DEMONSTRATIONS

Rallying Against—and Sometimes for—War in Iraq

THE DAY AFTER the first Tomahawk cruise missiles struck Baghdad, about 200 students, faculty, staff and local residents gathered in White Plaza to protest the U.S. war on Iraq. Many then marched to Palo Alto to join a community rally and later convened for a candlelight vigil in Memorial Church.

Although it was March 20—the middle of finals week—students said they had planned to join the rapid-response rally whenever it occurred. “People are dying,” freshman Linda Tran said, as she handed out green armbands and tried not to worry about that evening’s exam. Associate professor of drama and classics Rush Rehm and sophomore Anna Mumford told the crowd about the hours they’d spent that morning in San Francisco, blocking the intersection of Folsom and Third streets with about 100 other students and faculty. “Many of us were arrested,” said Rehm, PhD ’85, adding that the protestors intended the chaos of the street action to “reflect the nature of the war on the people of Iraq.”

The two events capped months of campus demonstrations, all peaceful and many with an academic component. On March 5, more than 500 students and faculty converged on the Quad to protest and to attend teach-ins offered by 20 professors from 10 departments. Biologist Robert Sapolsky spoke about “Evolution of Aggression and Warfare,” anthropologist Carol Delaney recalled a trip to Iraq, and political scientist Terry Karl, ’70, MA ’76, PhD ’82, addressed the links between “Oil and the War in Iraq.” And as chants of “Whose world? Our world!” roared across the Inner Quad, a quieter request was raised on the brilliant green grass of the Oval, where 18 students bowed their heads in prayer: “Father, I ask, for this time and place, that You do a miraculous thing.”

Both groups of students were responding to the call for a nationwide “Books Not Bombs” strike. Activists from more than 25 campus groups—including the Stanford Community for Peace and Justice, the Muslim Student Awareness Network, the Stanford chapter of the NAACP and Stanford University Catholic Social Action—came together in a hastily formed Coalition of Students Against War, joining thousands of other high school and college students on more than 400 campuses who walked out of classes to rally for peace. To support the student initiative, 26 Stanford professors canceled classes for the day and 64 signed an online pledge.

During the daylong strike, dozens of students stopped by tables to write letters of protest to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, imploring her to “not ignore the opinion of your former students.” A handful of students wrote to the Stanford Daily for several days afterward to articulate other points of view. Noting that her decision to attend class on March 5 was not a statement of support for war, junior and Daily columnist Caroline Ciccone said one of her professors had led a discussion that day about U.S. decisions to intervene in international conflicts. “How much more timely could these classes be?” she asked.

Prevailing student sentiment—including that of the Daily editorial board—seemed to be against U.S. military action, at least without the backing of the United Nations. But at least twice, there were competing campus protests. “We support the liberation of Iraq because we want freedom throughout the world,” freshman Bob Sensenbrenner of the Stanford College Republicans told the Daily during one such demonstration, on January 17.

Students and faculty also chose means other than campus rallies to express their views. A handful fasted on White Plaza; others gathered there to read aloud Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. History professor Clayborne Carson drew on his familiarity with the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. to present an evening “vigil for justice and peace” in a packed Memorial Church on February 19.

And remember the “Draft SUV Drivers First” signs that popped up at the worldwide peace rallies on February 16? Two days earlier, seniors Josh Bushinsky and Jonathan Neril and a busload of Stanford students had teamed up with the group Don’t Be Fueled at a Hummer dealership in Burlingame to protest the 11-miles-per-gallon vehicles, and had made Bay Area headlines.

But no event drew more people than the March 5 strike on the Quad. Organizers were warned the day before that they had not received authorization to use amplification and were asked to move to White Plaza. Still, police were not summoned when students set up a stage and sound system near Building 10, and administrators stood by and watched the protest. Later complaints about classes being disrupted were referred to the Office of Judicial Affairs, which is investigating them.

University President John Hennessy told the Faculty Senate he wished classes had not been canceled and hoped “that the faculty [who] did cancel classes will generously offer to reschedule them.” Nevertheless, he told the Daily, he supported students’ decisions to attend the event. “All of us have a limited ability to do anything,” Hennessy was quoted as saying, “but if in good conscience you reach the decision that this [war] is a mistake, you have an obligation to make your voice known.”

ADMISSIONS

Defending Affirmative Action

CITING A NEED for student diversity, Stanford joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dupont, IBM and others in filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in February, supporting the University of Michigan’s stance that race and ethnicity should be considered in undergraduate admissions. That same month, the Black Law Students Associations of Stanford, Harvard and Yale filed a similar “friend of the court” brief supporting the use of race in admissions at Michigan’s law school. Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan also signed onto two briefs representing the views of law school deans, while law professor Pamela Karlan co-authored a brief for the Association of American Law Schools.

They were among the more than 300 institutions and individuals who filed more than 60 amicus briefs in the two cases, which many consider the most formidable challenges to affirmative action since the Supreme Court’s 1978 decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In that decision, the justices banned racial quotas but agreed race could be one of many factors that schools considered in admitting students. Oral arguments in the two Michigan cases were held April 1, and more than 30 Stanford students joined the crowd of 50,000 who marched in Washington, D.C., that day to support affirmative action.

A decision against Michigan would not necessarily invalidate Stanford’s admission policies. Observers disagree about whether it would likely apply just to public schools, or also to private schools—such as Stanford—that receive federal funds. And Stanford and Michigan consider race differently. In undergraduate admissions, for example, Michigan uses a formula that automatically awards 20 points (on a 150-point scale) to African-Americans, Latinos and Native Americans. Those 20 points can effectively raise an applicant’s grade-point average from 3.0 to 4.0. Stanford’s policy, by contrast, is flexible, granting “special consideration provided they meet basic requirements of academic excellence and personal achievement” to several groups, including “African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Native Americans and others whose backgrounds would provide additional dimensions to University programs.”

The brief that University general counsel Debra Zumwalt, JD ’79, signed on behalf of Stanford argues that “diversity (broadly defined and including racial and ethnic diversity) is in fact absolutely essential to the advancement of science and engineering.” It goes on to note that “minorities are even more under-represented in science and engineering fields than in others.”

That parallels findings that law students Alexis Karteron and Dawn Smalls uncovered in their research for the brief they co-wrote with students at Harvard and Yale and several attorneys. Karteron and Smalls drafted several sections of the 29-page document between December and February.

Their argument, Karteron explains, had two parts: first, that “the accomplishments of a critical mass of black students at elite universities contribute to those schools being able to meet their public missions”; and second, that alternatives to race-conscious programs would not be successful in a law school context. “Without affirmative action,” she says, “we know that elite universities would become incredibly racially segregated and, therefore, fail to graduate lawyers who are prepared to face the issues that we as a country face collectively with growing diversity.”

Cardinal Numbers

Undergraduates living in University housing (approx.):  6,000

Undergraduates living without roommates:  1,096

Roommates in Toyon Hall, room 193: 5

Requests per week received by Housing Assignment Services to switch roommates: 1

Residents in freshman dorm Rinconada: 94

Episodes, per quarter, of Rinconada residents locking themselves out of their rooms: 60

Sources: Stanford Housing Assignment Services; Student Housing Services; Rinconada House

SPACE SCIENCE

Diagnosing the Shuttle Disaster

WITHIN MINUTES of hearing about the disintegration of the Columbia space shuttle on February 1, management science and engineering department chair Elisabeth Paté-Cornell was in her office, fielding media calls. “I had a pretty good idea about what had happened,” says the risk-analysis specialist who led a 1990 NASA-commissioned study of the shuttle’s insulation tiles. Although it’s “not impossible” that space debris caused catastrophic structural damage, Paté-Cornell says “it could not possibly help to have lost a piece of foam at takeoff and have it hit the tiles.”

As a result of the 100-page report she submitted to NASA in 1990, managers at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center did special testing on zones of tiles that she identified as “most risk-critical”; and she was told that officials at Alabama’s Marshall Space Flight Center reinforced the attachment of the foam insulation on the shuttles’ 15-story external fuel tanks. But Paté-Cornell, MS ’72, PhD ’78, says she was informed that those in charge at Houston’s Johnson Space Center “decided our report was not a reason to add anything or make any modifications” to tile maintenance procedures.

The tiles are likely to be a focus of inquiry for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which includes Nobel laureate and physics professor Douglas Osheroff and former astronaut Sally Ride, ’73, MS ’75, PhD ’78 (associate professor of electrical engineering Gregory Kovacs, PhD ’90, MD ’92, is coordinating debris and sensor analyses for the board). In the 22-year-old shuttle’s previous 27 flights, Paté-Cornell says, the tiles had been challenged by vibrations and by aerodynamic forces—but not by “pieces of stuff” like the insulation that fell off and hit the underside of the shuttle’s left wing. The tiles would have held, she adds, “provided they had been well bonded.”

Shuttle flights probably will not be halted for long, because the international space station is still under construction. But in the “medium term,” Paté-Cornell says, “we need a system to replace the shuttle.”

Norman Sleep, who studies solar system origins and planetary habitability, would go a step further. Shortly after the Columbia tragedy, the geophysics professor publicly advocated ending human space flight. “Little science has come out of the manned space program,” he says. “Most of the experiments on [the shuttle] were either ant-farm, science-fair-project-type stuff or things that could have been done completely robotically.” And speaking of robots, Sleep says they’re the ideal space travelers. Not only are they cheaper and unlikely to contaminate moons and planets, he says, but “they don’t need huge amounts of life support, they can be made to do one task very well, and they don’t get sick or bored.”

RESEARCH

What Beach-Closing Signs Don't Say

ALTHOUGH SHE SPENDS major time entering data on her computer and assaying samples in her lab, it really helps to get out to the beach.

So says Alexandria Boehm, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and a Hawaiian-bred surfing aficionado. Two summers ago, Boehm, a specialist in coastal water quality who was then on the UC-Irvine faculty, supervised some 50 students on a three-week, 24-hour-a-day study of one of her favorite surfing spots in Southern California—Huntington Beach—which had been closed for two months in the summer of 1999. Boehm’s team dug through data for more than 100,000 surf-zone water samples dating back to 1958 and also took frequent samples of ankle-depth ocean water in 500-milliliter plastic bottles.

Her conclusion: many historical episodes of contamination can be traced to raw sewage spills, stormwater runoff or nuisance runoff. More surprising? Water quality can also be affected by sunlight, rainfall and patterns of the lunar cycle, with harmful bacteria at their highest levels during the rainiest months and at midnight under a full or new moon.

Boehm says her studies, which have been published in the prestigious journal Environmental Science & Technology, also tell her that decisions to close beaches shouldn’t be based on once-a-day, early-morning samplings of water. And if you don’t trust beach-closing signs, “you can use the rule, ‘Don’t go in the water during the new and full moons,’” she says.

In her first year at Stanford, Boehm has begun to look at historical data for Santa Cruz beaches that date back to 1987. She’d also like to design some field projects in San Francisco Bay for her students. “I miss the ocean,” she says, almost wistfully. Especially Flat Island, off Oahu’s Kailua coast. “The waves break right next to the island,” she remembers, “and everyone out there kind of knows each other.” What a lab.

ACTIVITIES

Playing the Market

SENIOR CHARLES NAJDA’S experience at Stanford’s student-run investment fund has been full of ups and downs. Of course, so has the stock market. When Najda arrived as a freshman in 1999, the Blyth Fund’s two largest holdings were Sun Microsystems and Cisco. By the end of his freshman year, the market’s downward slide had begun, and the student investors had started a deliberate rotation out of tech stocks.

“We sold Cisco at $26, which was still a relatively high price,” remembers Najda, now the fund’s co-president. (At press time, it was trading at $13.) “It was a difficult situation because analyst estimates were still saying that $26 price was reasonable. It showed a great deal of foresight.”

The students began buying industrials and oil stocks, including Alcoa and Apache. Today, the fund relies heavily on comparatively stable holdings like Johnson & Johnson, which is up 17 percent since the students purchased it in 2001.

The fund began in 1978 when a colleague of investment banker Charles Blyth gave $75,000 to each of three California colleges to allow undergraduates to try their hand at investing. A typical example might be John Fogelsong, ’05, who entered Stanford with an interest in investing and worked his way up through the fund’s training program to serve as co-president this year. Fogelsong, Najda and two other directors choose stocks based on recommendations made by the broader membership of 15 in semiweekly meetings. Dividends are reinvested, so the only reward is bragging rights.

And those aren’t exactly guaranteed, these days. The fund now has about $72,000, down from approximately $130,000 at its peak. But due to a timely investment in Sonus Networks, the fund was up 25.63 percent in the first quarter of 2003—far outpacing the major indexes.

For more: www.blythfund.com

MEDICINE

The Jade Ribbon Campaign

JUNIOR WAN-CHI SO spent Chinese New Year 2002 at the ceremonial street festival in San Francisco’s Chinatown. But she wasn’t there just for the party. She was raising awareness about hepatitis B.

Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States are 100 times more likely to have the chronic form of the liver disease than Caucasians, says Samuel So, an associate professor of surgery. He estimates that one in 10 Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders have the virus, and one in four of those will die from liver cancer or liver failure. “Many Asian-Americans are foreign-born and came from countries where chronic hepatitis B is endemic,” he explains. And because most were infected at birth or during early childhood, it is important to screen and treat them young.

In 1996, Samuel So founded Stanford’s Asian Liver Center, which has three components: research, treatment, and educational outreach and advocacy. Public communications are largely managed by about a dozen undergraduate interns, who facilitate free community screenings and conduct a part-grassroots, part-media awareness campaign. Their jade awareness ribbons are twisted into the shape of the Chinese character for “person” or “people.”

Incorporating traditional cultural values “such as a deep respect for family and heritage is important in our campaign,” says Wan-Chi So. “When you see a whole family of grandparents, parents and grandkids strolling down the street, you don’t just thrust a brochure in their hands. You first give candies to the grandkids, wish the grandparents good health, and then you ask the parents if their kids have been vaccinated against hep B and if they have had regular screenings for hep B.”

For more: liver.stanford.edu

—VAUHINI VARA, ’04, and MELISANDE MIDDLETON, ’02

RESIDENCES

Wearing Dorm Pride on Their Sleeves

WHAT BETTER WAY to show that your dorm is the dorm than with a T-shirt? These days, most dorms boast several tees—one for casual wear, one for intramural games and the all-important Big Game shirt. STANFORD dishes out the First Annual Dorm T-shirt Awards:

Ralph Lauren Award. Toyon’s navy blue “Toyacht Club” T-shirt exudes a preppiness that could drive the cheeriest sophomore to disembark.

Most Likely to Be Mocked by Paly High Students. The “How to Live in Mirlo” shirt instructs, “no sex, drink EANABs [equally attractive nonalcoholic beverages], lights out at 12.” On the back, the punch line: “But at least we’re not SLE.” Mirlo, we pity you.

Best Slogan. A pair of flip-flop shoes and the understated phrase, “Arroyo de Janeiro—a place where you can kick off your shoes,” put Arroyo’s shirt on the cool list.

Best Portrayal of Utopia. If you’re a straight guy, that is. Otero shows off its unique feature—one floor of men between two floors of women—with male-female-male bathroom icons plus the rallying cry, “Viva el Manwich.”

Huh? Award. West Lagunita is either indecisive or confused. The red T-shirt and “Buck Ferkeley” wording get the Big Game juices flowing, but why is Kermit there? (Get it? Kermit the Lag?)

Most Inspirational. Casa Zapata celebrates 30 years with a red T-shirt featuring Emiliano Zapata’s famous quote, “Es mejor morir de pie que vivir de rodillas” (“It is better to die standing than to live on your knees”).

Best Cal-Bashing. Oski has the temerity to relieve himself on a certain redwood on the front of Junipero’s Big Game shirt; on the back, the Tree gets revenge by sitting his big trunk down on a bearskin rug.

Most Coveted. The Suites have always been a sought-after place, and this year’s “Suite Valley High” shirt only adds to the hype. It has the athletic look of many college tees, and dorm staff members’ shirts even say “popular” on the back. Psychology professor Philip Zimbardo has reportedly tried to obtain one.

Best Artwork. Potter’s black tee shows a basic pirate’s map—but wait! Turn out the lights and a trail to the hidden treasure appears. A very positive spin on the fact that these upperclassmen undoubtedly did poorly in the housing draw.

COMMUNICATION

Meet the Deliberative Poll

MODERATOR: “Do all of you generally believe [the United States] did not have, with the exception of Great Britain, the support of the world?”

Respondent: “Well, France has always been one of those who have turned their nose up at the U.S.”

The exchange came not in the early weeks of the war in Iraq, but back in early December. A dozen people—part of a larger group of 280 randomly selected individuals—were talking about when nations are justified in using military force. But instead of sitting together in a conference room, they were speaking up from their own homes in the first-ever online, voice-based “deliberative poll.”

“Typically, the New York Times or a survey organization will call and ask how you feel about X, Y or Z,” communication professor Shanto Iyengar says about the tiresome interruptions that often come at dinnertime. Not so with the Deliberative Poll. It was developed and trademarked by James Fishkin, a professor of government at the University of Texas-Austin who created a face-to-face version of the poll 10 years ago. Fishkin, who joins the Stanford communication department in July, has shown that when people have an opportunity to learn about and discuss issues before being questioned, their answers are different from a control group’s off-the-cuff responses.

Iyengar, who works on harnessing technology to stimulate political interest, came up with the idea of taking deliberative polling online. He and Fishkin wanted to study a representative national sample, which meant they needed to bridge the digital divide. “We took people who were in the ‘have-not’ category, who didn’t have Internet access, and gave them fully equipped computers and taught them how to use the software,” Iyengar says.

All participants received nonpartisan briefing materials designed by the Kettering Foundation and the National Issues Forums Institute. They then met in an online chat room twice a week for an hour each time. At the end of the six-week cyberdiscussion, 60 percent said they supported the protection of human rights in other countries, compared with 49 percent at the outset. The proportion who supported protecting weaker nations against aggression rose from 56 to 68 percent.

When computers become as widespread as televisions, Iyengar says, the online poll could be powerful. “It’s clear that if you want people to become more involved in their communities and take a more active role in society, this is a wonderful tool for doing that.”

Campus Notebook

Here Comes the Class of 2007

With dean of admission and financial aid Robin Mamlet sending out the remaining 1,653 offers of admission in late March, the 597 members of the Class of 2007 admitted by early decision now have a sense of who their classmates will be. For the second straight year, more than half of those admitted are members of minority groups. Also up are the number of countries from which students hail (60-plus), the number of high schools represented (1,344) and the percentage of students from California (nearly 40). About the only thing down: percentage of applicants accepted, which dropped to 12.1.

For Commencement Speaker, Peru’s President

When Alejandro Toledo was elected president of Peru in 2001, it marked the culmination of his rise from poverty to become his homeland’s first leader of Indian descent. His story caught the attention of the Class of 2003 presidents, who recommended him as a top choice for Commencement speaker to University President John Hennessy. Toledo, MA ’72, MA ’74, PhD ’93, will take the podium at Stanford Stadium on June 15. “The choice of President Toledo at a time when international events are at such a critical juncture will set the stage for an important and meaningful address,” Hennessy says.

Relocating Students to Prepare for SARS

At press time, no one in the Stanford community had been diagnosed with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. But that hasn’t stopped the disease from affecting the eight undergraduates living in the Governor’s Corner cottages near Lake Lagunita. In early April, the students were relocated so the cottages could be used as isolation units for SARS patients. Stanford took the precautionary action after officials in Santa Clara County—which has seven suspected SARS cases—requested increased vigilance from the medical community. The students, who were initially notified by e-mail and were given eight days to move, expressed frustration to administrators. But their predicament, unlike SARS, may have a cure: the University will consider giving each one an extra preferred year in the housing draw.

Toyon Bids Farewell to Its RF

Toyon Hall residents mourned the loss of their resident fellow, Rolf Faste, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and the director of the product design program, who died of esophageal cancer March 6 at 59. “Rolf taught us how to drive stick shift, to build model yachts, to draw stick figures, to unlock the magic of brain gym, to map minds,” wrote Toyon resident assistant Payal Dalal, ’03, in the Stanford Daily. “He relentlessly protected our right to throw campus parties and bought the dorm every available kind of chocolate during finals week.” An obituary will appear in the next issue of STANFORD.

Head of the Class

MENTOR COMMENDED: Electrical engineering professor Robert Gray received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring for his efforts in recruiting and supporting women in engineering. Twelve of the 42 doctoral students Gray has supervised during his 33-year Stanford career have been women.

WRITE STUFF: International relations major and Stanford Daily staffer Vauhini Vara, ’04, was selected as the first Daniel Pearl Memorial Journalism Intern and will work in an overseas bureau of the Wall Street Journal this summer. The internship commemorates the life and work of Pearl, ’85, a Journal reporter who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan in 2002.

ENGINEERING ACCOLADES: Computer science and electrical engineering professor Hector Garcia-Molina, MS ’75, MS ’77, PhD ’79, received one of engineering’s top professional distinctions in February when he was elected to the National Academy of Engineers. Stanford’s 82nd academy member was honored for his research in distributed information systems. The academy awarded its 2003 Draper Prize to emeritus aeronautics and astronautics professor Bradford Parkinson, PhD ’66, and fellow GPS pioneer Ivan Getting.

Survey Says

WHAT’S THAT ABOUT CAL? More than 4 percent of dorm residents’ passwords are easily guessed, according to a Stanford pilot study. Some highlights, according to Ced Bennett, director of information security services: “user,” “beatcal” and “four-letter-word-cal.”

GIVING PEACE A CHANCE: Thirty-two alumni are serving as Peace Corps volunteers, which puts Stanford 10th among medium-sized schools. Historically, more than 1,280 Stanford graduates have volunteered in 105 different countries.

ETHNIC STUDIES

'Journeys in Search of Knowledge'

THIS YEAR’S spring-break destination: Belize.

But it wasn’t just for snorkeling or touring Mayan ruins. The two dozen students on the academic expedition had just finished a course called African and Native American Peoples in Belize and Beyond, where they learned about the 18th-century shipwrecked Nigerians and West Africans who intermarried with so-called “yellow Caribes,” lost pitched battles to the British and were exiled to Central America’s Mosquito Coast.

“For so many students, their conception of black culture is what they see on TV,” says linguistics professor John Rickford. “We want them to have a conception of the diversity and richness of black people the world over—to take them out of their Stanford seats and into the larger world, and set their imaginations working.”

And so Rickford has been captaining what he likes to call “journeys in search of knowledge” since 1998, when he became chair of the African and African American Studies (AAAS) program. With dozens of AAAS majors and minors, he has visited the isolated Gullah-speaking peoples of South Carolina’s Sea Islands and trekked to remote mountain settlements in Jamaica—all with a nod to the late professor St. Clair Drake, an anthropologist who traveled to Africa in the 1960s and co-founded the Stanford program in 1969, in response to student demands. “He saw in Africa a link not just with past history, but with nations that were coming into being, searching for their own identities, conquering their own destinies,” Rickford says.

Today’s program graduates about a dozen students each year; hundreds more enroll in its courses. Recently named one of five “highly regarded” black-studies programs in the nation by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, AAAS has diverged from the focus on history and literature that is typical at many schools. Instead, says Rickford, it aims to stake out a “broader view,” drawing on the expertise of faculty in psychology, linguistics and law.

The broad scope of the program raises a dilemma: “How applied should [the program] be?” Rickford asks. “It’s fine to go back and learn about ancient African civilizations, but all around us, students are failing [school] at significant rates and communities are plagued with problems of police persecution and drugs. So to what extent should we be addressing issues of practical concern in education and criminal justice and political representation?”

To consider those and other questions, Stanford hosted a daylong pedagogy workshop in late April for faculty from more than a dozen campuses. “We saw it as a real roll-up-your-sleeves workshop,” Rickford says. “It was all, ‘What books do you use? What problems do you have? What works best and what bombs completely?’ ”

Spring-break learning expeditions, it appears, work quite well.

LECTURE HALL

Water, Water Everywhere—and Lots of Kinds to Drink

AS STUDENTS SIPPED samples from Dixie cups, their comments didn’t quite have the ring of a sophisticated wine tasting.

“I guess I’d brush my teeth in it.”

“It has kind of a weird aftertaste, like a swimming pool.”

“Yow—toss it.”

The 10 undergraduates enrolled in Geophysics 104: The Water Course were tasting water from around the world—and, as it turned out, from their own hometowns. Junior Molly Meyer, for example, should’ve known what was in bottle No. 13. When the wrapping was removed, the flask was revealed to have come from her father, along with a carefully hand-lettered label: “Indiana Water Company tap water. Collectors Vintage. Rare. Aged for enjoyment since 2/15/03.”

The point of the exercise? To experience how geological factors like “residence time” control the chemistry, and therefore the taste, of water. Rainwater that moves rapidly through rivers and lakes, for example, has a very different taste from water trapped in the ground for hundreds or thousands of years. “The longer the rock and water react, the more the chemistry of the water is going to be changed by the chemistry of the rock,” says geophysics professor Rosemary Knight.

The hands-down winner in Knight’s class this year was bottled water from Fiji’s volcanic highlands, voted both “soft” and “refreshing.” Runners-up included vapor-distilled water with added electrolytes, groundwater from the granitic Sierra and glacier water from Canada. The nastiest? Las Vegas tap water.

Knight, PhD ’85, a specialist in geophysical imaging, designed the course to attract undergraduates who might not otherwise be inclined to take a class in geophysics. “And how do you get an English major to perk up and pay attention when you’re talking about satellite measurements or reflected infrared radiation?” she asks. “By making that information relevant to something that’s important to her, which is where her water comes from.”

In fact, that’s the goal for the quarter: plotting the course of hometown water, from precipitation to tap. After learning how to analyze data from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Environmental Protection Agency, students zero in on the water sources for their localities, including Los Angeles, Mexico City, Tulsa, New Orleans and San Jose. They determine what percentage of land covering in their hometowns is forest or pavement, then figure out how much precipitation winds up in the ground and what it all means in terms of domestic, agricultural and industrial water use. The end product? Information posted on the class website that can be downloaded by, say, junior Danielle Murray’s local water district in Waterbury, Vt.

Although there’s no math requirement for the course, students tend to have strong backgrounds in calculus and linear algebra, which come in handy as they construct models of water storage and evapotranspiration. Learning to quantify a system as complicated as the hydrologic cycle is “incredibly empowering,” Knight says. “It makes them realize that math does work, and they learn that they can sit down, do an analysis and actually be in a position to say something quantitative about long-term water supply in their hometowns.”

Sophomore Kenny Dixon saw immediate real-world applications from his study of the Raymond Basin Aquifer in Pasadena, Calif., which relies heavily on imported water. Before he took Knight’s course, he hadn’t heard about activists’ proposal to tear out concrete channels that alter the natural flow of the Arroyo Seco River. But Dixon now understands that it can be done without causing floods and that the resulting river and creek beds would provide habitat for several endangered species. “I thought to myself, ‘That’s the kind of work I’d eventually like to do,’” he says.

Research for term papers takes students farther afield. Senior Annie Kellough studied China’s Three Gorges Project, and sophomore Kelly Grijalva learned about desalination in Saudi Arabia and the overall scarcity of water in the Middle East. Meyer, who helped install a gray-water toilet system at a Buddhist monastery near Carmel, Calif., last summer, says she’d like to find a job where she could “help the environment and other people.”

That’s what Knight loves to hear. “They’re going to do all sorts of amazing things in their lives,” she says. “Ideally, you would like them to leave Stanford with a higher level of what I call geoliteracy—an understanding of how the Earth works.”

STUDENT LIFE

Reaping the Rewards of Community Farming

JUST PAST THE blossoming plum trees, a blue heron is stalking a pesky ground squirrel. Close by the raised beds of onions, farm cats Hecate and Gray Kitty are also wiggling for a pounce.

Spring is in the air and sprouting from the mulch as students chop down cover crops and turn them into the soil in preparation for planting down on the Stanford Community Farm. During the winter, they harvested leeks, kale, broccoli and lettuce; and come summer, they’ll be delivering squash, peas and heirloom tomatoes to members of community-supported agriculture.

“It’s a subscription program that Stanford faculty, staff and community people can join,” says junior Pepper Yelton, one of three student farm managers. “You become a member and support the farm, and we give you a crate of fresh vegetables and fruits every week.” The 40 residents of the campus co-op Chi Theta Chi, for example, pay the farm a collective membership fee of $160 at the beginning of the summer and receive fresh produce through early fall.

Yelton, who has worked summers on an organic farm in Mendocino County, heard about the Stanford farm in her freshman year and has been hanging out there ever since. In season, she makes the trek daily to the one-acre site near the horse stables to help tend 32 communally managed student plots. There’s always a posted list of jobs to be done—“weed out 1M bed so leeks can grow, mix in two wheelbarrows of compost mulch with straw”—but Yelton also goes for the ambience. “It’s such a wonderful place to get away from Stanford and be out in the sun,” she says. “I just like taking care of my little plants.”

Senior Becca Hall, who rooms with Yelton in one of the off-campus Dead Houses, grew up playing in her mom’s organic garden and has worked on farms from Seattle to upstate New York. As a student manager, she helps teach workshops on water conservation and composting—and also flies high on a swing that hangs from a nearby oak. “One of the things I love about the farm is that when you come out here, your mindset just changes and you can release all of the pressure and stress of school,” she says.

This quarter, Yelton, Hall and sophomore Abby Hall also are co-teaching a one-credit course at the farm, Community Agriculture, to 20 students. “We cover issues like soil science, local school gardens and biointensive methods of farming,” says Abby Hall (no relation to Becca). Class sponsor Suki Hoagland, associate director of the interdisciplinary program in environment and resources, will give a talk about sustainable agriculture in developing countries, and farm coordinator Drew Harwell will speak on the subject of permaculture. Harwell keeps the farm running year-round as he prepares the compost piles, waters seedlings and maintains records of plantings, and he’s now talking with Pamela Matson, dean of the School of Earth Sciences, about using the farm as a multidisciplinary laboratory.

Last year, the three managers collected material for compost from the Ricker Dining Center in Governor’s Corner, but now that the University dining halls collectively deliver their food scraps to an off-campus composter, the students make weekly stops at several smaller eateries on campus, including Olives@Building 160 and the Cantor Arts Center’s Cool Cafe. The resulting “black gold” is spread among the communal plots, and sometimes there’s a bit left over for student, faculty and staff gardeners who have their own individual flower and vegetable gardens on the site. “Some of the private-plot people are really intense,” Yelton says, pointing to an orderly array of roses. “They’re out here all the time—it’s cool.”

This spring, the farm managers are transplanting the seedlings they‘ve tended all winter in the greenhouse, and hoping that their favorites make it, including a rainbow of tomato plants—Early Girl, Brandywine, Green Zebra and Pruden’s Purple. There’s also a new herb garden under way, with rosemary, lavender, thyme and yarrow competing for sweetest aura.

It’s fitting, after all, at a place called the Farm.

For more: www.stanford.edu/group/scfarm/

What You Don't Know About Memorial Church

WHEN THE UNIVERSITY’S first chaplain, the Rev. Charles Gardner, dedicated Memorial Church on a Sunday morning 100 years ago, Stanford began what he called “a unique experiment.”

“No less an experiment than this: to test whether a nonsectarian church can minister to the spiritual needs of a great university,” Gardner said.

Since then, MemChu has been a source of solace and inspiration for hundreds of thousands of worshipers, a center for student religious life, a sanctuary in times of trouble, an admired architectural wonder, a popular backdrop for photographs and a very busy wedding venue. Church docent Susan Christiansen, ’60, MA ’61, and University archivist Maggie Kimball, ’80, helped us excavate some peculiar details from its history.

A Vatican blessing. Pope Leo XIII gave special permission to Venetian tilemakers Salviati & Co. to reproduce The Last Supper fresco from the Sistine Chapel for a Memorial Church mosaic.

Is nothing sacred? Cal students commemorated the opening of the church in their 1903 Blue & Gold yearbook with their own version of a stained-glass window—featuring a scarecrow wearing a Stanford sweatshirt and flanked by vultures.

They don’t make them like this anymore. A team of 10 men spent two years on scaffolds carving the ornate stone arches and borders inside the church.

Mary and Joseph . . . and Sally and Billy. The faces of the cherubs at the top of the sanctuary’s sandstone columns were modeled on children of faculty and staff who lived on campus during the church’s construction.

I do, I do, I do, I do, I do . . . On February 22, 1903, Ethel Rhodes and William Holt, members of the Class of 1902, became the first couple to wed in the church. There have been more than 6,000 since.

Heavenly host. An early fresco (later replaced by today’s dome skylight) included a large eye—“the eye of God”—looking down on the chancel.

No stone left unturned. The church was completely disassembled after heavy damage from the 1906 earthquake. Pieces were individually numbered and labeled, and reconstruction began two years later, but the work wasn’t finished until 1916. The 80-foot steeple that collapsed in the earthquake was never replaced.

To each her own. In 1966, after a two-year advocacy campaign by the Stanford Daily, trustees approved sectarian worship services in the church on a trial basis. In order to make the measure permanent, the University had to go to court to overturn a 1902 amendment to the Founding Grant in which Jane Stanford strictly forbade “all denominational alliances.” The Sunday 10 a.m. service remains ecumenical.

A peaceful place. In a 1994 address, the Dalai Lama stressed the need for “global community and universal responsibility.” He is one of several Nobel Peace Prize winners who have spoken at the church.

It sounds divine. The Baroque-style Fisk-Nanney organ, located in the choir loft, is considered one of the best in the world. Number of pipes: 4,422.

Try explaining that one to the dean. The church’s stained-glass windows have survived two major earthquakes, a century’s worth of storms and periods of campus unrest that included rock-throwing protesters. Only one window has ever been damaged—during a game of Frisbee golf.