How SCoPE 2035 Became the most Powerful Activist Group on Campus

Stanford politics magazine DECEMBER 2018 | ISSUE 06 STANFORDPOLITICS.ORG

“If I [were] Stanford, I would be threatened by us.”

HOW SCOPE 2035 BECAME THE MOST POWERFUL ACTIVIST GROUP ON CAMPUS

RELIGION IN AMERICA • PROP 47 • CHINA’S ISLAM POLICY

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EDITOR’S NOTE A little under a year and a half ago, we at Stanford Politics released our first magazine. The day before sending our first issue to print, I, a sophomore who had never laid out more than a few pages of her high school newspaper, worked diligently through the night alongside then-incoming editor in chief Ruairí Arrieta-Kenna to make the impossible possible. Although we were only two people, we managed to design, lay out, copy edit, and nearly perfect a 56-page magazine with little more than the help of a few friends. When the magazine was finally released, we were exhausted but proud.

This year, I’m excited to step into the role of editor in chief to continue to help this publication improve and grow.

Although we’ve only been printing for about a year now, our magazines have come to define us. They contain some of the most in-depth, longform journalism at Stanford. They are beautiful, if we do say so ourselves. And they feature thoughtful and original commentary on local, national and international politics.

I’m proud to say that this issue does just that. Our cover story discusses the efforts and trajectory of one of the most powerful activist groups on campus: the Stanford Coalition for Planning an Equitable 2035. We also have two pieces written by new staff writers, both of whom are freshmen—one regarding California Proposition 47 and the other about the Uighur and Hui Muslims in China. Lastly, our magazine director, Nathalie Kiersznowski, has published her first piece for Stanford Politics: an analysis of the relationship between religious thought and political action in American society. Although this magazine has no theme, it is emblematic of exactly what Stanford Politics stands for: high-quality, well-researched, comprehensive journalism from all sides of the political spectrum.

While putting these magazines together is still no easy task, I’m happy to say that we now have a team. Our writers, editors, and graphic designers have all worked tirelessly to make this issue possible, and their efforts cannot be understated. But the success and significance of our work depends on you, our readers.

Please read, share and discuss our content. As Ruairí once wrote: “Quality journalism is only as good as it informs the public.”

Daniela González Editor-in-Chief

MASTHEAD EDITOR IN CHIEF DANIELA GONZÁLEZ

MANAGING EDITOR JAKE DOW

CHIEF OF STAFF HARRISON BRONFELD

MAGAZINE DIRECTOR NATHALIE KIERSZNOWSKI

SENIOR EDITORS EMILY KATZ JULIAN WATROUS ASSISTANT EDITORS ALLIE DOW SIERRA MACIOROWSKI

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER LANDON ELLINGSON COPY EDTORS NATHAN LEE REBECCA SMALBACH NICHOLAS WELCH AMBER YANG

GRAPHIC DESIGN LORENA DIOSDADO LENA HAN NOEL MARTINEZ-AMADOR EMILY O’NEAL DANIEL WU

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CONTENTS

LEAVING RELIGION AT HOME

Engaging Religious Thought and Action in American Society NATHALIE KIERSZNOWSKI

“IF I [WERE] STANFORD, I WOULD BE THREATENED BY US” How SCoPE 2035 Became the Most Powerful Activist Group on Campus

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ROXY BONAFONT & EMILY LEMMERMAN

SECOND CHANCES

The Enduring Empathy of Prop 47

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KYLE WANG

CHINA’S PUZZLING ISLAM POLICY WILSON LIANG

ABOUT THE AUTHORS OF THE COVER STORY Roxy Bonafont is a sophomore and prospective English major and political science minor. Her interests include modernist literature, political and ethical philosophy, and folksy music.

Emily Lemmerman is a senior studying sociology with minors in data science and African & African-American studies. Her interests are at the intersection between the ethics of algorithms and racial/ economic justice. She also likes to paint.

All in-text references are cited online at stanfordpolitics.org.

Stanford Politics is a student publication at Stanford University. All views expressed in the magazine are those of the authors and interviewees only and do not represent the views of Stanford University. Copyright © 2018 by Stanford Political Journal. All rights reserved. No original article or portion herein is to be reproduced or adapted to other works without the expressed written consent of the editor of Stanford Politics.

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LEAVING RELIGION AT HOME

Engaging Religious Thought and Action in American Society

NATHALIE KIERSZNOWSKI

KARL FREDRICKSON

RELIGION

“The goal is to reach consensus about conclusions, but not necessarily consensus about the reasons for the conclusions.”

Garry Gutter, New York Times

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t an Oxford University conference on human dignity held earlier this year, Dr. Paul Fiddes, a professor of systematic theology, presented his thesis on the role religion should play in social and political arenas. In the speech, Professor Fiddes argued that it was unethical for individuals to bring their private religious beliefs into the public sphere. He advocated for the adoption of secular public arenas as a response to increasingly multicultural societies. As the West becomes more religiously diverse, he argued, adherence to purely secular social behaviors in public would reduce cultural tension and create increasingly peaceful societies.

Dr. Fiddes also contended it was culturally offensive to bring religious beliefs into public affairs, as not every member of society shares these values. Sitting in the audience, I grew increasingly unsettled by the professor’s speech; faces in the audience, though, seemed unvexed and inattentive. The room’s complete lack of recoil spoke volumes. This perspective was not bewildering: this was the West’s new normal.

As the conference came to an end, the professor’s words remained a point of internal conflict. Was this a justifiable request to ask of people, to separate their private religious beliefs from their public action? And did Fiddes’ thesis further substantiate America’s historic call for the separation of the private church and public state, or miss the mark altogether? Contrary to Dr. Fiddes’ proposition, separating religious beliefs from public action is an impossible and unnecessary burden. Rather than shunning religion from public environments, Americans should adopt the practice of cross-cultural religious literacy when engaging with religion in public. The secularization of public spaces ultimately conceals, rather than reduces, societal friction.

EXPECTATIONS IN THE WEST: LET’S LEAVE RELIGION AT HOME After declaring independence from a country whose leader was both the head of state and the head of the church, the American Founding Fathers ensured their Constitution included provisions to prevent religion from dominating government at an institutional

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level. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment explicitly ensures that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” and Article Six of the Constitution also specifies that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

While the Constitution restricts religious jurisdiction, it does not support a strict separatist view of church-state relations. Unlike some European policies of state secularization, like France’s Laïcité, American law does not prohibit religion from influencing the public arena. A strict separatist stance on religion and the public state is contradictory to the First Amendment’s protection of the practice of religion and freedom of speech. The Constitution ultimately restricts religion from impacting government at an institutional, not personal, level; it does not prohibit individual politicians, academics or public figures from incorporating religious views into their leadership roles and decision making.

Nearly 60 percent of Americans believe Congress is too influenced by religious beliefs.

Today, this institutional religious tolerance is starting to wilt.

America is experiencing a social shift to the religious separatist standards more common in Europe. A 2018 study conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that the majority of Americans believe religion should have no influence in policymaking. Nearly 60 percent of Americans believe Congress is too influenced by religious belief. Just four years ago, 60 percent of Americans polled during the 2014 midterm elections said that it was “important for members of Congress to have strong religious beliefs.” What accounts for this stark change in national opinion? Much of it may be attributed to the growing distaste of religion on both sides of the political spectrum. The left has clashed with Evangelical America over LGBTQ and reproductive rights issues, while President’s Trump campaign rhetoric highlighted a parallel distrust of Islam amongst the far right.

American distrust of religious influence goes beyond the political arena. Several years ago, former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow

RELIGION habitually wrote Bible verses on his eyeblack during football games.

The verse he used during the 2009 College Football National Championship was searched on Google over 90 million times in 24 hours, sparking nationwide debate. Significant backlash from fans and media outlets forced the league to create a new rule banning players from writing on their faces, nicknamed “The Tebow Rule.”

This backlash did not derive from animosity toward the practice of players writing personal messages on eyeblacks—around the same time, New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush wrote his hometown’s area code under his eyes every game to no reaction. “The Tebow Rule” arose from the belief that Tebow’s explicit advertisement of religion in a public space was unethical. Tebow, according to many in the American public, should have kept religion at home.

Hostile reactions to public displays of religion are not a purely American phenomena, either; they are modern, Western trends.

A judge in Quebec recently refused to hear a Muslim woman’s trial because of her hijab. The judge contended that all religious symbols were inappropriate in that setting, as courts are public environments. Similarly, some cinemas in the UK have refused to show any religious advertisements. Theater directors stated that religious videos are offensive to those who hold opposing beliefs.

Thus, Western countries are increasingly designating public spaces—like courts, theaters or athletic matches—as purely secular arenas. These policies view religion as one dimensional, expecting individuals or groups to “turn off ” their religious selves when necessary. This belief belies the fact that many religious people are unable to discriminate between which areas of life religion should

and should not shape. In addition, attempts to limit the public effects of religious values are largely misdirected and unhelpful.

Benjamin Simon, ’21, a Jewish student at Stanford who has written broadly on the topic of religion for The Stanford Review, sat down to discuss his thoughts on religion in the public. Simon described the intimate relationship between religious thought and public influence: “Religion permeates all aspects of life. Perhaps it would be a mistake to say that Judaism is a “component” of my identity. … My identity is not, for the most part, compartmentalized.

My religious beliefs and practices deeply inform how I live my day-to-day life—who I will date, which parties I will go to, how I spend my free time, etc.—and also how I think about the biggest political and philosophical questions.”

Simon disputes the common belief that religion is a singular identity, able to be “boxed off ” by itself. For many, religion is instead a lens through which all other aspects of life are observed.

Although it would be a mistake to assume every religious American shares Simon’s belief about the extensive personal reach of religion, it is equally naive to presume religion does not shape multiple components of life. People’s beliefs about the world will inevitably influence their positions on issues like morality, politics, dress, gender, sex and more. Similarly, politicians will naturally support legislation in accordance with their values, religious or not. Many politicians, like Vice President Mike Pence, have faced criticism for allowing religion to shape their political decisions. It would be unwarranted, though, to expect Pence to act “un-Christian” or “non-religious” exclusively at his place of work. The notion of hav-

OPEN SPORTS

ABC15 ARIZONA During the 2009 college football championship, Tebow wrote the Bible verse John 3:16 on his eye black. The verse was googled over 90 million times in less than 24 hours.

Vice President Mike Pence is often criticized for regularly including prayer in his rallies and speeches.

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RELIGION ing both a “secular public self ” and a “religious private self ” is impossible: any private value system will influence decisions throughout all areas of life.

CROSS-CULTURAL RELIGOUS LITERACY: A RESPONSE TO AMERICAN PLURALISM How then should a country like the United States engage with its increasingly multicultural society without shunning religion from the public sphere? This question is especially challenging today, as most Americans are failing to engage in meaningful cross-cultural interactions. Americans are more likely than ever to exclusively associate with people similar to them. According to recent statistics from Barna, a research institute on faith and culture, 69 percent of Americans reported that most of their close friends held similar religious views, while 74 percent revealed that their friends were all of the same race. With evangelicals, those numbers jump to 91 percent and 88 percent, respectively. Americans are becoming less willing to cross religious and racial boundaries.

Dr. Chris Seiple, current president of the DC-based Institute for Global Engagement, sat down with me to discuss his thoughts on how diverse countries could improve relations between citizens.

His organization was founded primarily to “help people of faith engage with the world better.” They have conducted work all over the globe, such as helping rescue and restore Middle Eastern Christians to their hometowns after periods of discrimination. In our interview, Seiple emphasized cross-cultural religious literacy as essential for learning how to coexist in multicultural societies. Cross-cultural religious literacy, according to Seiple, involves adopting “humili-

ty in attempts to gain a greater appreciation and understanding” for radically different belief systems than one’s own. His organization has faced criticism from both the American right and left for its work to improve religious relations. According to Seiple, “Republicans accused [him] of supporting ‘blood-thirsty bigots’” when the IGE invited prominent Pakistani politician Mahmud Ali Durrani to the US to spark dialogue about Islam and the West. He also claims that the left has long suspected his organization of “promoting some secret evangelizing mission.”

The notion of having both a “secular public self ” and a “religious private self ” is impossible.

Despite the criticism, Seiple remains confident that engaging in honest and respectful discourse is the best way for societies with diverse religious makeups to thrive. Seiple says he does not trust that “sweeping religious differences under the rug” will improve cross-cultural relationships: “If I’m going to respect you and you’re going to respect me, we can’t have watered down differences,” he argues. “You have to know that the essence of my identity is Christ as a believer, and yours might be Muhammad and the Quran. Once we agree about what the essence of our respective identities is, we can actually engage each other. I have found that practical collaboration actually results faster when there’s that deeper respect for identity.”

Gaining a deep understanding of each other’s religious and cultural

Do you friends generally hold similar religious beliefs as you? of the general

91%

American public responded yes, while...

67%

of American Evangelicals responded yes.

BARNA

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RELIGION

differences, instead of pretending they don’t exist, is ultimately the best way to improve relations in a multicultural society.

Seiple also sat in attendance at the Oxford University conference.

Unsurprisingly, his reaction to the Professor Fiddes’ thesis was less than agreeable. Seiple’s lifelong commitment to religious engagement and literacy largely stems from his belief that a person’s religious values will inevitably impact their public decision making. “I don’t think you can separate religion and politics, belief and behavior. That’s sort of an ignorant assumption,” he says. “Let the beliefs speak for themselves through the actions, and the actions should reflect a common good.” Americans will never agree on the basis of religion or morality; every individual has a unique value system to justify their conception of right and wrong, good and evil. Consequently, we shouldn’t expect every American to speak, act or vote the same in public.

***

The United States of America is a country still heavily influenced by religion. A recent Pew Research Center study found in 2018 that over 77 percent of Americans identified as religious. While some claim that religion should be removed from the public sphere, religion plays an essential role in the identities and beliefs of Americans. It is illogical to expect religiously identifying citizens to adopt separate public personas; religion cannot be pigeonholed into private, hidden sectors of life. Instead of hiding private religious influence from society, Americans should recognize and learn from the many religious influences that shape their fellow citizens. Engaging in honest dialogue allows people to simultaneously disagree

with—yet understand—action stemming from religious belief.

Religious diversity and disagreement will always be an important characteristic of the American story. We can either ignore the existence of these stark differences, or attempt to engage with and learn from our fascinating, complex society.

On the final morning of the conference on Human Dignity, speakers and participants sat in an Oxford dining hall enjoying breakfast together. A young Middle Eastern woman wearing a headscarf took a seat beside Dr. Seiple. While most conference participants naturally shook hands with each other, I marveled at Seiple’s reaction to her. Recognizing that she might feel uncomfortable touching a non-related man, he immediately placed his hand on his right heart, nodded to her, and said, “As-Salaam-Alaikum”—Arabic for, “peace be upon you.” The woman appeared briefly taken aback, perhaps surprised that a Westerner had taken the time to study traditional Islamic greetings. Smiling, she repeated the greeting back to him.

Seiple’s actions are regrettably unique in Western society. In Europe today, some Muslim women have struggled to find high-paying jobs, as they preferred not the shake hands with men they conduct business with. Seiple’s simple, respectful greeting illustrates how easy it would be to begin improving cross-cultural and religious relations in the West. By taking the time to understand another belief system, he had put himself in a position to build greater relationships with strikingly dissimilar people. Religion will always differentiate people in the way they act, think and vote. But, like Seiple illustrates, it doesn’t need to divide us.

Nathalie Kiersznowski, a junior studying political science and economics, is the magazine director of Stanford Politics.

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“IF I [WERE] STANFORD, I WOULD BE THREATENED

BY US”

HOW SCOPE 2035 BECAME THE MOST POWERFUL ACTIVIST GROUP ON CAMPUS

ROXY BONAFONT & EMILY LEMMERMAN

SCOPE 2035

I

t’s a Saturday at Terman Fountain, and the brothers of Delta Tau Delta are pregaming the Stanford football game. Red Solo cups litter the ground around the fountain, and loud music plays from a speaker.

A conspicuously quieter group sits on the edge of the fountain, eating Trader Joe’s cheese puffs and chatting about whether to go to law school or a public policy graduate school. These are the members of the Stanford Coalition for Planning an Equitable 2035 (SCoPE 2035), celebrating a win—two ordinances passed by Santa Clara County which require Stanford to pay up to $182.8 million toward affordable housing over the next 17 years.

SCoPE 2035 is an unusual student group. For the last two years, they have committed hundreds of hours to reading lengthy county environmental reports, carpooling to public comment meetings in San Jose and attending weeknight town hall meetings in Palo Alto. Amulya Yerrapotu ‘20, a “point person” for SCoPE’s advocacy subgroup, describes spending the second day of classes this academic year at a Santa Clara county public meeting in order to witness the approval of county ordinances requiring Stanford to pay a greater development fee. “We were at the boardroom for literally six hours,” she says, grinning.

SCoPE’s voice is being heard—according to Joe Simitian MA ‘00, President of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, the coalition’s public comments are “some of the best testimony [he has] ever heard.” Simitian has served in state and local government for more than 20 years, including time spent as a state assemblymember and state senator, and says SCoPE’s “analysis is rigorous, and when they communicate, they communicate clearly and with impact.” Simitian has noticed that other members of the Board of Supervisors lean in when SCoPE members speak and often mention how impressed they are by the students.

At the core of SCoPE’s work is the belief that Stanford is a bad neighbor. In an Oct. 10 teach-in that the organization hosted to educate the campus community about their policy platform, SCoPE members highlighted Stanford’s size—8,180 acres, roughly a quarter the size of San Francisco—as well as its $26.5 billion endowment. In contrast, they noted that the university has spent, at most, $40 million on affordable housing over the past 20 years. To SCoPE, this number is offensively low.

“We need to think of Stanford as a landlord and a developer,” one SCoPE member said at the teach-in.

As the university seeks a renewed land-use agreement with Santa Clara County, known as a General Use Permit, SCoPE is fighting for regulations that would hold Stanford accountable for its development. The organization argues that Stanford’s continued development will bring harm to a community already suffering a severe housing crisis. The proposed 2018 General Use Permit (GUP) will allow Stanford to build up to 2.275 million net new square feet of academic space, as well

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as 2,600 beds for students and 550 additional units for faculty and staff. For SCoPE, however, the GUP is an opportunity to mitigate the effects of Stanford’s growth and to improve conditions for its employees.

“The fact that [we are] students on campus at a time when Stanford is applying for a new GUP is unique, and most Stanford students don’t have that experience,” SCoPE member Erica Knox ‘16 MS ‘18 said. “It’s one of our only opportunities to give public input where Stanford is required to consider and is influenced by public input and our broader community vision of what Stanford should look like.”

The coalition wants the university to build housing for subcontracted workers and other staff on campus, increase funding for off-campus affordable housing and extend transportation benefits to subcontracted and service workers. Also in the Coalition’s platform is the distribution of the Stanford Affordable Housing Fund to low-income housing development in East Palo Alto, in addition to cities in Santa Clara County. SCoPE urges Santa Clara County to give nine percent yearly from affordable housing fees collected from Stanford— around $27 million total—to East Palo Alto’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund and similarly asks Stanford to give $1 million yearly to East Palo Alto’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

The Bay Area housing crisis, characterized by an unprecedented rise in rents and lack of housing affordable for lowand median-income households, spans the 13-county region.

Professor Miriam Zuk, who directs the Urban Displacement Project at UC Berkeley, has said that as of 2015, 62 percent of low-income households in the region are at risk of displacement or are already experiencing it. Between 2000 and 2013, the number of housing units affordable for low-income households in the Bay Area decreased by half. In Redwood City, the number of households burdened by housing costs—defined as paying 35 percent or more of their income towards housing—increased from 36 percent in 2000 to 59 percent in 2013.

Nearby Redwood City and East Palo Alto have been identified by the Urban Displacement Project as notable areas of “Ongoing Gentrification/Displacement” within the wider context of a gentrifying Bay Area that is displacing low-income residents.

SCoPE regards Stanford as a direct contributor to the housing crisis. As the university develops and brings more faculty, students, administrators, researchers, events and services to campus, it creates demand for service employees who can’t afford to live nearby. Stanford’s development exacerbates the region’s jobs-housing imbalance. Currently, 37 percent of Stanford’s service employees live outside the Bay Area and 35.5 percent commute more than 90 minutes each way to get to campus. When asked why they don’t live closer, 88 percent of workers cited the cost of housing. The new GUP is a rare chance to change this story.

“This is actually an opportunity to do some good in an area that has suffered for a really long time,” Knox said.

SCOPE 2035

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SCoPE members Neel Rao ‘21 and Erica Knox ‘16 MS ‘18 at a protest for on-campus affordable housing during Family Weekend 2018.

he seed for the founding of SCoPE was planted in the spring of 2016. John Zhao ‘18 first heard about the General Use Permit from Peter Drekmeier, an advisor to Students for a Sustainable Stanford and former mayor of Palo Alto. A native of the Bay Area, Zhao was interested in the housing and labor issues addressed by the GUP, as well as the traditional environmental impacts of Stanford’s development.

“I took Michael Kahan’s Gentrification class in the spring,” Zhao said, “and that really shaped how I was thinking about the GUP.” Zhao approached Dan Sakaguchi ‘16 MA ‘18 over the summer about organizing students around social and environmental justice issues related to the GUP. When the duo enrolled in the Housing Justice Research Lab in the fall of 2016, they asked if the project-based class would

be interested in analyzing and advocating for housing justice through Stanford’s development plan. “It felt hard to talk about housing justice without talking about the room we were in,” said Zhao.

Nani Friedman ‘20 was in the class as well and continues to be a core member of SCoPE. Also a Bay Area native, she said that her experience going to high school in Redwood City shaped her strong interest in working on issues of housing policy, gentrification and anti-displacement. At Sequoia High School, Friedman became aware of how her peers and friends were being impacted by the rapid changes and displacement in Redwood City, and says that there was “a very clear difference in experience based on if your family consisted of homeowners or tenants.”

It was important to the early members of SCoPE that the coalition represent voices of those most affected by Stanford’s development, as well as indigenous perspectives and other perspectives from the

Stanford student body. Zhao said that he and Sakaguchi “racked our brain[s] trying to figure out what groups needed to be in the room.” Eventually, they began building a relationship with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 2007, which represents Stanford service workers. They also reached out to leaders of the Ramaytush Ohlone people, who are indigenous to Stanford’s land, as well as the Stanford American Indian Organization, the Filipino-American Student Union, and the Stanford Asian-American Activism Committee, among other groups.

Stewart Hyland, an internal organizer for SEIU involved in the GUP process, said that there is “a really strong alignment” between SCoPE’s platform and that of the union.

“In some ways the students’ demands are a little beyond what the workers’ demands are because workers are kind of used to limitations in life,” Hyland said.

“And I guess it’s just the nature of young-

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SCOPE 2035 er folks to have higher standards. So they actually put a good pressure on what more can be done.”

Sakaguchi and Zhao both described a challenge in leveraging their privilege as Stanford students without claiming absolute ownership over the group, given that they were not members of the communities most impacted by Bay Area displacement.

“Urban planning and planning, in general, is a process that is maybe by

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design … very technical, very abstract, not designed to be accessible,” Sakaguchi said.

In order to strike a balance, SCoPE found its place as a coalition. The coalition works closely with SEIU to center the voices of those most impacted while also using their privilege as Stanford students to decipher complex planning documents and to be taken seriously at public comment meetings. Still, the coalition often wondered how to speak out, using tech-

n a Monday night in October, SCoPE gathers in the lounge at El Centro Chicano y Latino.

It’s their first general meeting since hosting a public “teach-in” to educate the Stanford community on the General Use Permit and housing justice, and they have attracted a handful of new recruits.

Almost 20 students are present, nestled against cushions with computers perched on their laps, listening as Matt Nissen ‘20 updates the group on the past week’s news: the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, in an Oct. 16 meeting, determined that it would not pursue a Development Agreement unless Stanford’s offer exceeded the terms currently required by the two ordinances. Moving forward, he says, the “next big thing” will be a vote on the final Environmental Impact Report in December, followed ultimately by a conclusive late-June vote on the GUP. SCoPE’s campaign is in the final stretch: the county is “really set on finishing” the GUP process, Nissen says, and the matter will largely be settled within the 2018-2019 academic year. Before launching into the meeting, the group pauses to make sure new members are all familiar with the relevant nomenclature of housing development, explaining terms like GUP, DA, and ordinances.

Joining SCoPE, Eva Reyes ‘22 told Stanford Politics, can initially appear “formidable.”

“It seems so esoteric and technical,” Reyes said.

The level of expertise the students of SCoPE command is startling. They’re well-versed in 500-page legal documents, and can recall numbers off the tops of their heads in conversation. But most current core members are relatively new, and many joined in the spring or summer of 2018, as founding members with more experience graduated and stepped back from the organization. David Yosuico ‘20 became involved in early July 2018 and, after being brought up to speed by SCoPE co-founder Dan Sakaguchi, is now the “point-person” for the team’s policy subgroup.

“I guess it was pretty fast,” Yosuico acknowledged.

The minutiae of land-use politics are undeniably complex.

Students readily admitted to Stanford Politics when they found

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nical language, on issues in Stanford’s General Use Permit without speaking over residents of East Palo Alto and other localities who offered personal stories and anecdotes at public comment meetings.

“They’re curious about learning more, so they engage us and the workers, too,” Hyland said, “which is not something Stanford’s necessarily known for in communities of color—asking questions as opposed to coming in with answers already.”

GENERAL USE PERMIT A General Use Permit (GUP) is a land-use agreement between a municipality and a developer, establishing the amount, as well as the kind of development (i.e. establishing guidelines for residential vs. academic vs. commercial development). A GUP also takes into account an environmental impact report (EIR) by the county, which assesses both traditional environmental impacts such as air, water and sound pollution, and also impacts in terms of housing, traffic and public services, including schools.

Stanford’s last application for a GUP was in 2000 when it applied to build 2,035,000 net square feet of new academic space, 2,000 student housing units, 350 new housing units for postdoctoral fellows and medical residents and 668 net new housing units for faculty and staff. The university also applied to build 2,300 new parking spaces in addition to the existing 19,351 spaces. All current construction on campus is under the 2000 GUP. The 2018 GUP, which Stanford initially applied for in November 2016, asks to develop up to 2.275 million net new square feet of academic space. Additionally, the GUP asks to develop 2,600 new on-campus beds for students and 550 faculty and staff units, as well as up to 40,000 square feet of child care centers and other “trip-reducing facilities” to provide faculty and staff more services on campus.

SCOPE 2035 a detail to be confusing, and Yosuico said that in some ways he is “still learning.” But the momentum of their predecessors’ mission, coupled with what Reyes referred to as a “stocked” Google Drive folder of introductory documents, has allowed relatively new members to continue the campaign without missing a beat.

Nissen, who joined in the spring of 2018, told Stanford Politics he was “very impressed by the resilience of SCoPE.” “It’s interesting to be a part of that process, being the new generation of SCoPE, picking up the reins, especially in the final mile,” Nissen said.

As SCoPE gears up for this final mile, its five component subgroups work to advance the campaign from different angles. Members become involved in either the policy, direct action, media, advocacy, or partnerships subgroups. Their work ranges from combing through county documents to holding rallies, which makes the organization uniquely comprehensive among campus activist groups.

“Other groups will often stage a rally or protest or something, which is all well and good, and it’s important to have those, but it doesn’t necessarily bring about action,” Nissen said. “I think what I really like about SCoPE is it does both. We have the public awareness … but we also try to find an avenue to work through our policy proposals and talk to the county and get actual change done.”

Those policy proposals are outlined in SCoPE’s official platform—a detailed, 15-page document posted to the group’s website. Reyes has been involved with other campus activist groups in the past, and said that meeting with administrators often tests the strength and clarity of a campaign. She learned that university officials would “try to do anything in their power to take what you came and brought them and completely shift it into something they wanted.”

“It’s easy for admin to sideline you and make you burn out faster if you don’t have set goals that you’re working towards,” Reyes said.

SCOPE 2035

SCoPE members Erica Knox ‘16 MS ‘18 and John Zhao ‘18 lead a walking tour during Family Weekend 2018.

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SCOPE 2035

S

CoPE’s relationship with the university is unusual.

The organization rarely interacts with the administration directly, focusing instead on pushing for legal change on a county level. The consensus within the group is that the university will not make a meaningful contribution toward affordable housing unless it is forced to, and therefore informal negotiations will not be productive. But Stanford is very interested in SCoPE: multiple members recalled university administrators, including Director of Government and Community Relations Lucy Wicks, showing up to SCoPE events unannounced. According to several SCoPE members, Wicks attended last year’s teach-in. Wicks reportedly actively participated in the teach-in and advocated on behalf of the university; afterward, she approached SCoPE members with concerns that some of their statistics were outdated.

Administrators have not attended any SCoPE events so far this year. Reyes said the encounter at last year’s teach-in was unlike anything she’d experienced with other campus activ-

ist groups, as she believes administrators feel the university is “threatened” by SCoPE. “If I [were] Stanford, I would be threatened by us,” Reyes said.

“Because it’s not like a regular group networking with admin and admin has the final say—the county has the final say on what Stanford does.”

A university spokesperson told Stanford Politics in an email that administrators “have heard and understand SCoPE 2035’s areas of interest regarding the 2018 General Use Permit.”

“Stanford staff have met directly with students in the SCoPE group several times and we welcome their participation in this process,” the spokesperson wrote. “We will continue to stay engaged with them and other organizations and groups that have an interest in the future of Stanford as the 2018 General Use Permit proceeds.”

University administrators declined to speak more extensively about SCoPE.

GENERAL USE PERMIT TIMELINE Stanford submits its GUP application to the county.

JUNE 2016 Stanford announces it is starting the GUP process.

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NOV. 2016

Affordable housing nexus studies are published.

OCT. 2017 The Draft Environmental Impact Report is published.

APR. 2018

SCOPE 2035

COUNTY ORDINANCES VS. STANFORD’S PROPOSED DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT Total Funds for New Affordable Units

Funds for New Affordable Units per Square Foot

Total Funds Contributed* (Including Value of Housing Subsidy)

* adjusted for net present value, assuming avg. interest rate of 3.9% from $202,214,621 over 17 years.

Stanford submits application for Development Agreement.

JUNE 2018 Recirculated portion of the Draft Environmental Impact Report is issued.

JULY 2018

The Final Environmental Impact Report is published.

SEP. 2018 County passes Affordable Housing Impact Fee and Inclusionary Housing Ordinances.

DEC. 2018

JUNE 2019 The GUP is finalized.

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SCOPE 2035

DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT A Development Agreement (DA) is an agreement between a developer—in this case, Stanford and Santa Clara County. It can be an additional or alternate process to a General Use Permit for land-use agreements, and according to County Supervisor Joe Simitian, General Use Permits are typically utilized over development agreements. Stanford currently has a DA with Redwood City for its development there.

The difference between a DA and a General Use Permit is the amount of community input. A DA would be discussed between Stanford and two members of the board of supervisors, Joe Simitian and Cindy Chavez, with limited public input. The Board of Supervisors decided that the public would know what the contents of such an agreement were two weeks before it was voted on.

On July 17, 2018, Stanford filed an application for a DA with the county. Such an agreement would lock in county regulations throughout Stanford’s development as outlined in the GUP and could rescind the two ordinances. In exchange, however, the university is expected to voluntarily provide “community benefits” to mitigate its development.

In its proposal, Stanford stated that it would be willing to provide 200 affordable housing units, 100 of which would be reserved for staff, and that it was prepared to front-load the creation of these units early in the development process. The university also proposed contributing $14.3 million to a county affordable housing fund and an additional $21.7 million to an “evergreen fund” that would support affordable housing projects. In particular, the university emphasized in its proposal that the immediacy with which these benefits could be provided would adequately meet the county’s expectations for mitigation.

“Under traditional ordinances, provision of affordable housing would be completely dependent on the pace of Stanford’s growth,” Stanford’s DA proposal states. “By contrast, through a Development Agreement, Stanford would commit to affordable housing benefits up front without regard to the timing of its future growth, and Stanford would commit to provide a substantial portion of these benefits on its land.”

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S

tanford has made abundantly clear, especially in recent months, that it finds much of SCoPE’s platform excessively demanding. Catherine Palter, Stanford’s Associate Vice President for Land Use and Environmental Planning, said in an interview with Stanford News that the University is and “will continue to be a leader” in building affordable housing.

“But we must do so in a manner that keeps our focus on our academic mission and preserves our core campus for future generations,” Palter said. She also noted that Stanford knows of “no other employer in the region that has constructed more employee housing.”

The argument that Stanford is unfairly targeted by the county was repeated in a letter the university sent to the county in July 2018, which threatened to sue if the Affordable Housing Impact Fee and Inclusionary Housing Ordinances were passed. The letter calls the ordinances “unlawful” and claims that they unfairly single out Stanford among all other developers in the region. The county passed the ordinances anyway, in late September 2018.

Now, the university is pursuing a different angle to avoid the ordinances: a Development Agreement with the county, which, if successful, would replace current regulations (see sidebar).

“WE ARE IN AN UNPRECEDENTED HOUSING CRISIS.” Stanford proposed a DA in July 2018 and outlined the voluntary contributions they were prepared to make toward affordable housing, known as “community benefits.” The university emphasized in their proposal that much of these benefits could be front-loaded, which increases their value. However, an analysis done by the county found that, even accounting for the higher value of benefits that are provided earlier, Stanford’s proposal in total falls $75 million short of the contributions required under the Affordable Housing Impact Fee and the Inclusionary Housing Ordinances. The Board of Supervisors noted this discrepancy in an Oct. 16 hearing and determined that the current DA proposal does not provide any “community benefits.”

Palter told Stanford Politics that the sizeable shortfall—more than 40 percent of the $169 million (adjusted for net present value) required by the ordinances—represented the county’s “initial calculation.”

“We didn’t really have a time before that hearing to do our own calculations to see if we agree,” Palter said. “But I think that’s part of the discussion, is how does the value of providing upfront housing get incorporated into this discussion. They gave some initial thoughts about that, and I think that’s going to be part of our continued conversation.”

SCOPE 2035

INCREASING WORKER POPULATION AT STANFORD 2018 2035

To Knox, the current DA proposal “feels like a similar pattern.”

“Stanford is trying to undercut the amount of things that they could do as far as mitigating impact with housing and transportation,” Knox said.

However, as much as the ordinances were a win for SCoPE, some members acknowledge that, at least in theory, a DA could address community needs with greater immediacy.

“We are in an unprecedented housing crisis,” Yerrapotu said.

“We can talk about the economics of what is ideal, but if we wait too long, there won’t be anyone left to fight for.”

The County Board of Supervisors has informed Stanford that it will not enter into a DA that offers less than what the ordinances currently require. Palter told Stanford Politics that the university would still like to pursue a DA, but Yosuico isn’t convinced.

“It’s going to be a really short timeline,” Yosuico said. “The county is getting tired of this GUP. They want to move it through, they already have conditions of approval.”

A Development Agreement could not be voted on until after the final Environmental Impact Review, which is scheduled for December 2018. Stanford, according to Palter, does not yet have an updated DA. Since the county plans on finalizing the General Use Permit in June 2019, Stanford may not be able to make a deal with the county in time.

“A

n institution like this—that has so much money and wields so much power and influence—shouldn’t be able to just unilaterally make decisions and do things, or wield the power that it does over the people that it does,” Nissen said, when asked why he’s a part of SCoPE. “And there should be some sort of push back against that.”

On the question of whether SCoPE is a check on Stanford’s power, Nissen said, “[We] would hope to be,” and laughed.

Power—who has it, who doesn’t, and what it looks like—is the

issue at the core of a debate that can quickly become obfuscated and alienating in its own complexity. Stanford’s threat to sue the county over the Affordable Housing Impact Fee and the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance was written by Barbara Schussman of Perkins Coie LLP, a law firm which counts Google, Microsoft, and Amazon among its clients. SCoPE sees Stanford, like these tech companies, as a force that contributes to, and should be held responsible for mitigating the housing crisis in the Bay Area. At a teach-in this year, SCoPE members emphasized Stanford’s nearly 10 billion dollars of offshore investments, as well as profits made by Stanford through the leasing of land for the Stanford Shopping Center, to drive home the point that Stanford is, “at the end of the day, a business.”

Palter said the university stands by the letter, although it’s unclear if Stanford intends to pursue legal action against the county if the Development Agreement falls through.

“Obviously, Stanford has a lot more financial capital than we do, and they have people whose full-time job it is to work on this issue, whereas we’re using our free time as students to do this, which is already limited,” Knox said. “So we really have to be able to do high-impact things that are visible and also help get people organized.”

This discrepancy doesn’t leave SCoPE members feeling hopeless.

Instead, Knox said she often feels “super motivated that we’re able to do this work even though it’s not our full-time job.”

The roots of the Bay Area housing crisis are numerous and the culpable institutions countless, from the legacy of Proposition 13 and the restrictive zoning practices of suburban communities to the growth of the tech economy. The students of SCoPE can’t bring an end to the region’s socioeconomic strife, but they might give Stanford the push it needs to become a more active part of solutions, and mitigate its contribution to the crisis.

“We have our policy proposals, and we have this process, and we just push as hard as we can through the process to get as close to the proposals as we can,” Nissen said. “And whatever comes out of that I think we’ll be happy with.”I think we’ll be happy with.”

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PROP 47 SECOND COVER PAGE

CHANCES:

THE ENDURING EMPATHY OF PROP 47

KYLE WANG

KYLE WANG

PROP 47

I

n July 2013, my house was burglarized. The event left me with recurring nightmares and my family with a long list of missing items: cameras, laptops, my little brother’s Nintendo DS and a SIM card containing home videos of my brother and me as children.

A little more than a year after the burglary, California’s residents—my parents included—voted resoundingly in support of Proposition 47, a proposed law which would grant leniency to certain nonviolent criminal offenses, including petty theft, burglary and several drug offenses. The controversy surrounding Prop 47 erupted not long after its initial passage, as voters began to understand what the law’s implementation entailed. Though the

law offered a chance to start afresh for thousands of ex-cons, many voters saw things differently: spikes in statewide break-ins, automobile thefts and larceny were soon attributed to Prop 47, giving rise to a growing movement to repeal the law.

For me, the story of Prop 47 has been both deeply personal and deeply complicated. The law fixed several major flaws in the criminal justice system by reducing the collateral consequences of imprisonment for many ex-cons. These reductions, proponents argued, were supposed to ease social reentry after prison life and lower recidivism rates.

But Prop 47 has also led to rising rates of burglary, larceny and drug use. And for many whose homes have

been burglarized—either before or after the law’s passage—Prop 47 has eroded a sense of safety and security in their very own neighborhoods.

Ultimately, Prop 47 was never meant to be the end to all criminal justice reform: instead, the law was supposed to lay the groundwork for larger-scale changes to the criminal justice system that emphasized rehabilitation over retribution. Prop 47 itself merely opened the doors and redirected funds from California’s overcrowded prison system to underfunded, under-resourced school districts. The law itself already represented a radical shift away from California’s standard criminal justice system: it gave former criminals a legitimate second chance to turn their lives around.

A SHORT HISTORY OF PROP 47 California’s proposition system is simple enough in theory. It allows any voter to propose a law—the proposition—on the ballot for an election cycle. If enough voters support a given proposition, first through signatures and then a vote, the proposal then becomes a law. This system places tremendous power into the hands of the voters themselves: in 2016, for example, voters utilized the proposition system to pass a tax on all soft drinks, overriding the lobbying influence of the soda industry.

Ne ve r t h e l e ss , the efficacy of this direct democracy system has come under fire in recent years. Many have argued that California’s government hands excessive amounts

of power to individual voters who lack the competency to wield it. Journalist David Dayen, for example, argued that it “disempowers legislators” while privileging special interest groups; others have pointed out that the proposition system is by nature inflexible and stagnant.

The case of Prop 47 exemplifies these growing tensions. On paper, the terms of the proposition were straightforward: the law reclassifies certain drug possession charges from felonies to misdemeanors and mandates misdemeanor sentences for petty theft, check forgery and receiving stolen property when less than $950 is involved.

The proposition’s stated goal was to reduce overcrowding in county jails, thereby liberating up to $150 million for the state to reinvest elsewhere.

When it was pitched to voters, however, Prop 47 was relabeled the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.” Flyers promoting its passage were generic and simple, emblazoned with slogans such as “Justice

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PROP 47 that Works”; other promotional materials flaunted pictures of young, inquisitive-looking children, some with their hands raised. There were few mentions of sentencing changes or criminal justice reform.

The marketing tactics, if not entirely accurate, were understandable. California’s legal system gives just 150 days for the supporters of any proposition to collect the necessary signatures. And even if the proposition’s supporters succeed, they’ll still face the will of a large, diverse, active body of in-state voters come election time.

Thus, the supporters of Prop 47 had little reason to be completely upfront about the nature of their reforms: a measure proposing changes as radical as Prop 47 needed to be palatable to as many voters as possible in order to pass.

My parents, who voted in favor of its passage, remember distinctly what they had been told: that Prop 47 would reduce the burden on the criminal justice system and generate additional funding which could then be reinvested in local school districts.

The marketing behind Prop 47 hadn’t been explicitly false, per se—the prop did state that it would reduce prison overcrowding—but proponents had conveniently excluded details about the nature of the prison reforms which might have tipped the balance against its favor.

But even voters who were aware of Prop 47’s purpose seem to have lost their faith in the proposal. Saratoga City Councilmember Rishi Kumar voted in favor of the proposition in 2014 because it “appealed to [his] social conscience.” But as he told me in an interview, he changed his mind soon after he saw an increase in burglaries in Saratoga.

Kumar was elected in the 2014 election cycle. That summer—just four months before he was elected—Saratoga had experienced an uptick in the number of residential burglaries, and many neighborhood dinner-table conversations focused on the growing sense that Saratoga wasn’t as safe as it used to be. Not long after, a flyer from Kumar’s campaign promising to address the “lingering threat of car break-ins, mailbox thefts, and residential burglaries” soon arrived at our house. At the time, concerns of residential safety ran high in Saratoga.

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From 2013 to 2014, the number of burglaries jumped from 89 to 136; the number would keep growing until it peaked at 159 in 2016.

After he was elected, Kumar first worked on local reforms. When residents from 22 neighborhoods showed up to a city council meeting that June, expressing interest in new community security programs, Kumar knew he’d struck a nerve. Since the early 2000s, “Neighborhood Watch” signs had dotted the streets of Saratoga. But these, Kumar said, were “relics of the past.” Because of a lack of neighborhood leadership, the signs served little purpose beyond mild scare tactics. Kumar and his team rebuilt the Neighborhood Watch program from the ground up. They designated “safety captains” for each neighborhood in Saratoga to communicate with city staff, and gave out grant money on a case-by-case basis. Thus far, the results have been promising—in 2017, the year after Kumar first initiated these programs, the burglary rate dropped by 47 percent.

“The data says it all,” Kumar said. “Today, we have active, engaged leadership in almost every part of Saratoga, and the city has formalized the structure for its program to ensure Neighborhood Watch programs will always be alive and kicking.”

The outward changes have undeniably helped Saratoga, but individual residents have expressed concerns of racial profiling in Neighborhood Watch systems across the country. Such cases of profiling are not rare: one Neighborhood Watch group in Shreveport, Louisiana suggested that residents keep an eye out for “young black men” after a string of break-ins. To attempt to mitigate these risks, the program holds frequent interactive Q&A sessions with the local Sheriff ’s Department—but even Kumar admits it’s not a perfect solution.“The discussion coalesced around how safety was very important, and how there was perhaps a price to pay as crime went up,” Kumar said.

Kumar and the Neighborhood Watch captains have since turned their attention directly to Prop 47.

Currently, the

PROP 47 captains are actively working to collect signatures for KeepCalSafe. org, a 2020 ballot initiative seeking to tighten punishments for petty theft and other crimes.

Despite the rising burglary rates, Saratoga remains an extremely safe city. Its property and violent crime rates consistently fall below national and even Santa Clara County averages. Consequently, citizens are quick to notice even the mildest uptick in crime. The city experienced a string of break-ins and burglaries that even normal fluctuations can’t explain. And a jump like the one that occurred between 2013 and 2014 left many residents—including my own parents—deeply unsettled. It is unsurprising that Kumar’s reforms struck a nerve with local residents, who, according to Kumar, have overwhelmingly supported the KeepCalSafe initiative.

“I believe some are nostalgic for the good ole days when they did not have to lock their doors and windows,” he said. “Times have changed, unfortunately! Crime is happening, and we have to take precautions and apply deterrents.”

THE POLICE PERSPECTIVE Earlier this year, President of the California Police Chiefs Association David Swing published an editorial in the San Jose Mercury News in response to an article from the Bay Area News Group, a piece which he felt had mischaracterized the effects of the proposition. Swing argued that Prop 47 had not only placed a tremendous burden on police officers across the state, but also made habitual drug users less likely to seek treatment—neither of which were part of the law’s originally intended outcomes.

When I interviewed him about whether he supported Prop 47, however, he was quick to correct me on any assumptions that his beliefs on Prop 47 were linked to his personal values.

“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion right out of the gate,” Swing said.

“I don’t think it’s about like or dislike of the proposition; I think it’s a concern for how we as police officers reach out to our communities to ensure safety.”

In his article for the Mercury News, Swing noted that the reported nine percent increase in larceny, or personal property theft, could very well be a “gross misrepresentation”—a vast underestimation of the true crime rates. Because many cases of personal property theft aren’t noticed until long after the crime occurs, there’s often little evidence for the victims to report, Swing explained. So many don’t bother reporting the crimes at all. Data from a preliminary FBI crime report appears to support these conclusions: larceny-theft jumped by 12 percent following the passage of Prop 47.

The $950 limit has also made apprehending and imprisoning criminals more difficult: according to Swing, many officers have arrested perpetrators multiple times in a single day. In Morgan Hill specifically, Swing recalls several instances where officers arrested individuals for crimes that—had it not been for Prop 47—would have landed them in county jail.

More than once, Swing has heard stories from his fellow officers of criminals committing theft with calculators. “Upon being confronted and apprehended, they tell us, ‘You can’t send me to jail—it’s under $950,’” Swing said. Incidents of misdemeanor theft and larceny have become increasingly common throughout the state. According to a report from the PPIC, larceny theft has increased by nine percent since 2014, with car break-ins accounting for roughly three-fourths of the increase.

“The men and women who do this job continue to adapt to the changing landscape,” Swing said, “but I can’t help but think that it would be demoralizing to a certain extent if they don’t see the true impact of their work.” Based on the data itself—as well as reactions he has gauged from police chiefs throughout the state—Swing believes there is a compelling need to change the law.

For a moment at the end of the interview, he abandoned advancing his arguments through data and spoke to me directly: “People like you and me that have a moral compass that points true north don’t need sanctions to help us make the right decision. But for those who choose to commit crime without abandon and have no problem victimizing others, whether that’s a person or a business— clearly individuals like that need to have something that helps recalibrate their compass. Unfortunately, what Prop 47 did is it took that calibration away.”

ENDURING HOPE IN THE LEGAL SYSTEM Others who have been affected directly by Prop 47’s outcomes, however—such as public defenders—continue to defend the law’s merits. Among them is Lara Wallman, Deputy Public Defender in the Santa Clara County. Wallman specializes in Prop 47 cases and

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PROP 47 remembers she was “thrilled” when the initiative passed in 2014.

Wallman’s take on Prop 47, in contrast to Swing’s and Kumar’s, focused less on rising crime rates and more on a new system of rehabilitation for drug users. Many of her clients struggled with drug addiction and were imprisoned on either felony drug possession charges or theft-related crimes that they committed to support their habits. “These clients suffer from substance abuse issues, and sending them to prison was not the solution,” Wallman said.

One client Wallman worked with had been sentenced to life in prison for possessing less than one gram of cocaine. Following the passage of Prop 47, Wallman and her team were able to petition to free him after he had served nearly a decade. A 2010 report from the National Institutes of Health seems to confirm the inefficacy of imprisonment for drug addiction treatment. The NIH’s survey of recidivism rates in 15 states found that nearly 25 percent of felons convicted of drug possession would be rearrested within three years, most likely for a similar drug possession charge.

The state of rehabilitative treatment in prison—or the lack thereof—offers a simple explanation: people who enter jail with drug habits tend to maintain them. According to a report from the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, 65 percent of prison inmates meet criteria for substance abuse. Just 11 percent will seek treatment of any kind.

The previous system California had in place for treating drug addiction was broken. Even if Prop 47 brought some unintended consequences, it appeared to be a step in the right direction for treating drug use.

Nonetheless, even Wallman admits that the “revolving door” Swing mentioned earlier is very much alive. “Unfortunately, we public defenders often see our clients back again,” Wallman said.

“But, as I said earlier, many of those are suffering from substance

abuse.”

Wallman has personally worked with clients who committed nighttime commercial burglaries despite knowing full well that their crime would be classified as a felony. “When someone is committing a crime to feed their habit, they are not in a rational state of mind where they are thinking about making sure the value of what they take is less than $950,” Wallman said.

This argument about a “rational state of mind” also helps clarify Swing’s anecdotes about criminals with calculators. After all, someone who is using a calculator to stay within Prop 47’s $950 limit does not—by most standards of a “rational state of mind”—seem to be thinking clearly.

To any staunch opponent of Prop 47, Wallman’s story offers an alternative perspective. The theory behind Wallman’s arguments supporting an alternative, more lenient approach to criminal justice makes sense: the current criminal justice system clearly isn’t working for treating and rehabilitating drug addicts.

But it’s unclear whether or not Prop 47 itself—a law which grants clemency to drug addicts without any added incentives to seek rehabilitation—was an effective solution on its own. To optimistic supporters, Prop 47 laid the foundation for broader changes to California’s approach toward criminal justice that unfortunately never materialized; to cynics, however, it was a hastily-repackaged initiative written in response to overcrowded prisons.

Regardless of Prop 47’s flaws, Wallman continues to stand by the law and the clients it has helped protect. “Having a felony on your record is really a stigma that follows you for your entire life. No one will hire you and no one will rent to you,” Wallman said. “It ends up being a revolving door because persons are more likely to commit crimes when they are not working—if only to try to feed themselves and their families.”

THE FACES OF PROP 47

daughter. She and her daughter split briefly when Archie was sent to jail, but reunited soon after her first prison stint ended in 2005.

Despite her felony conviction, Archie managed to get back on her feet. With the help of a program called “A New Way of Life,” she found a place to stay and got a job at Verizon. For several years, things appeared to be going well.

It wouldn’t last.

In 2009, Verizon decided that it would no longer hire convicted felons. Archie lost her job and—because of her past criminal conviction—struggled to find a new one. Moreover, her criminal conviction prevented her from receiving child care assistance; she’d had a second child, and without a steady job was struggling to stay afloat.

Four years later, she found herself in prison again. She told MyProp47.org that she had been buying groceries with her daughters. One of them stayed in the car while she went inside with the other; the police came, and—even though she maintains that she’d only been in the store for five minutes—she was charged with felony child endangerment. Because of her past criminal record, she was sent to prison for three years this time.

Eventually, Archie did manage to turn her life around. She had

Ingrid Archie was 14 when she first went to juvenile hall. She grew up in the 1980s during the war on drugs. Her adolescent criminal actions, she says, were deeply embedded in her upbringing: her mother was a drug addict and her father was legally barred from taking custody of her because he had a felony marijuana conviction on his record. Since early childhood, she’d been shuffled in and out of foster homes.

The war on drugs disproportionately affected poor, black communities like the one in Los Angeles where Archie grew up. Author Michelle Alexander contends in her book “The New Jim Crow” that the aggressive police tactics the Reagan Administration promoted as part of their response to the purported “crack epidemic” predominantly targeted poor, African-American neighborhoods— long before the supposed “epidemic” fully materialized. Archie and her family were caught in the crossfire. “I was basically collateral damage,” Archie said.

Not long after she turned 19, Archie gave birth to her first

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PROP 47 learned about Prop 47 in 2015, not long after the law’s passage, and successfully appealed her felony conviction. Soon after she was released on probation, she reached out to A New Way of Life a second time.

The first time she sat down with A New Way of Life in 2005, Archie had been shocked. They had asked her about her long-term career goals: how she envisioned her future, for example, and where she saw herself in several years. At the time, Archie hadn’t known how to respond. “I was still young and fresh out of prison,” she said, “and I’d never been asked that before—of course in school I had, but never by someone in my community.”

This time, A New Way of Life set her up with a temporary canvassing job and a series of speaking engagements related to Prop 47; they soon decided that they wanted to hire her permanently as a Prop 47 specialist.

Archie considers herself lucky to have found A New Way of Life; many of her fellow inmates—especially those who were struggling with drug addictions—found it almost impossible to re-adjust to life outside once they were released. Many of these inmates were lost in the endless bureaucracy of post-prison life, from parole meetings to paperwork. They went to treatment programs only to find that these programs lacked the resources they needed; more often than not, they were simply redirected to other service organizations.

“Why would anybody want to come home and be shuffled around when all they want to do is stay clean and stay healthy?” she said.

When I asked Archie about her responses to critics of Prop 47, she sounded upset.

She was angry mostly at the criminal justice system, which she said had prompted a culture of “locking people up” instead of rehabilitative treatment. Even when inmates were released, she said, the series of collateral consequences they faced made it difficult to start afresh. “When you get out of prison and all you’re hearing is ‘No, no, no,’ it’s a natural instinct to get discouraged,” she said. “If there’s nothing to help me do something with my life when I get home, why would I want to stay home?”

Prop 47 and A New Way of Life gave Archie a second chance to turn her life around

that she wouldn’t have had otherwise. For her, Prop 47 was crucial in creating a new approach to criminal justice—a harbinger of larger-scale reform. “When you’re working from a place with people whose lives are actually impacted [by Prop 47], then you’d want to push for something that would help people lead sustainable lives so they don’t have to go back,” Archie said.

MOVING FORWARD For my parents, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to separate the story of Prop 47 from the burglary; it’s hard to forgive people like the stranger who broke into your house. In 2014, they voted for the proposition; now, though, they regret that choice.

“Of course, if better rehabilitation existed, that would be good,” my father said. “But as a taxpayer I’d still prefer to pay more taxes to keep criminals in jail.”

And yet Archie’s experiences are proof that the law did help former convicts turn their lives around. There will always be people who commit crimes, but the current criminal justice system in California has made it difficult for even nonviolent felons to fully reintegrate into society.

It’s easy to reduce issues like Prop 47 to a series of statistics: rising burglary rates, for example, or an increase in break-ins. The solution some offer is to reverse all the changes that Prop 47 made. But as Wallman and Archie noted, the old system was broken from prison overcrowding to persistent recidivism.

Already, a new ballot proposition has emerged in California to repeal many of the reforms made by Prop 47—it will be on the ballot for the 2020

FACES OF PROP 47

election cycle. For now, it seems unlikely that reforms like Prop 47 will occur in the foreseeable future.

But in the long term, Prop 47 may still come to be seen as a success. According to MyProp47.org, the funds that were saved from Prop 47 were ultimately redirected to under-resourced K-12 schools within the state of California—schools that serve communities which are markedly less privileged and fortunate than Saratoga. Though the PPIC report noted that it’s still too early to draw any firm conclusions about improved educational outcomes in these districts, the law lends hope for a more positive future in these communities.

More importantly, the law has already given a second chance to thousands across the state. And many of them, like Archie herself, have undeniably made their lives better. The law, as Archie herself stated, provided an opportunity to succeed that she’d never had before as a young, poor juvenile offender coming from a broken home. At its best, Prop 47 saw these individuals not as a statistical detriment to society, but as real people who needed support and guidance to turn their lives around.

And for them—for the thousands of Ingrid Archies who have managed to turn their lives around—Prop 47 undeniably deserves a second chance at success.

Kyle Wang, a freshman, is a staff writer for Stanford Politics.

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CHINa’S PUZZLING ISLAM POLICY WILSON LIANG

CHINA

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n Xinjiang, China’s westernmost province, the government has detained up to a million Uighur Muslims (nearly 10 percent of the total Uighur population) in government-operated internment camps. Branded officially as “re-education centers,” the camps are part of a larger crackdown by the Beijing leadership to tighten control over the historically volatile region. Within concrete walls patrolled by armed guards, prisoners are forced to renounce Islam, learn Chinese, and pledge loyalty to the Communist party. Depending on the “crime,” internees receive sentences ranging from months to 15 years—despite never being formally charged with a crime—where they spend each day in classrooms reciting pro-regime propaganda. Survivors also report being forced to consume pork and alcohol, which is forbidden in the Sunni sect that most Uighurs practice. International experts consider the program a serious human rights violation under the pretext of combating terrorism, comparable to a “cultural cleansing.” According to a report by Human Rights Watch, “Chinese law defines terrorism and extremism in an overbroad and vague manner and does not require that action be taken in furtherance of a crime to prompt prosecution, deprivation of liberty, or other restrictions.” The report also deemed the crisis “of a scope and scale not seen in China since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.” To the outside world, it may seem like the Muslim faith is being ruthlessly crushed and supplanted by the nationalist, authoritarian ideology that modern China has embraced. Yet, a thousand miles from Urumqi, in the heartland of China, another Muslim group, the Hui, are free to practice their faith without the threat of persecution.

A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE In Xinjiang, one can be arrested for praying in public, growing a beard, viewing foreign websites, or quitting smoking too suddenly.

These rules were published in an official 2014 statement titled, “75 signs of religious extremism,” and have lead to thousands of arrests.

In 2017, criminal arrests in Xinjiang accounted for 21% of Chinese arrests, despite the Xinjiang population representing only 1.5% of the national population, a three-fold increase in the past five years.

Children in Xinjiang are forbidden from learning religious teachings and attending religious services. The building of mosques and the training of clergy are also heavily restricted by local officials. In recent years, the entire Xinjiang region has been effectively transformed into a surveillance state—one of the most effective in the world. Police stations lie on every block of every major city and village, and are each responsible for monitoring about 500 people.

There are 500 police per 10k inhabitants (New York City has 423).

The roads are lined with checkpoints where Uighurs are routinely stopped and searched. At these checkpoints, passersby present a valid identity card while photographs are taken, fingerprints re-

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corded, and eyes scanned using iris-recognition software. Teams of half a dozen policemen go house and house, compiling dossiers of personal information on residents under a system called Fanghuiju. Neighbors are encouraged to report and turn in anyone guilty of suspicious activity. Anyone living in Xinjiang must install a spyware app on their phone that tracks online activity and social media. All data collected is then consolidated and sent into a computer system called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, which uses machine learning to evaluate an individual’s trustworthiness.

Under China’s rising social credit system, merely being Uighur is enough to lower one’s score.

In recent years, the entire Xinjiang Region has been effectively transformed into a surveillance state ... There are 500 police per 10k inhabitants.

In contrast, the restrictions are far laxer for the Hui. In the 1980s, China passed a series of reforms that restored Islamic buildings, permitted religious schools and texts, and opened religious worship—reforms that have largely excluded Xinjiang. These reforms have led to the reconstruction of some 40,000 mosques, mainly funded and used by Hui worshippers. Local governments also support the establishment of Muslim faith schools, known as “Sino-Arab” schools. With approval from the government, these private schools are run by Hui imams and cater to poor Hui who cannot afford regular schooling. Hui are also able to participate in the Hajj, the religious pilgrimage to Mecca, while many Uighurs are banned altogether from making the trip. In the Chinese Islamic Association, the national committee that oversees all religious affairs in China, the Hui are overrepresented when compared to the Uighurs. Through the association, Hui representatives conduct diplomacy with international Islamic bodies like the Muslim World League, and receive foreign aid from Arab states for religious projects.

These extreme disparities in treatment are not born out of chance. Although the Hui and Uighurs share a religion, they differ in almost every other aspect: ethnic origins, cultural practices, and historical perception by the Han majority. While China’s eight million Uighurs live almost exclusively in southern Xinjiang, the nine million Hui are scattered across central China. Significant Hui populations can be found in the Ningxia, Gansu, and Qinghai provinces, which lie between Xinjiang to the west and Inner Mongolia to the north. Smaller communities are also extant in major cities like Beijing and Xi’an. Together, the Uighur and Hui peoples form ninety percent of China’s Muslim population.

CHINA Unlike the Uighurs, whose historical relations with China have been consistently that of conquest and subjugation, the Hui have had a much more complex relationship with China—laden with conflict, yet also cooperation and coexistence. As a result, the Hui enjoy the special status of an ideal Muslim minority (in the eyes of the CCP), along with freedoms that seem unthinkable to a Uighur.

A TALE OF TWO PEOPLES One of the pioneers of the Age of Exploration was Zheng He, the famous Ming admiral who sailed down the coast of Africa during the early 15th century. He also happened to be a Hui, as were many of the sailors employed on his ships.

During one voyage, he traveled to Mecca to perform the sacred pilgrimage. Today, his legacy is celebrated not only in China as a national hero, but also in the southeast Asian states influenced by his arrival (he is credited with the introduction of Islam to Indonesia).

Like Zheng, Hui figures have played important roles throughout Chinese history. Since the introduction of Islam in the 7th century, the Hui have fulfilled historical roles as translators, merchants, and administrators, forming a sort of cultural bridge to China’s Muslim neighbors along the Silk Road. It is the heritage of generations of intermixing among Han, Persian, Arab, and Central Asian peoples to which Hui lay claim. Apart from their distinctive, white headdress, modern Hui are physically indistinguishable from the Han, and most Hui are fluent in Mandarin.

The Hui have fought in virtually every Chinese military conflict in recent history ... sometimes even against other Muslims.

The Hui have fought in virtually every Chinese military conflict in recent history, sometimes alongside the Han, sometimes against, and sometimes even against other Muslims and Hui. Examples range from a Hui general who quashed Muslim rebellions against the Ming dynasty, to Hui warlords who defended China during the Sino-Japanese war. Han-Hui relations are complicated and usually dependent on the administration in power. For the Communist party, relations fell to the nadir during the Shadian Incident: in 1975, in response to Hui protests of the closing of a local mosque, 10,000 soldiers—equipped with assault rifles, artillery, and fighter

jets—were deployed to the town of Shadian,. In the aftermath of the massacre, 1,600 villagers lay dead and 4,000 homes destroyed.

The incident was an ugly retread of the senseless ethnic killings that were all-too-familiar in dynastic times. Yet, rather than downplay and deny, as the CCP have done to many such atrocities, the government apologized and issued reparations to families after the end of the Cultural Revolution. Today, Shadian’s Grand Mosque, built with the help of such funds, incorporating both Arabic and Chinese architecture, stands as a testament to the Hui’s religious revival.

But Uighurs have no shared heroes like Zheng He to point to.

Their history began as a distinct Turkic people who originated from the Tiele tribes of Central Asia. Around 800AD, a Uighur Khanate emerged as a confederation among tribes, spanning all of modern-day Mongolia. After its collapse in the 9th century, many Uighurs moved south and settled in the Tarim Basin. The region would be under Mongol rule until the 18th century, when a series of Qing invasions annexed the former Mongol territories, incorporating the Basin into the newly created state of Xinjiang. The Qing employed an active campaign of sinicization to eradicate and replace local cultures, incurring massive Han migration to Xinjiang and changing the ethnic composition of the region forever. To this day, the CCP employs a similar form of state-sponsored migration, encouraging millions of Chinese migrant workers to settle in the richer north of Xinjiang, fur-

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CHINA ther polarizing the ethnic composition of the region.

Despite more than millennia of foreign rule, Uighur independence has found short-lived success on occasion. In the 1860s, a Uighur warlord seized control of the city of Kashgar and declared a jihad against the oppressors before being defeated by Qing forces a decade later. In the early 20th century, Uighur separatists took advantage of the ongoing Chinese civil war to establish successive Uighur republics under the new geopolitical identity of “East Turkestan,” a term intended to distance ties with China. These states were backed by the Soviet Union to undermine Chinese territorial security following the Sino-Soviet split, but were largely unrecognized by the international community as sovereign. Following the communist victory in 1949 and Chinese reunification, the last hopes of Uighur independence were snuffed out as the PRC troops marched into Xinjiang unopposed and established the autonomous region under Chinese rule.

Today, Uighur independence movements are fractionalized and disorganized. Some, like the World Uighur Congress, support the creation of a democratic Uighur state through nonviolent resistance. Others prefer more extreme methods, such as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which is designated by the US and EU as a terrorist organization with ties to Al-Qaeda. According to the Chinese government, the group is responsible for carrying out numerous attacks in recent years. In 2014, masked individuals attacked commuters in a train station in Kunming, killing 29 and wounding hundreds. State-owned media blamed the attack on Uighur separatists, fueling anti-Uighur sentiments and reinforcing Beijing’s hardline stance towards Xinjiang.

ISLAM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS

public opinion have become priorities in the political agenda. The brutal crackdown in Xinjiang is a way to remind the inhabitants of Xinjiang who is really in charge. It is also a clear affirmation to the general populace of the government’s ability to maintain order in a world increasingly beset by extremist ideologies. Given the strategic importance of Xinjiang—it contains substantial mineral and oil deposits and is a key part of the One Belt One Road Initiative—the timing makes all the more sense.

While Uighur prisoners in internment camps are made to renounce Islam, it is not religion by which China is threatened.

Rather, the Uighurs, and the separatist fighters that they are synonymous with in Chinese state media, represent an existential and territorial threat to Chinese legitimacy. Xinjiang is but one piece on China’s geopolitical chessboard, one that includes Tibet, US military presence in Japan and Taiwan, and competing claims to the South China Sea. Yet, the history of Xinjiang demonstrated a key realization for China: any geographic insecurity can be exploited by foreign powers to undermine and weaken Chinese authority. Just as the Soviet Union helped sow the seeds of Uighur resistance in the 1960s, China considers local instability in Tibet part of a larger political rivalry with India, who borders Tibet and hosts the Dalai Lama in exile. The ongoing crises in Xinjiang and Tibet reflect China’s belief that policies that quash resistance and guarantee total internal security are necessary to strengthen China’s position in the modern world.

Thus, China’s crackdown in Xinjiang is fundamentally political in nature. The treatment of the Hui and Uighurs highlights a key difference in how China perceives them. To the CCP, the Hui are Chinese who happen to be Muslim. The Uighurs, on the other hand, are Muslims who happen to live in China.

With China adopting a more aggressive foreign policy to challenge the West and regional rivals, managing domestic security and

Wilson Liang, a freshman studying economics, is a staff writer for Stanford Politics.

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