficiencies were
identical, the Trojans’ serving garnered them a 16-kill, 26-attack advantage over the Cardinal by the end of the game. When Stanford could pass to freshman setter Nathan Lietzke, it couldn’t be stopped. The team’s .391 hitting percentage was its second-best of conference play. Lietzke, who earned the second start of
his career Thursday, showed his confidence and skill, racking up 40 assists. The 6’6” Cardinal dumped twice and had multiple running one-handed sets against the net. “Getting out on the court with Nathan makes me really excited,” Jasper said. “I love that he’s a
Please see PASSING, page 7
SQUASH
Playoffs kick off with Yale By DANIEL WU CONTRIBUTING WRITER
CODY GLENN/isiphotos.com
Junior Caroline Neave (above) plays in the No. 4 slot for the Cardinal. Stanford is currently seeded sixth in the Howe Cup, entering postseason play. First up, the Cardinal will take on No. 3 Yale in New Haven for a chance at the national title. The tournament favorite is No. 1 Harvard.
No. 6 Stanford squash (6-5) returns to New Haven this Friday to begin its postseason campaign with a rematch against No. 3 Yale (12-3). Seeded sixth in the Howe Cup, the National Championship division for the league’s top eight teams, Stanford will compete for a national title against a loaded field of rivals that also includes No. 1 Harvard, No. 2 Princeton and No. 4 Trinity. Last year, the Cardinal achieved a program-best No. 3 final ranking by upsetting Princeton in the third-place playoff match after beating Yale in the opening round and losing to topseed Harvard in the semifinals.
Please see YALE, page 8
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Kiana Williams aims to keep winning, wowing Oregon schools up next for Cardinal By DANIEL MARTINEZ-KRAMS STAFF WRITER
The top play from last weekend belonged, indisputably, to Kiana Williams and Stanford women’s basketball. SportsCenter said so. The junior guard’s teammates rushed to where she stood — closer to midcourt than the 3-point arc — for what quickly became a celebratory dogpile. Williams had drilled a 40-foot game-winning heave on the
road, just moments after coming up with a game-tying 3-pointer. Then she froze in space. “I was shocked,” Williams said. “I was just processing, like, ‘Wow, we really did that.’ The last five, 10 seconds it was happening so fast, and I was just in shock. I’m still in shock when I watch it.” The good times kept rolling for Williams, who was named to the College Sports Information Directos of America (CoSIDA) Academic All-District Team, but was late to the news as a consequence of her decision to take the month of February off social media. As such, Williams had yet to see the team’s Twitter
Please see WILLIAMS, page 7
KAREN AMBROSE HICKEY/isiphotos.com
Back-to-back 3-pointers from junior guard Kiana Williams (above) lifted the Cardinal to a last-second vicory at Colorado on Sunday. Next up for women’s hoops is No. 15 Oregon State on Friday in Maples Pavillion.
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The Stanford Daily
OPINIONS FRANKLY SPEAKING
The Stanford Daily Established 1892
Do identity politics chill campus discourse? he Stanford Daily’s Opinions section is excited to reintroduce”Frankly Speaking,” a column that invites community members to weigh in on various campus news and debates. Frankly Speaking is aimed at extending discourse and debate on important subjects beyond Daily staffers. We want to hear from students across disciplines and social identities about their unique takes on the controversial topics and vital realities we confront as an institution. If you want to have your take on campus news published in The Daily, contribute to the next edition of Frankly Speaking by scanning the QR code and filling out the form.
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This week’s topic: Do identity politics chill campus discourse at Stanford? The concept of identity politics defies an easy definition, but has come to describe an expansive range of activity and theory stemming from certain social, racial, ethnic, cultural or other identity groups’ shared experiences of injustice. This banner has grown to encompass movements including feminism and womxn’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, Black Lives Matter, immigrant rights, disability rights and more. Discussions surrounding identity politics, and the issues it has helped elevate, have become increasingly prominent on college campuses. But some iterations of identity politics, in locating injustice in systems that are upheld by individual actions, argue that certain
speech is itself harmful to people of certain identities, and this speech should be discouraged or even banned. This has been most salient recently in resistance to speakers on campus who hold opinions deemed harmful by certain groups. Is this strand of identity politics in deep conflict with the traditionally liberal ideas of free discourse and exchange of ideas? More specifically, do identity politics on our campus create a culture that stifles our ability to talk openly and honestly about campus issues in particular and social issues in general? Or, is it high time that offensive comments, regardless of the context, be censured rather than given the legitimacy of publication or promotion? Do identity politics encourage members of more marginalized groups who have traditionally been silenced or stifled to speak out? If you have any questions, please email opinions@stanforddaily.com.
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Alex Durham
Once the continent to study, now more of an afterthought in students’ minds he professor of my history class this quarter made an interesting observation in one of our first classes. Everybody had arrived, numbering around eight or nine people, and before starting his lecture he mentioned how a class on the history of Europe back when he was an undergraduate would have been completely packed. While at first appearing to just be an off-hand comment about the size of the class, the professor used it to observe that there seemed to be a dwindling number of undergraduate students who are interested in studying Europe, both historically and contemporarily. His observation initially didn’t strike me as odd at all; there seems to be some sort of disclaimer about how there are less and less students who are interested in studying history, and then there is the omnipresent issue of the dwindling number of students studying the humanities in general. But, putting aside the existential crisis about the humanities for a little, I am interested in exploring why Europe in particular might be fading from the limelight of historical studies in the United States. One factor that I believe contributes to this is the belief that Europe is slowly falling off the pedestal it has been sitting on for several decades. For a region once considered exotic, new and unchartedby a large number of Americans, and by extension students, studying the continent no longer contains the allure that it did in the past, and thus attracts less and less attention from students. While students would take classes about European history to learn about European cities, the history that they
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contain and dream about what cities like Paris, Madrid and Berlin were like, it is now more likely for someone to have traveled to them on a family vacation or through study abroad and had that experience first-hand. After all, why take a class on the history of Europe when you can just go to the cities and look at them yourself? Just writing that sentence makes me want to qualify it by saying it is an extreme oversimplification, but I really do think the point has serious merit nowadays. Traveling to Europe has never been easier, and with relatively cheap airfare and the plethora of study abroad and summer programs Stanford offers, the prospect of traveling around foreign cities is, for most people, much more exciting than sitting in a classroom and learning about their political situation or historical significance. I believe this trend toward substituting the “real thing” for a purely academic education about Europe is a large contributor to the decline in students interested in taking classes on European politics or history — but I think the reasoning behind why this trend might be occurring in the first place is more telling. This reasoning, distilled into a single word, is majors. If you aren’t studying history or international relations, what are the odds that you will carve time out of your extremely busy schedule to take a class about medieval European history? The answer is probably, very slim. That said, what seems to be a big contributor to a lowered interest in taking studying or taking classes about Europe is not just the fact that it’s easy and more fun to study in Europe, but
also that many students just don’t have the time to go out of their way and take a class about Europe for fun. Or, if they do have the space to explore, they’re simply choosing other classes to take. This brings me full circle back to my main point: Europe may just not be as interesting as a subject to study as it was in the past, especially with the mind-boggling variety of classes that Stanford offers, even within the history department. Classes on the history of Africa, Asia and Latin America are increasingly popular, and the ever-growing number of classes on American history always seem to draw a solid number of students. What this means is that, while Europe may remain the number-one study abroad destination for students, their interest is shifting from wanting to learn about its history and politics to a more general interest in the experience of Europe. So what seems to be occurring is a trade of sorts. Europe loses interest as a continent to study, but remains an extremely popular tourist destination where students can explore new cities, experience new cultures, and, if they feel like it, learn about Europe for the brief time they’re there. Contact Alex Durham at ahdurham @stanford.edu.
‘Once a Pun a Time’
Julia Gong
jxgong@stanford.edu
Friday, February 21, 2020 N 5
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THE GRIND
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A letter to my TI-84 Over the years, my dear calculator, you truly have aged gracefully By SARAYU PAI STAFF WRITER
Dear TI-84, I profusely apologize for never baptizing you with a new name before, but TI-84 just fits you so perfectly, seeing as it contains two integral parts of your identity — the Texas Instrument (the company where you were born and bred) and your series number. You are unique to me, with your light-up screen and slim design, fitting perfectly into my pencil pouch. I would also like to admit my deepest remorse for the trauma you have sustained after being dropped on the floor, either from slipping between my fingers or being knocked off the side of a table. Fear races through me as I dash to pick you up and check your condition, and, luckily, your tenacious spirit and will to survive always prevail. Despite all the adversities you have faced, your light-up screen glows brightly (unless you run out of battery). Another thing — why must you be com-
patible with only that funky charger with which you were brought home? Why are you not USB-friendly on both ends? I guess that just serves as a testament your uniqueness. You were brought home during my sophomore year of high school and started working diligently for me in AP Statistics. From creating residual plots to finding normal distributions to running the gamut of tests ranging from t-tests to chisquare, you never failed to provide me with answers. Your infallibility is commendable.In other words, there is no need to take calculated risks. From then on, your presence was useful during all the standardized testing needed to apply to this university and in the incessant days of AP and IB final examinations. Although the days may be long, peace may be found by taking comfort in your constant answers. No matter the difficulty of the integral or the complexity of the parametric equation, you spit out numerical answers and graphs within seconds — although, I will submit
that you sometimes get a bit lazy. And, TI-84, even though your battery does not last as long as it used to, your functionality and beauty are timeless. Over the years, you truly have aged gracefully. As an engineering and economics student, you have truly proven your worth, and I have the utmost confidence that you will continue to do so. I look forward to having you as a companion in the quarters to come, although I know that your job might change from graphing least-squares regression lines to calculating taxes, mortgages and investments as I journey on the path toward full-time adulting. Even if your battery goes kaput, know that your years of service will go down in graphing calculator history. Your faithful owner (with oodles of appreciation), Sarayu Contact Sarayu Pai at smpai918@ stanford.edu to chat about the wonders of the TI-84.
S ATIRE
Dorm plans on taking ‘ski trip’ to Hawaii
KIRSTEN METTLER/The Stanford Daily
While most dorms take a short road trip to go skiing, Roble residents are traveling six hours by plane. Many Roble residents are even getting exempt from midterms, since the Hawaii trip is a University-sponsored event. By KIRSTEN METTLER STAFF WRITER
Roble will be taking its winter ski trip to Honolulu, Hawaii, this February. The ski trip is a Stanford tradition where dorms, especially all-freshman dorms, take a winter weekend to go skiing and play in the snow. Roble, a fourclass dorm, did not feel like conforming this year. RA Shannon Ronin ’20 explained the choice. “Who wants to go somewhere cold?” Ronin asked. “I grew up in SoCal; Stanford is cold enough. Plus, it’s still a ski trip — just jet skis instead of snow ones.” Roble residents are, understandably, very excited. With the
University picking up most of the bill, students will be able to enjoy the warm Hawaiian air for only $15. “$15 to go to Hawaii? I spent more than that on my Uber to the grocery store last week,” exclaimed Roble resident Ken Hanson ’21. “I can’t wait for this trip.” Residents of other dorms are, understandably, jealous. While most dorms take a short road trip to Tahoe or Santa Cruz, Roble residents are traveling six hours by plane for their extravagant getaway. Many Roble residents are even getting exempt from midterms, since the Hawaii trip is a University-sponsored event. “I just don’t get it,” complained
Donner resident Hannah Jane ’22. “Roble people don’t even make the trip to East Campus. Why do they get to go to Hawaii?” Next year, perhaps more dorms will follow Roble’s lead and head off to the tropics — but for now, most Stanford residents will just have to settle for Tahoe ski cabins. 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. Contact Kirsten Mettler at kmettler @stanford.edu.
6 N Friday, February 21, 2020
The Stanford Daily
ARTS & LIFE SCREEN
JOURNEY THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD ‘Hades’ and the aesthetic of death By OMAR EL-SABROUT CONTRIBUTING WRITER
T
he word aesthetic has been co-opted to mean “visually satisfying to a particular (typical sleek or patterned) palette.” Its inverse, anaesthetic, signals the scientific but feels to me like the kind of beautiful word that should make its way back into usage because of the wonderful connotation with sleep. In reality, the word “aesthetic” is simply concerned with sensation, the felt and the signifiers that create that feeling. And so I get to thinking about how video game death is diverse with respect to ordinary death: Ordinary death anesthetizes whereas video game death aesthetizes. I have been dying in video games since I got my first gameboy game circa 2005. I have died nearly every kind of imaginable (and unimaginable) death: spikes, arrows, swords, spears, bullets, fatigue, cold weather, hot weather, dragons, falling, floating, lions, drowning,lag, running out of jumps, running with scissors, dying of boredom, poison, jumping too far, aliens, blood lasers, blood tears, bloodhounds, nuclear weapons, helicopters, etc. I’ve seen a lot in these last 15 years. But I keep coming back to these games, not just resigned to, but ready to die. Mid-December of last year marked the early access release of “Hades,” the newest title from my favorite San Francisco-based game development studio Supergiant Games (creators of “Bastion,” “Transistor” and “Pyre”). “Hades” is a 2D, hack-and-slash, rogue-like, dungeon-crawler, blah-blah-blah, you get the picture. But what’s new(ish) here is the dying-to-progress mechanic that I was first introduced to with “DeadCells”, a roguelike by the French cooperative MotionTwins. (Spoilers ahead) As Zagreus, Hades’ son, an angsty warrior type (literally) dying to get
away from his palatial home at the bottom of hell, the player has to escape through three bossfight-capped levels. However, especially on the highest difficulty level, one can expect a lot of dying along the way. In “DeadCells,” killing enemies and looting chests grants the players the titular cells which can be traded for certain powerups, which are permanent unlike power-ups purchased with gold. Remaining with you from life to life, these allow you to continue to get stronger over time, so in essence, dying benefits you. The same goes for “Hades,” but instead of just cells there are several currencies that are conserved postdeath: Chthonic Keys, Darkness, Gemstones, Nectar, Ambrosia, Diamonds and Titan Blood. With the exception of Nectar and Ambrosia, these are redeemable in the House of Hades, the palace where Zagreus is reborn after each failed excursion out into hell. These currencies allow Zagreus to do a whole host of things, ranging from weapon unlocks and character power-ups to paying a contractor to build a restorative spa room somewhere along the path through the Underworld. At the end of every run, and the beginning of the next, I emerged from the pool of blood in Hades’ palace, freshly gored by the Minotaur or hotly embarrassed by a death at the hands of a minor enemy, a Gorgon head or a Burn-Flinger. I did the necessary shopping for new items, switching of weapons and power-ups and reassured myself this would be the last time. In my early playthroughs, it felt fair to say that I experienced dying as somewhere between a minor nuisance and a
SCREEN
Supergiant Games
“Hades” (2018) is a 2D, roguelike video game. Players assume the role of Zagreus (pictured above), the son of Hades, as they try to escape the underworld. colossal tragedy, depending on if I died in a pathetic way very far along my run. But after hours and hours of playing the game, I began to feel a bit more ambivalent towards death and more excited about the post-death world experience. For example, there are (so far) six unlockable weapons in the game; the first, a stout two-handed broadsword, requires zero Chthonic keys to unlock and the fifth, an eagle-headed projectile launcher called the Rail, which requires eleven keys. Because each weapon was so mechanically and stylistically diverse and exciting, I began to prioritize getting the keys in my playthroughs in order to unlock more weapons. Rather than a singular eye towards completion, I was more interested in the feeling of the novel game mechanics. In a way, this truly felt like play, the involvement in the game for the excitement and the fun as opposed to the satisfaction of seeing the credits roll.
As with many rogue-like games, what’s fresh is the thousands of multitudes of combinations of game mechanics, weapons, and power-ups that one can collect while playing, and in that respect, “Hades” is not lacking. Each run felt fresh and new, sand-boxy (think “Binding of Isaac”), and because I was having a great time exploring these permutations I started to worry less about dying. The lessening frustration with individual deaths also came with my expanding understanding of the timeline of the game. I saw each death less as a marker of low skill or a restart, but rather as a natural, additive progression. Somewhere in there, Supergiant Games is teaching us something about the journey and not the destination. But honestly, I can’t really hear them because I’m so busy enjoying my death. Contact Omar El-Sabrout at omarel@stanford.edu.
more complicated ones that involved gear-shifting and physical wheels and pedals. (For anyone interested in reading more about gaming set-ups, r/AmericanTruckSimulator on Reddit boasts wheels, pedals, screens and keyboards that altogether cost several hundreds of dollars.) While these mechanics go largely unused, with driving being fairly straightforward when you’re going the same speed for hundreds of miles on a stretch, they become increasingly important at the end. Parking is hell. It is in real life, and it is in this game. Players have the choice to choose between three levels of parking, each with varying levels of experience points awarded. When playing with a friend, I truly witnessed him trying for 40 minutes to park on the third level of difficulty (and only succeeding in the 15 minutes we worked together). After enough time failing, the GPS prompts you asking if you’d like to give up on the task of parking, reaping the cash rewards but unfortunately not leveling up your cargo. These mechanics offer the most challenging aspects of gameplay, which may appeal to most but certainly do not to me. While the features themselves might seem a bit restrictive (they are), users have come up with their own ways to add their own touch to the game, customizing the landscape to the ways they like to play. A key feature that I hadn’t quite figured out was the presence of a radio: By dragging and dropping mp3s into a folder on your computer, you can listen to the music of your choice as you cruise along California. Self-sabotaging gamers might take pleasure in making the figureless trucker suffer by crashing into other vehicles or overdrawing loans from the bank and going bankrupt. Because the game itself is Steam, SCS Software “American Truck Simulator” (2016) allows players to drive through limited in the violence it is able the Central Valley in a fraction of the time. to portray, much of these mechanics need to be edited in with sensationalized screenshots and ALL CAPS TITLES!!! on video editing software. These types of players often post their “gruesome” accidents and “murders” on YouTube, to the tune of about 100 views. More relaxed gamers seem to comprise the majority of the people who play, occasionally turning on the game to drift away and allow themselves to relax mindlessly; these videos, of smooth, commentary-less driving mimic the experience of gameplay for viewers in a meditative way that, for me, is basically the same as playing. While my awkward lack of gaming skill probably disqualifies me from considering myself a safe driver (with a few speeding tickets, accidents and parking brake mishaps), I feel like I am able to exist in this game on my own terms, setting my own goals for myself and achieving what it is I want to do, except for parking.
BIG RIGS AND A look at ‘American BUTTONS Truck Simulator’ By JULIE FUKUNAGA CONTRIBUTING WRITER
I
nstead of studying for finals last quarter, I spent my dead week driving cargo across the Central Valley in a semi-truck. Such was “American Truck Simulator” (2016). Sped up to the pace of one minute per second of gameplay, a 900-mile crossstate trip can be condensed to half an hour. The possibilities for where to go within the state are mostly confined to the central median of California, from coastal San Diego to Pacific Northwest-adjacent Redding. Driving through the roads most people “pass through to get to other places,” I found myself reliving a lot of mental geographies that were familiar to me growing up. When driving through Stockton, I recognized the faint outline of the bushes alongside 99, and found a sense of “home” in the weird, empty, and semipixelated city-town vibes of strip malls and palm trees. Much like the excitement I feel when I meet anyone from the Central Valley, it is reaffirming to see yourself represented, even in the smallest ways. This relaxing view of the Inland Empire and Central Valley reminded me of a quiet alternate reality where the only inhabitants were motor vehicles, kind of like the entire premise of the “Cars” franchise. The mechanics of the game are fairly simple. With a 360-degree range, dragging your mouse allows you to see the entire span of the road as well as the inside of the truck container, bed and storage closets. Guiding you is a 2000s era navigational system (with the functionality of a TomTom), which also updates you with messages as things crop up, from damage fines to passing landmarks. As you drive past new towns, you unlock new potential headquarters and delivery locations. Too fearful to venture past W-A-S-D or up-down-leftright, I stuck to automatic mechanics, as opposed to the
Please see SIMULATOR, page 7
Friday, February 21, 2020 N 7
The Stanford Daily
WILLIAMS Continued from page 3 post recognizing her and sophomore guard Lexie Hull. Last Sunday, Hull was once again ahead of Williams, only this time she was sprinting to her still-frozen teammate. “Oh my gosh, that was just crazy,” Hull said. “It just happened so quickly that it was like, ‘Wait, does it count? Did it go in?’ I didn’t even see
it. It just all happened so fast — it was so exciting ... still kind of in disbelief about it.” Between Hull’s disbelief and Williams’s ongoing shock, it is hard to imagine that the toughest stretch of No. 4 Stanford’s (23-3, 12-2 Pac-12) season begins today. The final four regular season games will all come against ranked opponents, including the date on Friday with No. 15 Oregon State (19-7, 7-7 Pac-12). Luckily for the Cardinal, a Hall of Fame, two-time NCAA champion, Olympic
gold medal head coach is at the helm. Tara VanDerveer’s presence is felt both on the sideline during game and in preparation for the upcoming gauntlet. “What a perfect way to go into an NCAA Tournament: playing against tournament teams,” VanDerveer said, spinning the four-game stretch like a veteran politician. Neither game against Colorado was supposed to be a thriller, at least on paper. The Buffs are winless against the Cardinal dating to the
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2002 NCAA tournament, which includes their entire time as members of the Pac12, and they have lost twice as many games in conference play this season as they have won. That both games came down to the last second is a testament to the competition of the Pac-12. That Stanford won both is a testament to VanDerveer. The inbounds plays run by Stanford at the end of each of those games, the first to find freshman forward Ashten Prechtel under the hoop for a layup and the second to free up Williams from three, are practiced daily. “Tara really stresses on making sure that we’re focused and locked in when we practice those,” Hull said. “It’s easy, at the end of practice, to kind of just walk through those plays. And after that first Colorado game, I’m like, Okay, this is meaningful, and these plays are gonna change the game.” “For me as the point guard, you know you have to stay levelheaded,” Williams said. “Deep down inside, I was panicking, especially when they got that second rebound off the free throw, but thankfully she missed both free throws and we stuck together as a team.”
“Tara made sure everyone’s on the same page, and I made sure everyone’s on the same plan, and we executed,” Williams added. “That’s what we’re gonna have to do this weekend.” The Beavers are on a three-game losing streak, but no one is taking the challenge lightly. Head coach Scott Rueck’s group has twice lost in overtime and has two players — Destiny Slocum and Mikayla Pivec — named to ESPN’s midseason top 25. Stanford eked out a win on the road in the first meeting as Slocum went for 26 points, but the main lesson VanDerveer took from that game is that “Oregon State is a really good team.” Although freshman standout forward Kennedy Brown is out for the remainder of the season due to a torn ACL in her left knee, the Beavers have responded with a four-guard lineup that is potentially even more lethal. “I don’t feel like they missed a beat,” VanDerveer said. “They just get more from either players who are playing or someone coming in now.” While Stanford’s injury troubles have seen senior
PASSING
All-American reached the 20-kill plateau. Freshman outside Will Rottman added 11 more kills at a .400 clip. “ We knew what their block was going to do, and we had a gameplan around that,” Lietzke said. “We did a good job of playing into that gameplan and executing it well.” Though Stanford’s offense hummed, the Trojans marched on, hitting at a season-best .389 clip. Three Trojans reached double digits, led by opposite Billy Fauntleroy’s 23 kills. Out of the middle, Sam Lewis had another eight kills on 11 error-free swings. Nine Stanford blocks were noth-
Continued from page 3 freshman and has all this confidence.” “For a guy who hasn’t jumped in a long time, he did a lot of really nice things,” Kosty said. “He ran the offense we wanted him to run, which was really nice to see.” After just a week since his first start, Lietzke had a much-improved connection with his attackers. Junior opposite Jaylen Jasper paced the Cardinal with 20 kills on .429 hitting, marking the third time this year that the
SIMULATOR Continued from page 6 As one progresses, the opportunity opens up not only to purchase a truck but to become your own small businessman, hiring and managing employees on their own independent cargo deliveries. Encoded subtly in this game mechanic, especially for the completionists, is a pseudo-American Dream: to work hard, save money, and eventually run a profitable business. The game presents an all-consuming work narrative, one mimicking the often 8-plus
hour shifts that truck drivers have to drive to meet employer demands. This can be a bit disconcerting in thinking about how proximate to the real life profession this game proclaims to be. Users online claim to understand a “simpler,” “more relaxing” and “less hectic” life on the road. This fetishization of blue-collar labor completely masks the toll it takes on real human beings: the burden on family and communities of support, the health consequences of a difficult life on the road with high stress and little sleep, and the constant pressure of knowing these deliveries matter — that failing, crashing and being late have
guard DiJonai Carrington and freshman guard Haley Jones sideline for extensive time, junior forward Maya Dodson returned to the court for a combined 26 minutes last weekend. Though her interior presence and scoring are obvious additions, her impact on freshman forwards Ashten Prechtel and Fran Belibi may be an overlooked benefit of her return. “ When you’re at this point in the season, wanting another big body that has experience — our freshmen have been doing very well, but they just don’t understand the urgency sometimes with how hard you have to play,’ VanDerveer said. “We need a grittier presence inside.” “We’ve missed [Dodson] so much,” Williams added. “Just for Ashten and Fran, just to have another upperclassmen to look up to.” Belibi and Prechtel, now with two different post players to pick up moves from, can focus on what Hull called the key to the game: “Playing harder than them.” Tip-off is set for 8 p.m. PT on Friday at Maples Pavilion. Contact Daniel MartinezKrams at danielmk@ stanford.edu.
ing more than bumps in the road to victory for the Men of Troy. Tallying just two aces, the Cardinal servers were unable to force USC off the net, allowing the Trojans to fool Stanford’s front line with a variety of attacks. In losses, the Cardinal are averaging just .57 aces per set. Overall, Stanford’s .88 aces per set ranks dead last in the country. The next opportunity to break the losing streak will come on Saturday against Concordia. First serve from Maples will be at 6 p.m. PT. Contact James Hemker at jahemker@stanford.edu.
consequences. Much like the discomfort I have begun to feel as the child of a farmer playing games about farming, like Animal Crossing or (in antiquity) FarmVille, I think it is important to consider the potential problems of playing games that are too close to real life. Overall, though, “American Truck Simulator” is not a bad game for the price of a Subway sandwich, and you absolutely know what you’re going to get. (Special thanks to Ron Tep for convincing me to play this game. Perhaps one day we will be good at parking.) Contact Julie Fukunaga at juliefa@stanford.edu.
8 N Friday, February 21, 2020
The Stanford Daily
MEN’S SWIMMING AND DIVING
No. 2 Cal arrives for Senior Day dual By NATALIE HILDERBRAND DESK EDITOR
CODY GLENN/isiphotos.com
This weekend, men’s swimming and diving will face its toughest competition yet with No. 2 Cal in Avery Aquatic Center. The Cardinal will also celebrate Senior Day at what is the final home dual meet of the season.
YALE Continued from page 3 If Stanford is to repeat its postseason heroics this year, it will need to defeat an improved Yale squad that defeated the Cardinal 6-3 in January in a tightly contested affair. Stanford’s regular season loss to the Bulldogs included two brutal deciding-game losses for senior captains Casey Wong and Chloe Chemtob at the number-two and number-five positions — flipping those matchups will be crucial for Stanford to secure the upset. Yale, hosting the National Championships this year in New Haven, will once again retain home-court advantage against the traveling Cardinal. “I think it’s a 5-4 match either way, win or lose,� said head coach Mark Talbott. “I think it’s going to be close.� Stanford could also have its depth tested this weekend with freshman Haley Aube questionable with an ankle injury. Senior captain Julia Gillette is expected to move up to the Aube’s position if she is unavailable to play. “I’m disappointed for her,� Tal-
bott said. “I’m still not completely ruling [Aube] out if she heals enough — it’d be great if she could participate and maybe at least play one match [over the weekend], but it’s going to be a game-time decision.� With ambitions from last year’s historic finish on the line, the Cardinal will have much to play for on Friday. The winner between Stanford and Yale will progress to the semifinals to play the winner between Princeton and No. 7 Drexel on Saturday, while a loss would send the Cardinal to the consolation bracket and confirm an end-of-season ranking of five or lower. At the end of a season defined by close matches and nail-biting finishes — Stanford’s results against the rest of the Howe Cup field have included three 5-4 and three 6-3 scorelines — Talbott was optimistic. “They’re winnable matches,� he said. “It’s going to be exciting.� The Cardinal begin their postseason campaign on Friday at 12 p.m. PT. The match will be livestreamed on the College Squash Association’s website. Contact Daniel Wu at dwu21@ stanford.edu.
No. 16 men’s swimming (4-0, 3-0 Pac-12) takes on No. 2 Cal (5-0, 3-0 Pac-12) at Avery Aquatic Center on Saturday, marking the final dual meet of the season, and Stanford’s Senior Day. The Cardinal take on their strongest opponent yet this weekend, coming off momentum from an undefeated season. In its most recent dual meet matchup two weeks ago, Stanford handily defeated No. 21 USC, led by junior Alex Liang, who contributed multiple individual event victories. Look for him to have a big impact this weekend in backstroke and IM events. The Cardinal breaststroke has been on fire this season as well. Senior Hank Poppe and sophomore Daniel Roy have claimed first in the 100- and 200- yard breaststrokes in most meets this season.
Junior Brennan Pastorek and sophomore Jon Cook have consistently earned top-three breaststroke finishes, too. The Bears have an outstanding team all-around. Reece Whitley will prove to be a tough opponent for Stanford’s breaststrokers, and Zheng Wen Quah will likely bring in big points for Cal in backstroke and freestyle events as well. Seniors Benjamin Ho, William Macmillan, James Murphy, Hank Poppe and Grant Shoults will be recognized at the meet for their contributions to the team over the past four years. The meet kicks off at noon PT on Saturday at Avery Aquatic Center. After this weekend, the Cardinal will enter the postseason, beginning with Pac-12 championships on Feb. 26-29. Contact Natalie Hilderbrand at nhild@stanford.edu.