Welcome to the Neighborhood

stanford politics magazine STANFORDPOLITICS.ORG JANUARY 2020 | ISSUE 07

Welcome to the Neighborhood CAN STANFORD’S PLAN TO RADICALLY CHANGE HOUSING MAKE A FORCED COMMUNITY FEEL LIKE HOME?

LAVENDAR SCARE • PAMELA KARLAN • UNINFORMED ACTIVISM • UKRAINE5

Your bi-weekly rundown of Stanford news and commentary on campus, local, US and world politics.

EDITOR’S NOTE Our first issue of the academic year, and my first issue as editor-in-chief, arrives a little later than usual — but the diverse and thoughtful work inside is the same high-quality journalism that this campus has come to expect from Stanford Politics. I’m exceptionally proud of every writer who contributed to this magazine, all but one of whom are new members of our staff this year.

While this issue has no central theme, each piece is a timely and necessary response to the crucial moments of change we find ourselves in — nationally, internationally, and at Stanford. On a range of topics, this issue asks: How did we get where we are, and what happens next? In the cover story, Decker Paulmeier and Kyle Wang examine the history of Stanford housing, and of housing at peer institutions, to provide valuable insight into what a radical new neighborhood-style system could mean for the university. Beatrice Phi traces the lineage of three LGBTQ employment discrimination cases recently heard by the Supreme Court to the McCarthy-era Lavender Scare; complementing that article, Valeria Gonzalez interviewed Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan, who argued one of those three cases before the court in Oct. 2019. In “Fighting Blind,” Sierra Burgon argues that Stanford’s political landscape is damaged by uninformed activism, and asks students to take greater responsibility for learning about the movements they align themselves with. And in the final piece in this issue, Catarina Buchatskiy explains how the spelling of Ukraine’s capital city represents a much larger struggle for an internationally-recognized national identity.

This magazine wouldn’t be possible without the hard work of our excellent editors and our invaluable magazine director, Nathalie Kiersznowski. I am also so grateful for the rest of the leadership team and for the support and guidance offered by previous editors-in-chief. I hope that as we enter a new decade, Stanford Politics will continue to be a vibrant, inquisitive, incisive presence on this campus that earns your attention and your respect.

Roxy Bonafont Editor-in-Chief

MASTHEAD MANAGING EDITOR ALLIE DOW

EDITOR IN CHIEF ROXY BONAFONT

MAGAZINE DIRECTOR NATHALIE KIERSZNOWSKI

CHIEF OF STAFF HARRISON BRONFELD

SENIOR EDITORS SIERRA MACIOROWSKI REBECCA SMALBACH

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER RIP LIVINGSTON

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CONTENTS

REMEMBERING THE LAVENDER SCARE

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Employment Discrimination and the Queer Fight for America’s Moral Conscience BEATRICE PHI

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR PAMELA KARLAN

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VALERIA GONZALEZ

FIGHTING BLIND 09 A Telescope in Hawaii and the Dangers of Uninformed Activism SIERRA BURGON

WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD

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Can Stanford’s Plan to Radically Change Housing make a Forced Community Feel Like Home?

DECKER PAULMEIER & KYLE WANG

KYIV VS KIEV 22 What Two Letters Mean for Ukrainian Independence CATARINA BUCHATSKIY

ABOUT THE AUTHORS OF THE COVER STORY Decker Paulmeier is a sophomore and a prospective philosophy major and economics minor. His interests include political philosophy, developmental economics, and energy policy.

Kyle Wang is a sophomore studying English and math. His interests include poetry, a cappella, and all things Frank Ocean.

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

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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.

Remembering the Lavender Scare

Employment Discrimination and the Queer Fight for America’s Moral Conscience

Beatrice Phi

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LGBT

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hat is the ancestry of struggle for queer peoples in the United States? The recent Supreme Court oral arguments on employment discrimination seem to foreshadow a watershed moment in the United States’ ongoing conflict between queer freedom and religious liberty, which provokes a crisis of memory over the historical circumstances that produced the status quo. Although the mainstream media seems to focus on the recent cases as merely new interpretations of the Civil Rights Act with tangential callbacks to Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, there’s more to these cases than meets the eye. In fact, the dispute at the Supreme Court today adds on to a long history of employment discrimination on the basis of gender and sexuality. Many people struggle to remember the Lavender Scare—the exile of homosexuals from the federal government during the Cold War on grounds of treasonous conduct—which is not only a vital episode of our history but also a reminder that the struggle between queer freedom and religion/morality has remained a constant in conversations on LGBT rights for centuries.

The recent cases are not just legal spinoffs of the Civil Rights Act: they’re foils for conservative anxieties over queerness that have always put a standstill on progress. By evaluating how the Lavender Scare informs the present, we can trace the roots of the current employment discrimination cases back to the very moral bedrock of the United States and explore in a historical context why the cases are so divisive. In doing so, these recent cases can shed light on where the present fight for queer freedom stands, how far we’ve come, and what’s left to be accomplished.

The Lavender Scare

DECADE OF MASS EXILES

When the United States emerged victorious out of World War II, it was no longer a recluse on the international stage that passively observed the foreign chaos abroad. Instead, it was thrust to the forefront of western civilization and joined a pantheon of nation-states—Great Britain and others—tasked with leading the free world. At first, the Americans struggled to make sense out of their newfound hegemony as their European contemporaries waned in influence across the pond, and they hesitated in taking

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on the dignified pursuit of promoting the ideological authority of the west around the world. However, their paradigmatic authority was not unquestioned: rising to the challenge was their former ally, the formerly-allied Soviet Union, whose unflinching commitment to Marxism-Leninism provided an ideological antagonist for the United States. What confusion the Americans had about their obligation to the free world became quickly clarified: the United States needed to fight the Cold War by espousing its moral superiority in the face of communism.

Although the Cold War is remembered as a contest between capitalism and communism, there were many far-reaching implications for both respective civilizations beyond the question of competing socioeconomic systems—like the seldom-remembered Lavender Scare. As a byproduct of the witch hunts for communists inspired by Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s, the Lavender Scare refers to the mass exile of homosexuals from the federal government due to a supposed “threat” to national security. The Lavender Scare began as early as 1947 with President Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9835, which provided legal grounds for removing employees on the basis of “disloyalty.” President Truman’s successor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, passed Executive Order 10450, which further specified that “immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct” was grounds for removal from the federal government. As a result, thousands of federal government workers were forced out of employment because their sexuality contradicted the moral-turned-legal standards of the country they served with pride.

Although the Lavender Scare is often understood as the collateral damage of anti-communism writ large, the targeting of homosexuality—or, in their words, “sex perversion”—as a threat to national security actually had more sociocultural significance than simply a pretext for anti-communism. The “immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct” of homosexuality was an anxiety that spoke to the postwar demand of national greatness. What moral authority the United States commanded in wake of World War II seemed to be threatened by the sacriligious antagonist of homosexuality. Rep Arthur L. Miller, a contemporary of Sen. McCarthy, believed that “it is a known fact that homosexuality goes back to the Orientals,

In the 1950s, national fear over the disloyalty of homosexuals lead to thousands of federal workers being forced out of employment.

Executive Order 10450, signed

by President Eisenhower, further specified that “immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct” was grounds for removal from the federal government.

US NATIONAL ARCHIVES

LGBT long before the time of Confucius; that the Russians are strong believers in homosexuality.” In citing homosexuality as an identity alien to the west, Rep. Miller and his McCarthyist colleagues responsible for the Lavender Scare feared that homosexuality threatened the United States on the basis of virtue, not national security.

Judith Atkins, an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, states that “Many assumptions about Communists mirrored common beliefs about homosexuals. Both were thought to be morally weak or psychologically disturbed, both were seen as godless, both purportedly undermined the traditional family, both were assumed to recruit, and both were shadowy figures with a secret subculture.” In sum, the Lavender Scare reflected the urgency the United States felt to uphold moral and religious purity in order to avoid succumbing to the seeming sacrilege of the Soviet Union. The post-World War II anxieties regarding postmodernity provoked a paradigmatic fear over homosexuality and whether queer transgression would collapse the western civilization that the United States was in charge of protecting from similar evils abroad.

The Queer History of the Supreme Court

The sentiment that homosexuality--and queerness writ large-was antagonistic to western civilization seemed to ebb and flow with the brief stints of queer uprising in the latter half of the twentieth century. Decades after the Lavender Scare, the moral uproar stayed dormant until the Supreme Court oversaw landmark cases as of recently in the last few decades that reflected on queerness in a constitutional context with three landmark cases: Lawrence v. Texas, Obergefell v. Hodges, and Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v.

Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Although the Supreme Court witnessed countless cases regarding LGBT rights in the past century, the following three appear to be the most culturally significant to the alleged moral deterioration of the country. Lawrence v. Texas - a 2003 case where police officers accidentally encountered a homosexual couple having sex and arrested them--ruled that the criminalization of homosexual

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conduct violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Obergefell v. Hodges - a 2015 case regarding same-sex couples who sued their state governments for their bans on same-sex marriage--ruled that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed the right to marriage for same-sex couples. Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission - a 2017 case involving a bakery that refused service to a homosexual couple on religious grounds - ruled that forcing a business owner to conduct business with a homosexual couple was a violation of the business owners’ free exercise of religion.

The cases were met with hostility by social conservatives, who feared a dissociation between the judiciary and the moral obligation “inherent” within laws. After the Lawrence v. Texas ruling, Jonathan F. Cohn, an appellate lawyer in Washington, D.C., states in his National Review article: “Our Founding Fathers did not fight the Revolutionary War over a right to homosexual sodomy … To many, the most troubling aspect of the Supreme Court’s decision is the conclusion that public morality is an insufficient basis to sustain a law.” The “moral obligation” in question was intimately tied to the moral teachings of religion, which seemed to run counter to queer freedom in the three legal disputes in question. Although old anxieties over the immoral conduct of homosexuality were replaced by new anxieties over religious liberty, the underlying thesis remained: queer freedom was fundamentally incompatible with the moral substratum of the United States, which was deeply informed and occupied by religion.

The Newest Struggle

The three landmark cases of the last three decades set the stage for the recent Supreme Court episode, which is another triad of cases: Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, Bostock v. Clayton County, and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC. Although separate, they all concern the question of whether federal prohibitions on sex discrimination are broad enough to cover employment discrimination. Each case involves people who were fired from their jobs due to their gender or sexuality: Donald Zarda and Gerald Bostock are gay, and Aimee Stephens is a transgender woman.

DAILY KOS

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LGBT Earlier in the month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the three cases and began what may be a set of landmark cases for queer freedom and religious liberty alike.

Although Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission displayed the fallibility of religious liberty in the Supreme Court, the new conservative majority seems to be a major setback for queer peoples. Yuvraj Joshi, a fellow at Lambda Legal, states that Neil Gorsuch is “more religiously motivated than perhaps even the staunchest religious conservatives sitting on the Court today.” Andrew Seidel, an attorney at the Freedom From Religion Foundation, states that Brett Kavanaugh “will shift the high court dramatically to the right, most noticeably when it comes to religion.” Joshi and Seidel, both committed to the judicial liberation of queer peoples in the United States, form the common consensus of the left regarding the responsiveness of the conservative majority to the concerns of gay and transgender people. Not only are the triad of cases facing a conservative majority, but a religious majority as well, which might prove fatal for any hopes of a progressive victory.

To the religious right, a reclamation of religious liberty (and a broader return to the moral concerns expressed in the Lavender Scare) is taking place in the Supreme Court. Kelly Shackelford, the CEO of the Liberty Institute, wrote in FOX News that “The vision of religious freedom imagined by our Founders and enshrined in our Constitution may soon be restored in America.” Rep. Louie Gohmert, a congressman from Texas, states that “we’ve gotten away from teaching morality, right and wrong” and that “the left wants … such obscurity for right and wrong that it will create chaos.” Much like the sentiments offered on previous cases, Shackelford and Gohmert foresee a zero-sum game in the heart and soul of the country between queer freedom and religious liberty, and they’re more than eager to pick up where their conservative predecessors from the Lavender Scare left off in terms of staking claim to the United States as a country governed by the moral standards of religion.

Despite the odds being stacked against queer peoples in the conservative majority and their fervent backing by the religious right, the left is unwilling to back down without a fight. Chase Strangio--the Deputy Director for Transgender Justice at the American Civil Liberties Union--states: “the work doesn’t stop now; and no matter the outcome, this is all just a part of the long fight for justice. Win or lose we will keep fighting to ensure that no person faces discrimination or violence because of who they are.” Much like their conservative counterparts, Strangio also recognizes the rudimentary implications of the three cases on the queer and religious futures of the United States and whether they can coexist after decades of collisions in the Supreme Court. Strangio appeals to a different definition of freedom also inherent to the free world-the freedom from persecution that the United States fought the Cold War to preserve--which suggests that the three cases in the

Supreme Court are not just about who can or can’t be employed, but whether the United States can truly live up to their everlasting promise of freedom for all.

The three cases also arrive at the precipice of President Trump’s first term, which saw the rollback of countless protections for queer peoples enacted by former President Barack Obama. Specifically, the Trump administration rolled back policies pertaining to homeless shelters, healthcare coverage, military service, and bathroom usage, as well as allowing for several exemptions that allow gay and transgender people to be denied service based on religious grounds, which runs as an executive parallel to the cases being heard in the Supreme Court. Over the course of a few years, President Trump and his Republican entourage have delivered stunning blows to decades of progress, which raises the stakes for the current battle in the Supreme Court. If the conservative majority decides in favor of religious liberty, then gay and transgender people will have little left to work with in terms of making legal demands on the state and fighting for a deserved place in the United States.

Instead, we might face a revival of the Lavender Scare not merely in the federal government but in workplaces around the country. Whereas the Lavender Scare allowed for the gratuitous expulsion of queer peoples from the federal government, a ruling in favor of the religious right may give employers around the country the same liberty to do so. Employment discrimination won’t only affect queer peoples in the workplace, but anyone whom an employer considers out of step with gender norms; not having protections in place allows employers to lawfully define what is permissible conduct on the basis of gender and/or sexuality and fire employees acordingly. Should religion once again become a dictate to deny freedom for queer peoples, the Lavender Scare might find a constitutional basis over a half-century later and continue to exclude us on the grounds that we are different. Despite decades of persistent struggle by our historical antecedents ranging from the Mattachine Society to the Gay Liberation Front, the upcoming decision may provoke questions over how to keep their promise for change alive in the twenty-first century.

“To the religious right, a reclamation of religious liberty is taking place in the Supreme Court.”

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Looking Back and Marching Forward

When most people think about queer history, they often mention the 1969 Stonewall Riots, which brought black transgender women into the national spotlight as the figureheads of the Gay Liberation Front in search of a future without gender. Some mention the Mattachine Society, a gay rights organization founded in 1950 which largely operated in the shadows due to the pervasive McCarthyist sentiments at the time. I recalled the Lavender Scare, where countless federal government workers were fired from their

LGBT jobs on grounds that their sexualities were antithetical to what the United States stood for. Regardless of where our revolutionary history begins, what can be agreed upon is that they all lead to today.

At the highest court in the land, the triad of cases regarding employment discrimination have the potential to be historic in determining whether the law provides gay and transgender people the freedom they’re long overdue for or upholds the moral obligation “inherent” within the constitutional footing of the United States.

Much like the turning point the United States encountered after winning the Second World War, the United States once again is facing an existential conundrum. In the Supreme Court, the Lavender Scare resurfaced from dormancy to scrutinize queerness in an attempt to shield the basic premises of western civilization from decay. Although much progress has been achieved in the half-century following the Lavender Scare, there is still much progress to be won, and the moral panic that expunged homosexual federal government workers now haunts their twenty-first century successors. No longer does the national threat rest merely in the homosexuals who worked in the federal government; instead it is found

in bedrooms, weddings, bakeries, workplaces, and the countless other places gay and transgender people inhabit. However, the triad of cases also signal a willingness to fight among queer peoples.

Much like the demand to be great facing the United States after World War II, queer peoples must look backward to learn from our radical ancestors while marching forward to preserve their struggle. Today, they’re no longer defenseless like their forerunners were during the Lavender Scare; instead, they’re knocking at the door of the Supreme Court.

Beatrice Phi is a freshman writer for Stanford Politics.

Pamela Karlan is a Professor of Constitutional Law at Stanford Law School and the co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. Karlan attended Yale University where she received a bachelor’s, master’s, and a law degree. Before joining the Stanford faculty in 1998, Karlan worked at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and later taught at the University of Virginia Law School. In 2014 she served as the US Deputy Attorney for Voting Rights in the Civil Division of the Department of Justice .

In October of 2019, Karlan argued her ninth case before the Supreme Court—Bostock vs. Clayton County. The case focused on whether employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ people was a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The decision of the case remains pending. Stanford Politics spoke to Pamela Karlan about the implications of this case and the state of the Supreme Court more generally. What follows is a transcript of the interview, edited for length and clarity.

Stanford Politics: How did you get involved with the Bostock v Clayton county case?

Pamela Karlan: Just as a technical matter, I represent Zarda.

There were two cases that the Supreme Court granted review in the Bostock against Clayton County case, and then a case called Altitude Express against Zarda, and they’ve gone different ways in the lower court. So our client has won his argument that Title VII covers sexual orientation and Mr. Bostock had lost his. And when the court grants two cases like that they often consolidate them for oral arguments.

We wrote a brief for Mr. Zarda and the very good lawyers who represented Bostock, a guy named Brian Sutherland, was the lead lawyer there. But the Supreme Court would

only allow one of us to argue and we agreed because I had more experience arguing at the Supreme Court that I would do the argument for both clients. So I represented both of them at the argument, but Mr. Bostock actually has his own lawyer.

SP: How did you get involved with representing him?

PK: The lawyer who represented Mr. Zarda all along from filing the complaint in the trial court, up through now was a man named Greg Antollino, who had been a student of mine in 1993, when I taught at NYU for a semester. I had written him to congratulate him about the case, and he

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LGBT contacted me to help out when he realized the other side was going to try and get the Supreme Court to take the case. That’s how the case came to us. I had been involved in a number of the previous gay rights cases at the Supreme Court stretching back to 1996, when I worked on a case called Romer v. Evans. I’ve also worked on two of the marriage equality cases.

SP: What do you think the implications for the ruling are and why should people be concerned about it? How will it affect our society?

PK: Well, there are a number of states in which state law protects people from discrimination in employment on the basis of sexual orientation, but the majority of states don’t provide any protection to LGBT employees. The implication of the case is about whether fair employment laws apply to people who would otherwise lose their job or be treated differently on their job or be harrased because of the fact that they’re lesbian, gay, or bisexual.

SP: With the 2020 Election approaching and the various contentious cases being heard by the court, do you have any predictions for how the court might rule this cycle?

PK: Well, you know, the Supreme Court says that it doesn’t consider the upcoming election at all, but I think the court does consider its overall position in American society and having the respect of people on both sides of the aisle. The Chief Justice went out of his way earlier this year to respond to the President and say there aren’t Obama judges and Trump judges. I mean obviously those two presidents have appointed very different kinds of people to courts. You know, it’s very hard to predict which way to go on this, I think it will be a close vote either way.

SP: Considering the current political climate and new judge appointees, especially in the public outcry that surrounded the Kavanaugh nomination, what are your thoughts on the future of judicial review in the United States?

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PK: We’re going to have judicial review. The future of judicial review is that it is going to continue. The question of whether the Supreme Court continues to enjoy widespread respect among the American people depends on how the Supreme Court rules. Not so much in a case like mine, although I think our case will make the front page, but how the Supreme Court deals with the stuff that is bubbling up now that’s connected to this administration, in a way that our case really isn’t connected with the administration.

SP: I’d love to know more about your experience in general arguing in front of the Supreme Court. Do you have any special rituals or superstitions that you do before arguing in front of the Supreme Court?

PK: I don’t have a huge number of rituals and superstitions.

I generally like to stay at the same hotel, which is a hotel that’s fairly close to the court and I can walk to the court.

And I eat a banana and have a little bit of juice before the argument because I don’t want to risk my stomach. I wear the same suit. I’ve won the same suit now for seven arguments.

I’m not gonna change it until something bad happens. I have stuff I read the night before, but I don’t have a whole ritual.

Valeria Gonzalez is a freshman planning to major in Political Science

FIGHTING BLIND A Telescope in Hawaii and the Dangers of Uninformed Activism

Sierra Burgon

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n October of 2014, construction was set to begin for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii. The mountain is considered sacred by Native Hawaiians and construction was quickly halted due to protests. Scientists claim that Mauna Kea is an ideal site for the TMT due to its geographical location and climate. This July, it was announced that construction would begin again. The protestors returned and since then, there have been blockades halting construction on the mountain.

Hui O Na Moku, Stanford’s Pacific Islander coalition, has been protesting the TMT for four months, with a focus on the Moore Foundation—a Stanford benefactor and one of the largest funders of the TMT. This summer, the group organized rallies in White Plaza and a blockade to the entrances of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation parking lot, as well as a protest outside the private estate of the Moore family.

“We’re trying to find a way to respectfully come into their space to make ourselves known, but do it assertively and uncompromising,” said Keoni Rodriguez, a leader in Hui O Na Moku’s anti-TMT campaign.

Stanford is a member of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), which supports the construction of the TMT. Students of these member universities have been circulating a petition to denounce AURA’s support. Emails with phrases such as “violent act of colonialism” and “desecration of sacred land” urge action and sympathy, and it’s understandable why students may feel the desire to immediately take action. However, do these recruit-

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ed students fully understand the historical and social implications of the issue? To what extent do students need to be familiar with an issue before becoming involved?

On Oct 31, there was an event titled “Mana ‘O Maunakea,” hosted by the NACC. Speaker Lanakila Mangauil, who is a renowned Kumu Hula, or expert hula teacher was touring the Bay Area and had just spoken to Berkeley students earlier that day. Mangauil discussed native perspectives on the TMT issue and taught the group chants and dances to “feed” the group, since they were doing such important work with the Moore foundation. Managauil spoke a generous amount of Hawaiian and at times spoke in thick pidgin accent. He spoke of the immense suffering of the Hawaiian people, and how connected the Hawaiian people are to the Mauna. The audience repeated chants entirely in Hawaiian, one of which was about the regrowth that occurs after Pele’s destruction. The Kumu Hula taught a hula, and a mixture of elegant and rigid hips swayed to the mele. At the end of the program, the audience collectively sang an Oli Mahalo to the speaker. This event was an authentic bonding experience within the Stanford Native Hawaiian community, providing an opportunity to practice empowering traditions and to hear about the pain and resilience of their people. For someone without a Native Hawaiian background, it would have been extremely easy to feel out of place and to feel as though your opinion regarding the construction of the TMT would be illegitimate.

I grew up surrounded by Native Hawaiian people,

ACTIVISM stories, and traditions and growing up on Oahu is a huge part of my identity. From feeling genuine anger during my 4th grade Big Island field trip when it started to rain after a classmate plucked an Ohia Lehua flower, to preparing Ti leaves for cooking Lau Lau every New Years Eve, the culture has become entwined with my childhood memories. However, as someone who has an extremely diverse ethnic background, I don’t strongly embrace my Native Hawaiian heritage. I grew up Christian, so I don’t have a religious relationship with Maunakea. I understand the mountain’s importance, but I don’t have a strong connection to it. As I observed activism at Stanford on the issue, I became interested in how a student without ties to Hawaii would perceive the issue. It became apparent that not every recruited activist understood both sides of the TMT issue and the nuances behind it. I was frustrated because these activists without ties to Hawaii didn’t have to live with the consequences and implications of the TMT, and was driven to examine uninformed activism at Stanford as a whole.

Defaulting to supporting the beliefs of people of color as a result of feeling like an outsider is not a phenomenon unique to this movement, or to Stanford. Often students who come from less diverse or representative parts of the country go to college and are introduced to an environment in which people of color have a much larger voice. Stanford is significantly more diverse than the general U.S. population, with White students making up 36% of the undergraduate student body. In comparison, the U.S. Census reports that 76.5% of the

population is White. Although the proportion of White students is smaller on campus, the group still makes up a larger portion of the undergraduate population than any other ethnic demographic. Nani Friedman ‘20, a founding member of Stanford Coalition for Planning an Equitable 2035 (SCoPE 2035), an advocacy group for equitable outcomes from Stanford’s application for a new General Use Permit (GUP), expressed that the burden of defining a “social justice perspective,” “often falls on students of color demanding recognition in spaces in which they don’t receive it.”

“I do think that other students who don’t share those same identities do depend on that,” Friedman said.

“Certainly we can’t learn about everything; making an environment for ourselves where we know when things implicate us might be a good thing to do,” said Emilee Chapman, an assistant professor of Political Science at Stanford. Chapman, who is co-teaching the undergraduate course “Ethics for Activists” this winter, observed that people will often trust others to tell them how to respond to an issue.

However, “it is really important to make sure the person you’re following is trustworthy and are themselves in a position to know what’s going on,” Chapman said.

“The complexity of that is that we’re not always good at knowing who is trustworthy and we tend to be susceptible to all kinds of biases.”

Stanford’s lack of discourse may be attributed to the campus’ overwhelming liberal majority. Stanford Marriage Pact’s 2018 Campus Report revealed that 63.1% of respondents identified as a Democrat, with only 7.1% identifying as Republican. Ravi Jacques ‘20, the founder of The Stanford Sphere, a leftist newspaper designed to diversify campus discourse, described Stanford’s student body as largely “liberally defined but without any strong convictions.”

“Liberal consensus really hurts activism itself because politics is ultimately a strategic game,” Jacques said. “You have to approach it with a strategic mind, and you don’t do that if you’ve already won. If everyone agrees with you, you don’t have to persuade anyone. It’s just not conducive to good political thinking.”

Chapman said you shouldn’t necessarily remain neu-

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ACTIVISM tral just because you don’t know enough about a topic.

Our society is so interconnected, that even if an issue is relatively distant from you, your “neutral” stance may make you complicit. One example Chapman cited was when your taxes fund government efforts that you may deem unethical. “That puts us in a moral position where we can’t maintain a neutral stance towards lots of things because the things that we do are going to affect what happens regardless,” said Chapman.

For some activist groups on campus, using uninformed students is a necessity. In SCoPE, Friedman is challenged with organizing people for an issue that’s complex and requires a robust understanding of landuse policies. However, in order to promote collective action and to demonstrate communal dissatisfaction, it’s important to have bodies.

“We have a lot of people who are going to be indifferent so we need people who are not fully informed to work with us and be on our side,” Friedman said. “Do I think that that’s the best thing for critical understanding of social justice in our generation? No.” Joining an activist group requires not knowledge, but interest. “If the individual doesn’t educate themselves but has an interest, I don’t think that lack of education should be shamed,” Friedman said. “Education should be encouraged, but lack of education shouldn’t be shamed.”

“Every good political movement needs to gather a lot of people,” Jacques said. “In any successful political movement, you’re going to have a large mass who do follow. That doesn’t mean they’re not thoughtful people themselves, but you need to build up this critical mass to make change.”

Activist groups aren’t necessarily responsible for providing a comprehensive background of an issue when recruiting people to join their causes. It may not be in an organization’s best interest to communicate the

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opposing side’s perspective of an issue. One reason for this is that trying to create a narrative of two arguments of comparable weight is sometimes unproductive and creates the illusion of equivalence.

“For example, in the abolition movement, if you were to try to create a balanced argument you might hit state’s rights or property rights on one side, against the rights of human beings to live free on the other,” Chapman said. But, Chapman acknowledged, “There are limits as to what people can conceal or exaggerate about their case to get people on their side.” Because of this, having a thorough understanding of an issue falls on the individual rather than activist groups.

Another reason that a group may not be responsible for presenting an opposing viewpoint is that it’s already well-understood or effectively circulated. This perception informs SCoPE’s messaging, as the organization works to hold Stanford accountable for the housing crisis in surrounding neighborhoods.

“Stanford has more resources available to them in order to dominate the narratives around the issue through ads,” Friedman said. “They’re able to get their story out so effectively, I have no problem not mentioning their side at our teach-ins.” Activist groups are often pushing against policies and norms set by powerful people, and expressing their point of view is often going to be their priority.

Hui O Na Moku’s campaign, which protests the construction of the TMT on Maunakea, uses methods that are heavily connected to the Hawaiian culture to educate people

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Do you support the construction of the TMT in Hawaii?

50%

38%

All Hawaiin Voters

Native hawaiin voters

HAWAII STAR-ADVERTISER POLL

about their cause. Their “biggest thing is storytelling— just telling people where we come from and our own personal experience,” said Keoni Rodriguez. He added that the campaign is “committed to ceremony, so we did ceremonies involving chants, songs, and prayers” when engaging in demonstrations.

For the purposes of Hui O Na Moku’s cause, the organization’s approach makes sense. However, most students at Stanford aren’t confronted with the implications of the Mauna Kea telescope. The TMT will primarily influence Hawaii’s economy, leaving most students thousands of miles away from the state unaffected. For example, the TMT is projected to generate 300 local and specialized union construction jobs and create 140 STEM positions when operational. This is a significant addition to a city ranked 86th out of the largest 100 cities in the United States for professional STEM opportunities. Additionally, students may not know what what

the public opinion in Hawaii is regarding the telescope.

As of September 27, 2019, half of all voters in a Hawaii Star-Advertiser Poll said they support building the TMT. Of course, this is not representative of the Native Hawaiian population, of whom 62% oppose construction. However, these numbers demonstrate that there’s a larger debate to be had and that there are other valid opinions on the issue. Regardless if one concludes that the cultural significance of Maunakea outweighs other benefits, it is still important to know of these benefits before making a stance on the issue. On Stanford’s campus, discourse on the TMT isn’t easily accessible, making it understandable that students would support the anti-TMT campaign without also understanding the nuances of the issue.

Allies without natural ties to Hawaii are important to Hui O Na Moku’s anti-TMT campaign. However, it’s also important to have an understanding of your campaign’s implications, especially when it doesn’t necessarily affect you. But it is not an organization’s responsibility to educate students on opposing viewpoints, which makes blind activism dangerous. How much trust are we willing to give to the viewpoints of an activist group?

Blindly supporting a minority group doesn’t make you woke. It’s easy to advocate for marginalized people’s causes because we know of the historical injustice and the adversity these groups face to this day. However, the burden of distinguishing right from wrong can’t solely fall on people of color. These perspectives should be highly respected and valued, but they can’t be left uncontested. We can acknowledge that our understanding of an issue may be different because we come from different backgrounds, but we can’t automatically default to adopting another perspective. It’s neither productive to discourse nor activism.

Sierra Burgon is a sophomore majoring in human biology.

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Welcome to the

[N]EIGHBORHOOD Can Stanford’s plan to radically change housing make a forced community feel like home?

DECKER PAULMEIER & KYLE WANG

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here is a certain feeling you get when you pass by your freshman dorm. The mere sight of the building elicits flashes of the sights and sounds of your first year of college. It was the background to your freshman mistakes and success, triumphs, and defeats. Our assigned dorms become our home away from home -- communities built out of radically different backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences that are designed to become the nexus of our social lives for our first year at university. These feelings and reverence for that freshmen community vary widely from school to school, but Stanford puts a distinct focus on this experience, creating an enticing brochure image of residential life for prospective students. But the feelings many have for their first year of housing are not the same for their upperclassmen housing experience.

We jump from the well-defined, intentional freshman experience to the highly randomized and often chaotic selection of housing through the Draw. Many students are jettisoned from the cozy atmosphere of a well-bonded freshman dorm into upperclassmen dorm housing that lacks community or cohesion, forcing students to weigh out the options of different draw groups or pre-assignments. The system has incentivized many to join self-selecting communities in Greek life or row houses with pre-assignment. These are communities that have selection processes outside of the normal procedures of the Draw, allowing students to intentionally choose a residence by opting for Greek rush or pre-assignment interview process and potentially guarantee three years of living on the row. Situations like this are a natural product of a housing system in which housing stock diversity mirrors the complex nature of the school it serves. From themed co-ops, ethnic theme housing (ETH) and Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL) housing to suites and dorm-style housing, the variety available to Stanford students is immense. Though the variation and quality of much of Stanford’s residential experience can be called world-class, many students end up with mediocre residential experiences.

Whether it be the distribution of housing for ethnic dorms, the eurocentrism of the Row or any of the logistical problems with the Draw, there have been long-running complaints regarding the equity of this system. But this isn’t an intentional design―our housing stock is an amalgamation of a myriad of visions from previous administrations and periods. This has given us the most varied and diverse residential experience in the country, especially among our top-level peers. However, it has also created an overall lack of continuity and intentionality outside of

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pockets of Greek life and some row housing experiences.

The importance of the residential experience in college is hard to overstate. The failings of the residential system in these regards are put in an even harsher light when compared to other top level schools whose systems provide the most cohesive experience. As the competition between Stanford and other top level schools intensify, the impetus for Stanford to review and improve its systems is more pressing than ever. Stanford has embarked on a period of institutional soul searching as a result. Recently proposed reforms to the design of majors, freshman year academic experience and possible updates to student governance and the honor code reflect a serious effort by the current administration to update systems throughout the university. But these efforts pale in comparison to the scale of the ResX project in reforming the Stanford residential system.

The ResX commission was a task force formed by Provost Persis Drell in the spring of 2018 to form a comprehensive vision of Stanford housing for the next quarter-century. This task force, made up of professors, resident fellows, alumni and students, worked over the course of a summer to create its final report. The final report is a product of extensive research and analysis of thousands of pieces of feedback, pertinent literature and proposals. The final vision of the commission is one of the boldest laid out by an administration since the university was first conceived. It penned a visionary goal for the future of Stanford housing and more so the university as a whole. The report recommended replacing the existing Draw system with a new network of “neighborhoods,” clusters of housing that students would live in throughout their four years. This neighborhood model is now the foundational concept for Stanford housing moving forward. When the commission published the final report in spring 2019, it sent shockwaves around campus. The plan’s sweeping changes raised serious questions about the future of FSL and ETH housing. The plan also came with a host of reasonable and overdue policy updates, such as changes to residential staffing, freshman roommate selection and other administrative updates.

But the sheer scale of the neighborhood vision demands very serious considerations of its implementation. It comes with obvious logistical questions regarding how it will physically come to be. How will this scale of construction be possible without the General Use Permit which was abandoned this Fall? Where is the funding to reconstruct the entire Stanford housing stock? But these questions are outside of the scope of the ResX report and will be answered over the next several years. What must truly be considered now are the questions surrounding the

STEDMAN

PCAD

STANFORD UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

vision described by this report. How will a university-guided reconstruction of housing affect the character of the Stanford experience? But most important, what does this vision inform us about the priorities our current administration has for the future of Stanford? This story is bigger than a single report or reform―it demands that we take a broad overview of how we got here and how we move forward with this vision.

History of Stanford Housing

The story of Stanford housing begins before the first students arrived at the university. It started several years earlier, in 1894, during the wake of a tragedy. In mourning for the loss of his 15-year-old son to typhoid fever, Leland Stanford said to his wife that “the children of California shall be our children.” This solemn promise informed their new mission in life, to establish a world-class university in honor of their son on their 8100-acre

property in Palo Alto, California that would serve both sexes and would seek to train its graduates in the liberal arts as well as the cutting edge of technology and the natural sciences. The Stanfords sought to create a world-class university to give their son a legacy he was never able to create himself. This passion guided their ambitions and drove them on an east coast tour of the country’s best colleges to look for inspiration. After meeting with several university presidents, they eventually secured the council of the president of MIT, General Francis Walker, as an educational consultant for the university. Soon after, on the advice of Walker, they hired Fredrich Olmstead, the esteemed designer of Central Park, to design the master plan of the university. This team of Walker and Olmstead, together with the Boston architecture firm Shipley, Rutan and Coolidge, embarked on creating the university inspired by the vision of the Stanfords.

This pursuit soon proved to be a difficult task, as the Stanfords were

Encina Hall was the first male dormitory on campus. Within several decades, the residence lost popularity as students prefered to live in Greek houses. stubborn clients to please. Olmstead envisioned the university to look like a naturalistic park. The buildings were to have a more picturesque nature, rather than a formal one. This vision was most apparent in the team’s recommendation for student housing. A system of cottages laid out in a parklike fashion were to serve as the dorms for both men and women. These cottages were to house 15-25 students each and be modestly constructed to reflect the value of a lack of caste system or class divisions among students.

This vision of campus housing was superseded by Leland Stanford after his return from a European tour, where he was inspired by a grand hotel in Switzerland that embodied the grandeur that he wanted for the boys’ dormitory and by extension the university as a whole. This grand dormitory was complemented by the first Roble Hall, a more modest building built to

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HOUSING house the women of Stanford. They were both completed by the opening of the university in 1891 and housed the pioneer class of the institution.

Conflicts of interest around the vision of Stanford Housing didn’t stop after the first students moved in, and instead intensified. The first dorms came with a host of problems that reflected the growing pains of the new university. The grandiose space of Encina Hall proved to be desirable grounds for the hijinks of adolescents as pranks and hazing became rampant for many of the early years of the university. Attempts to enforce order were stifled by a conflict between the administration of the school and of the estate of the Stanfords, which remained a tight grip on control of the operations of the school. The prevalence of mayhem, in addition to increased room and board costs, led to an exodus of students from Encina Hall and Roble Hall alike. Many opted to rent with other students or form their own living communities. These factors led to the formation of the first fraternities on campus. The Greek system on campus grew quickly by 1916 there were 24 fraternities and five sororities. These numbers would only grow, resulting in a campus in which two-thirds of students were members of Greek organizations at some point. This growth in independent living was not only found in Greek organizations. Students who didn’t belong to Greek organizations looked for other options in order to find less expensive room and board. It began with students getting food from The Camp, a canteen located where Old Union stands today. Soon students organized their own eating clubs. After a few clubs that only lasted a couple years, a network of clubs based out of Toyon Hall became a tradition on campus. During the early decades of the school dining clubs evolved into hubs of social activity because they provided services for students who couldn’t join the Greek system due to racial or religious reasons, an gave early students of Chicano/Latinx, Asian and Jewish backgrounds the same services and sense of community found in these exclusionary social groups. Admission into these clubs only required signing up at the beginning of the year, making it a form of an egalitarian rebuke against the exclusive nature of Greek life for much of its existence.

These independent strands of residential life only gained more traction after several notable incidents in Encina Hall during Stanford’s early years, one of which included the death of a student that many believe was connected to continuous hazing during his freshman year.

The multiple sources of administrative authority initially bogged down the ability of the young university to try and

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counteract these issues. However, when authority over internal affairs was shifted from the estate office to the administration, and other internal governance reforms followed, affairs within Encina Hall and other residential buildings were stabilized. But a bigger problem soon arose―meeting the demand for increasing enrollment. In the 1920s, Encina Hall was followed by Toyon Hall and Branner Hall as well as expansions to the dining halls and common spaces for Encina Hall. Much of this early development was centered around male dormitories, as female enrollment was capped at 500 students. This was done at the behest of Jane Stanford, who didn’t want a large female student population so Stanford wouldn’t become the “Vassar of the West.” But as the university grew, these standards and some of the original vision began to fade away to accommodate the demands of the new situations.

Development of housing was suspended for a period of time during World War II as a large part of Stanford housing was turned over to the military. After the war, development continued and the modern Stanford housing scene began to take shape. The character of Stanford housing throughout these years became driven by the development of a large, thriving Greek life on campus.

Though there were periodic conflicts over Greek life throughout time, its influence wasn’t significantly diminished until the 1960s. Decades-long conflicts over the role of sororities led to their loss of housing due to severe turmoil between non-Greek and Greek women.

At the same time, fraternities on campus fell victim to a national trend of declining interest and membership.

Many fraternities began to close due to financial hardship, and the introduction of coed housing compounded the issue. The once-foundational component of Greek life soon faded into just a small aspect of campus. Structural changes to Greek housing policies reduced the ability of new houses to be created and of removed fraternities to return to campus. These newly vacant houses became university housing and led to the creation of non-Greek row houses. These row housing situations were unique to Stanford. Non-affiliated students moved in and began to form unique identities for these buildings as more fraternities dissolved, spawning the creation of some of the most notable living communities at Stanford. The conversion of row housing into general use housing occurred throughout the ’80s and ’90s, alongside the establishment of guaranteed housing for all four years. The housing stock was expanded to accommodate the growing population of students, mainly graduate students. The most

HOUSING

40%

of students living in upperclass dorms feel no sense of community or belonging in their housing.

DATA OBTAINED FROM RESEX SURVEYS

recent additions in this process being the opening of Ng house in 2015.

The Current Housing System

Stanford’s current housing is the end product of decades of change and evolution, most of which was driven by student initiative. What remains today is a mixture of well-defined all-freshmen dorm complexes, row houses, a small but seemingly resurgent Greek life, ethnic theme housing and numerous other styles of housing. With little pre-established continuity—unlike, for example, a residential college system like Yale’s—students are instead given an opportunity each year to choose their own path through the myriad of options available. Someone could, hypothetically, start in an ethnic-themed house like Ujamaa, move to a Greek house like Kappa Sigma sophomore year, draw into a four-class dorm-like FloMo after going abroad junior year and then spend their final year in a coop like Terra. This wide swath of choice showcases the university motto “the wind of freedom blows”—more so than many aspects of Stanford, ultimately providing students latitude to craft their own journeys in terms of housing.

At its best, such a housing system gives students an opportunity to form friendships with people they might never have met otherwise. At its worst, however, a student can spend four years at Stanford without ever truly finding a home. Because of the randomness inherent in the Draw system, both outcomes are possible: for every member of Greek Life who meets their best friend in Crothers junior year, there’s a dissatisfied senior who Tier One-d into a basement single in Roble.

Admittedly, the Draw process does have some built-in safeguards against this randomness. By rushing housed Greek organizations, students can hypothetically secure housing for the next three years. Alternatively, students

can also apply to pre-assign certain themed houses or coops—the process is imperfect, but it provides a degree of intentionality in the otherwise unpredictable draw.

These options, in addition to student staffing opportunities, have proven attractive alternatives to the draw for this reason, with over 46 percent of students eligible for the Draw choosing these options to opt out. FSL particularly has seen a boost from this effect, as sororities and fraternities on campus have seen a 123 percent and a 16 percent increase in membership respectively over the last decade. This shows a clear desire by students to get around the draw, if possible, but leads to another issue pointed out by the ResX report. Much of the quantitative feedback received by the committee in regard to the quality of housing showed that FSL housing and row housing was considered by most students as some of the best housing on campus, in terms of the quality of rooms as well as the community and cohesion within these residences. This creates a compounding issue for students who aren’t fully aware of these options or don’t have the drive to try and “game the system” as pointed out in the report. They are left to the random nature of the Draw for their options and are therefore left to contend with a lower quality selection.

These issues are all underlined by problems with the overall efficiency of the system itself. The ResX report noted that students found the Draw process confusing and complex. Though attempts have been made to curb this with FAQ sections and website improvement, it still proves unwieldy for most students. This is most acute for rising sophomores who have no experience with the process. The confusing nature of the system isn’t helped by the Draw routinely leaving students unassigned. This problem has improved dramatically from 2013, when almost six percent of students in the Draw were left unassigned, but leaving more than 100 students unassigned ev-

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STANFORD’S HOUSING

1891

Stanford opens Encina Hall and Roble Hall for its first class of students. Male students live in Ecina Hall while female students residedin Roble.

1916

Dissatisfaction with the housing communities causes a mass exodus from the university dorms. Greek organizations are becoming the most popular form of housing.

1920s

The University expands housing by adding Toyon Hall, Branner Hall, and several new dining spaces.

1940s

Development of new housing is suspended for a period of time during World War II. A large part of Stanford housing is turned over to the military

1980s

Many fraternities close due to financial and structural changes. The newly vacant houses lead to the creation of nonGreek row houses.

2019

Stanford releases a report with the ambitious goal of redesigning the entire undergraduate housing system into a collection of communities.

ery year suggests room for improvement. The Draw is Stanford’s attempt to allow students the freedom to choose their own housing path, but its unpredictability and complexity have created obstacles for many students.

These issues are highlighted by what remains the most significant problem in the housing system the sophomore slump. Stanford’s freshman experience is the most intentional and crafted part of Stanford’s housing, but unlike peer institutions’ programs, Stanford’s has no form of continuity after freshman year. Spring quarter brings this reality to the forefront for freshmen as they enter the stressful period of creating draw groups and trying to navigate the system. Many students use options like FSL housing and pre-assignment to find a new community or maintain connections with existing friends. But everyone else, most of whom save their Tier 1 for their senior year, are left to work with what’s left, leaving many students in upper-class dorm housing, split up from the friends and connections of their freshman dorm. Surveys by the ResX committee showed that 40 percent of students living in upperclass dorms didn’t have a sense of belonging in their housing. Upperclass dorms were the worst scoring type of housing in the survey, having 28 percent more students without a feeling of belonging than frosh-style housing. This dissatisfaction reveals the biggest gap in Stanford’s current system.

As a system that allows the significant freedom, it suffers from a lack of cohesion over the four years, taking away the support systems and community that many students relied on in their first year and putting students at serious risks for increased anxiety and stress as they continue through their undergraduate years. The risk of increased mental distress is the most concerning of the costs that come with a varied system like Stanford’s.

The ResX Task Force

Issues with the draw process and equity of housing stood out as primary concerns that the commission sought to address. The ResX commission proposed a solution to the Draw system in the form of a new neighborhood system. The plan was guided by four goals: 1. Ideal housing configurations for first-year students.

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HOUSING 2. Ideal neighborhood concept that “prioritizes community and belonging.”

3. Ideal staffing assignment.

4. Ideal housing assignment process.

The ideal unit to meet these goals was the proposed neighborhoods, a central feature that is to guide all future housing development at Stanford. Each neighborhood will contain all-frosh dorms, upperclassmen housing, suite-style housing and up to three row-style houses. All of these residences would be clustered around green space and shared amenities like common spaces, dining services and other facilities, including art studios. Groups of three to four neighborhoods would share a gym and recreational center. Neighborhoods would offer a succinct microcosm of a student’s currently available housing options and residential resources. Although the report mentions the need for “additional research” to determine the status of Greek life and co-ops, for now, these organizations will be distributed throughout the neighborhoods—there will no longer be a singular “Row” filled almost exclusively with self-ops, coops and Greek housing.

Though the report never explicitly mentions other schools, there are clear parallels between the neighborhoods and the housing systems of Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth. The neighborhood system, however, also differs from these systems in several crucial ways.

First, whereas Harvard and Yale wait until sophomore year to assign students to a continuous community—such as a residential college—the ResX report proposes that incoming freshmen will be assigned to a neighborhood before arriving on campus. While freshmen can theoretically opt to reassign to another neighborhood at the end of their first year, the report notes that the newly proposed system will attempt to minimize these cases by preserving the strong community bonds formed in all-frosh dorms for four years.

This move betrays the first of many assumptions that go largely unaddressed in the ResX Report: that maintaining the communities from all-frosh dorms will reduce the issues with “sophomore slump”—and, implicitly, that the

vast majority of frosh were wholly satisfied with their frosh dorm experience. Anecdotally, the latter assumption is false—many who have lived in all-frosh dorms can still feel somewhat isolated. One student stated that he often felt his friendships in his dorm formed based on proximity more than anything else, which can leave students vulnerable to feel isolated from older students as well as cliques and groups within their own year.

The caveat of not wanting students to switch neighborhoods raises an initial concern with the vision, which appears to sacrifice true intentionality in the name of minimizing randomness. The ResX recommendations would lock students into a community from the moment they arrive on campus rather than giving them the resources to grow and find their own communities. The Draw may put students into an unfavorable living community for one year, but it doesn’t lock them into a network of housing they dislike for all four years. The potential for students to now be more constrained into situations like this is something all should be wary of. A key to preventing this would be to maximize the number of students who enjoy their neighborhoods. But this leads to a fundamental question which the report never truly answers: who, or what, defines the identity of a neighborhood?

The most concrete recommendations from the commission were on the internal mechanisms of the neighborhood. The proposed system within neighborhoods details several ways for students to create neighborhood identities. The most notable policy in this vein is the neighborhood theme house. Existing row houses and ethnic theme dorms would be divided up amongst the neighborhoods, but each one would also have a theme house, constructed like a row house, that they would be able to define. The theming and programming of these dorms would be created by the students of the neighborhood through their dorms and neighborhood councils. However, these proposed opportunities come with caveats such as approval and review by Resident Fellows and neighborhood-specific faculty.

Such stipulations within the report illuminate the biggest challenge Stanford would face in implementing the neighborhood system. Unlike our Ivy League peers,

“At its worse, a student can spend four years at Stanford without ever truly finding a home.”

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HOUSING whose well-integrated, established residential college systems have been around for centuries, this commission must contend with creating a university-designed system that is still driven and shaped by the students.

The report lists the ability of students to drive and influence this system as a priority. But whether this intention can be genuinely implemented will remain to be seen over the decades-long process of constructing these neighborhoods. As much as our Ivy League counterparts may provide inspiration for what Stanford’s system could be, they also provide stark insight into just how difficult such a system is to create.

Each neighborhood would contain allfrosh, upperclassmen, and suites-style housing as well as up to three rowstyle houses.

THOMAS PFEIFFER

A Big Green Warning

Of all other housing systems, the ResX proposal best resembles Dartmouth’s housing system. Beginning in fall 2016, Dartmouth began placing all undergraduate students in one of six “House communities,” which are scattered across the 237-acre campus (by comparison, Stanford’s campus is 8,180 acres). The intent behind the house communities, which essentially operate as residential colleges, was community-building—in theory, students who spent four years living together were likely to find at least some common ground with their fellow residents.

Reactions to the system, however, have been mixed at best. Austin, a 2019 Dartmouth graduate, was a sophomore when Dartmouth officially shifted to its current housing system. “It was like Harry Potter, where each house had its own logo and activities,” he said. “But it was completely arbitrary—we didn’t have a Sorting Hat to choose for us.”

Like all incoming frosh at Dartmouth, Austin spent his freshman year in one

of the first-year dorms. For the first few weeks, he and his floormates were close, but he eventually found friends elsewhere: some in class and others through mutual friends. In the fall of his sophomore year, Austin joined a Greek organization. His decision was driven largely by Dartmouth’s campus culture—60 percent of Dartmouth students participate in Greek life—rather than any sense of isolation that he’d felt; he’d made some close friends by spring of his freshman year, and they stayed close throughout his four years.

While Austin admits that he made some close friends from his house community, he believes those friendships formed as a byproduct of his initiative rather than proximity alone.

He’d entered college as a shy, introverted freshman, and only became more comfortable once he’d found his core friend group. “There were some people I got close to sophomore through senior year because we lived on the same floor,” he said, “and we’d just chat while we were brushing our teeth and stuff, but that only happened because I’d developed a more outgoing personality.”

HOUSING Last September, the Dartmouth administration decided to limit access to house community facilities, such as libraries and residence halls, to residents only, leading to widespread backlash from the student community. While the move wasn’t explicitly geared toward fostering stronger community within each house—the administration’s move occurred in response to several incidents of racial bias and vandalism across different residence halls—for Austin, it exemplified many of the problems with the housing community system.

“Communities have to form organically through self-identification and exclusivity,” he said, “and the administration tried to implement the exclusivity part.”

Austin believes the enforced exclusivity only masked deeper problems. “There’s no sense of community when you’re just with random people,” he said.

What’s Next?

The ResX task force’s vision is an ambitious solution that gives a plan for what Stanford housing will become.

The neighborhood system will fundamentally change the Stanford experience. If such a system is implemented correctly, it could provide every Stanford student with a support system the second they get on campus that will continue throughout their four years, promoting wellness, health, community, and personal growth. It’s a lofty vision that combines core elements of the Stanford experience with the best practices of top-level universities from around the country. But right now, it is just that―a vision.

The new direction signaled by the ResX report leaves a myriad of questions to be answered beyond obvious questions around funding and zoning issues. How long will the construction of these neighborhoods take? What form of neighborhoods will be in place while their physical structures are created? These are questions that future commissions, directors and provosts will have to answer for years to come. Current students and alumni alike should be considering the broader direction this plan signals for the university.

A later portion of the report dives deeply into the cost of too much choice. The introduction of the neighborhood system would dramatically change the range of choices students would have in creating their residential journey.

Intuitively, one could view this reduction in choice as a bad thing, limiting the freedom of some so everyone has a form of continuity. But the authors of the ResX report question the value of choice. Feedback from students cited in the report show that the sheer amount of options available to students come with great costs. Many students felt they missed out on certain experiences, particularly the

all-freshmen dorm experience, due to the variation of dorm options. The problems that come with the Draw are also deeply intertwined with the amount of variation. Though there are a multitude of options for many, many of the residence options are not desirable in the first place. The plan to eliminate the Draw in favor of a more structured system reflects the complexity and lower quality of the current diversity of options. By creating a structured residential system that provides continuity, the commission actually listened to what the majority of students said they desired.

This approach does come with one blind spot―the pockets of campus residential life that already have these elements. Tightly bonded communities, continuity over the four-year experience and a sense of belonging can be found in the types of housing that the report doesn’t know how to deal with, including FSL, ETH, and tightknit row communities. The report distinctly says that it doesn’t know what to do with Greek life as a part of the neighborhood plan at all. Though there are systematic issues within Greek life that are being actively addressed on Stanford’s campus and across the country, these residential communities possess an element of community that the university needs to consider as they plan. The ability of Stanford students to create their own communities and organizations is a fundamental component of Stanford’s culture and has been since its inception as a university. This independence is an essential quality of all who join Stanford that bonds us across the generations, making it essential that this nature should be leveraged, not ignored, in order to ensure the success of the neighborhood system. The commission has recognized this to a degree, making it clear that students need to drive the formation of the identity of neighborhoods.

But intentions can often be lost in the implementation.

Dartmouth’s example is a clear warning sign to administrators on what these types of communities can become if they aren’t allowed to organically grow. So how can the Stanford administration look to organically grow these identities? How do they let the true spirit of the school mold this vision rather than detached commissions and panels?

This question requires administrators driving this process to step back and reflect on whether or not the neighborhoods themselves could ever organically create community. The report itself doesn’t evaluate any changes or transitory updates to the system. Immediate reforms over the next five years that could alleviate several issues with the current system are seemingly passed over.

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HOUSING

Instead, the report went for the loftiest vision possible, advocating for a solution and model for all future planning that is the most capital-intensive route possible. For all of the complaints of the current system, the task force was very reserved in its short term goals. Of course, this vision statement is one to guide development for the next 25 years. But even this plan will be severely curtailed due to Stanford’s abandonment of its GUP application. The path forward for the neighborhood vision is complex.

But if there is a path forward, the next team that works on how this vision will be implemented needs to begin directing efforts to what will happen in the next five to 10 years. Reforms to the distribution of ethnic theme housing, more students wanting to be in all-freshmen housing, or the Draw itself can all happen today. Creating a housing system that promotes wellness and development of students requires more than a long term vision, it requires action today. As administration looks for the next step in creating the neighborhood system current

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students and alumni must remember this. The future of Stanford’s housing, and by extension Stanford itself, is in all of our hands. It is the responsibility of current and future students to ask themselves how we can make the communities and environment that we would like to leave for the generations to come.

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UKRAINE

KYIV vs. KIEV

What Two Letters Mean for Ukrainian Independence Catarina Buchatskiy

In 2014, unmarked Russian troops invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine. The justification behind it, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, was simple. Ukrainians and Russians are one people. Ukraine and Russia are one nation. It’s not an “invasion,” but rather a “reclaiming” of territory.

Ukraine has been a sovereign country since it declared independence in 1991 during the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Ukrainians have been fighting to separate Ukraine from its eastern neighbor. Less than a month before Putin’s illegal annexation of Crimea, the Ukrainian people rose in a turbulent revolution against ex-president Victor Yanukovych after he turned down a trade agreement with the European Union in favor of one with Russia. Roughly 125 people died fighting for Ukraine’s liberty during the Maidan Revolution, and more continue to die every day on Ukraine’s eastern border as the war with Russia rages on. After the invasion, Putin has referred to the newly claimed territory on the eastern border as “New Russia.” The international community has widely condemned Putin’s actions in Ukraine and has attempted

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to stand with Ukrainian independence. Yet many allies are still making a crucial error that enforces Russian domination over the region.

Two little letters could make a significant difference in helping Ukraine establish sovereignty on the global stage and separate itself from being considered “little Russia”: the “yi” in Kyiv. Following the increasing emphasis on Ukrainian cultural distinction and independence, the Ukrainian government and people have been demanding that the spelling is corrected. Many global newspapers, organizations, and people around the world are still using the traditional Russian spelling of Ukraine’s capital city: Kiev.

The intersection between language and Ukrainian sovereignty can be traced back centuries. Between the 18th and 20th centuries, Ukraine belonged to the Russian empire.

However, prior to that, its lands belonged to Poland, who inherited the land in 1569 from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Before colonial rule, Ukraine was home to the Kyivan Rus, an extremely prosperous and flourishing state. This made control of Ukrainian territory extremely valuable, for its fertile

UKRAINE soil and natural resources. Yet the concept of a strong, unified Ukrainian identity made the country more difficult to control; while the Poles and the Russians both wanted to claim Ukraine as their own, it was clear that Ukraine was neither Polish nor Russian. It was Ukrainian. It was in the interest of imperial powers to wipe out that distinct Ukrainian identity and culture.

As described by Anne Applebaum in her book Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, during Russian colonization, the Russian empire identified Ukrainian as a primary target, barring Ukrainian from being used in state schools despite it allowing the use of other non-Russian dialects, as described by. Russians treated the Ukrainian language as a dialect of the Russian language — not an independent one, despite their clear differences. Because for a large part of Ukraine’s history the country was colonized, Ukrainian was mostly spoken in the countryside as the urban centers adapted to the modes of the colonizers. The restrictions on the use of Ukrainian took a toll on the Ukrainian national movement, and Ukrainians were demoralized. They had to switch to Russian in order to survive. It was no longer useful or practical to speak Ukrainian: because most of the people occupying high-power positions were Russian, they hired Russian speaking candidates. Well-respected and influential positions all required the use of Russian. Ukrainian was being made obsolete, and it became harder and harder to stay afloat without switching to Russian.

When the Soviet Union came to power, its measures against Ukrainian sovereignty became even more drastic. Applebaum also depicts the process of Russification that continued in the early 1930s. The plan was to exterminate Ukraine by starvation and resettle the land with Russians. This plan was almost successful: Stalin’s “holodomor,” or orchestrated famine in Ukraine is said to have taken the lives of up to seven million Ukrainians. These losses were significant, particularly because most affected were rural Ukrainians who had the strongest sense of Ukrainian identity. Their traditions, songs, foods, were almost extinguished along with them.

This is because of a concentrated effort, both by the Russian empire and the Soviet Union, to destroy the Ukrainian nation. Now, once again, we see the trend continue with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The 2014 Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv was a major moment for Ukrainian national pride; Ukrainians flooded the streets, proudly waving Ukrainian flags, and the protestors’ battle cry — “glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes” — echoed throughout the country. It was a direct threat to Putin’s influence: the public was willing to put their lives at risk rather than continue allowing Russia to control them. Roughly a hundred protestors (now dubbed the Heavenly Hundred) paid that ultimate price. Putin’s invasion, if anything, only heightened Ukrainian national pride, as war often does.

With Ukraine now making headlines around the world because of its involvement in President Trump’s impeachment, media outlets are being forced to reconsider the way that they portray Ukraine. With increased attention on the importance of military aid to Ukraine, the way that media outlets choose to report on Ukraine, and particularly how they choose to spell Kyiv, becomes especially relevant.

The Associated Press made an announcement in August that it will be updating its spelling to the traditional Ukrainian spelling of Kyiv, citing it as an “important adaptation” because of the spelling’s significance to Ukraine’s “current status.” The U.S. government recognizes Kyiv as the official spelling and Kiev as an alternate spelling in its most recent 2016 U.S. Government Publishing Office Style Manual.

On Oct. 3, The Wall Street Journal published that after “careful consideration” it will be joining the Associated Press in its use of the Ukrainian spelling of Kyiv. On Nov. 18, the New York Times announced that it too will be revising its spelling and will no longer be using “Kiev” in response to Yuri Shevchuk, a lecturer in Ukrainian at Columbia University, who explained that the correct spelling ought to be used out of respect for the country, as well as that the Russian spelling is a sign of “old colonialist inertia.”

The difference in spelling may seem like a trivial matter on the surface, but it represents a deep history of oppression.

Russian and other colonial powers have spent centuries making sure that there isn’t a Ukrainian national identity recognized on a global scale, and they are not willing to relinquish their rule. The global community is perpetuating their efforts by not recognizing the correct, Ukrainian spelling of its own capital city. The inaction in changing the way that global organizations spell Kyiv, despite Ukrainian pleas for correction, reflect an attitude of indifference around the world towards Ukrainian statehood. In 2018, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry launched a global social media campaign, #KyivNotKiev, in an attempt to bring awareness to the correct spelling of the city. In other formerly colonized countries, name changes were widely accepted. Ceylon became Sri Lanka, Bombay became Mumbai. Yet Ukraine’s objections do not seem worthy of the same consideration, as the global media has not taken action to change their language until. Despite years of Ukraine’s requests for international recognition of their language as official, major newspapers such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have only recently begun to listen. While their changes have marked the beginning of a turning point, it is still just the beginning.

How the world views Ukraine is important, and not just for Ukrainians — Ukraine’s independence has been critical to American foreign policy.

As Bill Taylor, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, described, Ukrainian independence “affects the world that we live in, that our children will grow up in and our grandchil-

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Anti government protests in Kyiv, 2014.

dren.” He elaborated that “Ukraine is on the front line” of a long lasting struggle to maintain the post-World War II global peace. If we allow Russia to seize Ukraine, this order will collapse.

Continuing to refer to Ukraine’s capital city in its Russian manner is just one more concession of Ukraine to the Kremlin, and along with that comes tangible consequences.

If Ukrainian statehood was more concretely defined, perhaps it would not have been as easy for Russia to dispute the borders and annex the Crimean peninsula. The Ukrainian vs.

Russian language distinction was particularly important in Putin’s decision to “reclaim” Crimea and eastern Ukraine, with Putin claiming that his actions were to defend the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine. Thanks to centuries of effort by colonial powers, especially during the 1930s, the Russian language is heavily used in parts of Ukraine, thus allowing Putin to “justify” the annexation and finally finish the process of Russification of Ukraine carefully orchestrated by Stalin a century ago.

Kyiv is the correct, Ukrainian way to spell the capital city.

Kiev is the literal translation of the Russian spelling of the city. Using that as the widely accepted way to refer to the capital is dismissive of Ukrainian autonomy. It implies the Russian way to spell Ukraine’s capital city is “correct” and the

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Ukrainian way isn’t, despite that being the officially recognized and used spelling by the Ukrainian government. Those two letters embody an existential threat to the Ukrainian nation, and the way that the world chooses to spell could have significant consequences; one spelling would entrench the old colonial values and depict Ukraine as simply a Russian relic, while one would take a stand in supporting Ukraine’s independence and statehood. By continuing to use the Russian spelling one becomes complicit in the centuries-long Russian effort to erase Ukrainian national identity. This battle for two letters is just a microcosm of the historic and still ongoing cultural battle that Russia has waged for Ukraine, and the outcome will have consequences on the future of Europe and the international order.

Catarina Buchatskiy is a freshman hoping to major in international relations.

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