Stanford Today Edition: July/August, 1997 Section: Features: A Year in the Life of the Farm WWW: A Year in the Life of the Farm
From the discovery of evidence for life on Mars and six national sports championships - not to mention a Nobel and a Pulitzer - to scientific research that will revolutionize the study of molecules and the way we relate to nature's services, Stanford had a year to remember. Here's a look at the main news stories.
MORE THAN HALFWAY THERE
President Casper announced it during a press conference in April: In only 11 months, $108 million had been pledged as part of a campaign to raise $200 million for 300 new graduate fellowships in the sciences and engineering.
The news got immediate national attention and for obvious reasons: The money will fund an unprecedented project to insulate graduate education from the uncertainties of federal funding. Already dwindling, federal support for research is projected to decline between 14 and 18 percent in real dollars by the year 2002. The program will help Stanford attract the best students by assuring at least three years of financial support in the sciences, engineering and some social sciences. Nominated by their departments and selected by faculty committees, the students will receive a tuition voucher of $12,000 and a stipend of $16,000 annually.
Texas businessman Robert Bass and Cisco Systems Chairman John Morgridge each gave $10 million. President Casper urged more entrepreneurs to join in. "We are looking for help from those who benefit from our students and faculty to ensure the future," he said.
INCLUSIVENESS FOR HUMANITIES
Two years after a committee was appointed to study and revise the program in Cultures, Ideas and Values, the Faculty Senate on May 15 unanimously approved legislation for a new Introduction to the Humanities that will replace CIV as a year-long freshman requirement. After a two-year period of transition, the program is scheduled to be fully implemented by the 1999-2000 academic year.
Two new prototype courses, offered in autumn quarter 1997, will be team-taught and focus on between three and five primary texts. Each course will be limited to 250 students who will hear two lectures and meet twice weekly in small discussion sections of no more than 15 students each. In a departure from the CIV legislation that mandated "substantial attention to the issues of race, gender and class," Introduction to the Humanities will affirm "the spirit and principle of inclusiveness."
CROSSING BORDERS IN RACE AND ETHNICITY
Almost before the ink had dried on legislation for a new program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CSRE) last November, the faculty who designed it were fielding phone calls from other universities hoping to establish similar programs.
The impetus for the interdisciplinary program dates from the early 1970s, when students began asking for programs in ethnic studies. Almost 170 courses will be available under the CSRE umbrella and students can major in one of four areas: Asian American studies, comparative studies in race and ethnicity, Native American studies and Chicano/a studies. Al Camarillo, professor of history, was appointed head of the program. A research institute, co-directed by professors of history and psychology, will be available to graduate students.
SILICON GENEROSITY
The inventors of Yahoo!, the first online directory for the World Wide Web, donated $2 million to establish a new endowed chair in the School of Engineering. At ages 28 and 30, Chih-Yuan "Jerry" Yang and David Filo, who earned master's degrees in electrical engineering at Stanford in 1990, are the youngest individuals to have endowed a chair at Stanford in more than two decades. The founding of Yahoo! is a legend of Silicon Valley style: Yang and Filo started the guide to the web as a hobby while working toward their doctorates in the Computer Systems Laboratory. The company that grew out of that lark reported revenues totaling $8.6 million for the fourth quarter ending Dec. 31, 1996. The Yahoo! chair is one of 12 endowed professorships established this academic year, the biggest collection since the middle of the centennial campaign.
STANFORD MBAs SITTING PRETTY
Early last year the Business School mailed a long questionnaire to 4,000 of its 1965 through 1989 MBA graduates. The results were encouraging: Stanford MBAs are professionally itinerant, financially comfortable and generally pleased with their place in life and with the preparation they got at the university. Their median salary-plus-bonus range is $150,000 to $200,000. At the 75th percentile the range is $300,000 to $500,000. One of the trends was the migration to smaller companies. The full career survey report can be seen on the web at http://www-gsb.stanford.edu/ under "Employment Survey."
CHANGING OF THE GUARD
James Montoya, dean of undergraduate admission and financial aid, will be taking over as vice provost and dean of student affairs at the end of the academic year. Montoya will succeed Mary Edmonds, who retires after five years. Edmonds will continue to manage a study of Stanford's athletic department required for National Collegiate Athletic Association certification. Montoya, who has been at the university for five years, said he will explore "new technologies to improve our services to students."
TOBIAS WOLFF COMES BACK TO THE FARM
It's been a long time coming, but acclaimed author Tobias Wolff finally has agreed to move west. He will begin work as a tenured professor of English at Stanford on Sept. 1. Wolff, an award-winning writer and one of the country's premier short story writers, is best known for his memoirs This Boy's Life, which was made into a movie starring Robert DeNiro, and In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War, an account of his experiences in Vietnam as a Green Beret. For the last 17 years, Wolff has taught at Syracuse University in New York, where he was the university's creative writing program director. Wolff taught at Stanford from 1976 to 1978 and last visited the Farm in December, when he taught a graduate seminar in creative writing.
MEDICAL MEGA-MERGER
After months of negotiations, Stanford University Medical Center and the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center last November decided to merge to create UCSF/Stanford Health Care. An overload of administrative work and pending legislation has delayed the completion of the mega-venture, scheduled for mid-July, until Sept. 1. The new hospital system will include Stanford University Hospital and Clinic, Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF/Mount Zion Hospital. Packard and Stanford hospitals merged in January.
UCSF/Stanford Health Care will be "a classic high-tech company," said Peter Van Etten, the new chief executive officer. Van Etten, the top administrator at the Stanford Health Services, was appointed after UCSF's chief executive turned down the job in February.
POSSIBLE LIFE ON MARS
It was the biggest science story of the year in the solar system. In August, a team of scientists, including several Stanford chemists, led by Richard Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Chemistry, announced that it had found microscopic evidence in a Martian meteorite that strongly suggests microbial life once existed on the Red Planet.
In a paper published in the journal Science and in a news conference televised around the world, the scientists explained that while they did not have a "smoking gun" or actual organism, they had enough evidence to build a compelling case that the meteorite had been inhabited by microscopic life when it was blasted from the surface of Mars about 3.6 billion years ago.
The evidence: tiny grains of magnetite that are shaped identically to those created by earthly microbes, as well as other mineralogical evidence that could most easily be explained as the by-product of living organisms. Images of tiny ovals and worm shapes, about a thousand times smaller than most terrestrial bacteria, appeared in the press.
In addition to the news coverage, the researchers' results were met with a healthy combination of excitement and skepticism by the global scientific community. Since then many papers have been published, attacking and supporting their conclusion.
THE SMALLEST OF THE SMALL
Stanford scientists helped redefine the concept of a small force. Imagine a force that is roughly a billionth of a billionth of a pound. Until now, forces in this range have been undetectable, but Stanford mechanical engineers, working with scientists at IBM's Almaden Research Center, successfully measured the so-called atto-newton forces for the first time last March.
The secret to this delicate measurement was the fabrication of tiny silicon cantilevers that are a thousand times thinner than a human hair and invisible to the naked eye. When a cantilever was equipped with a magnetic tip and its deflection measured by an optical fiber attached to an instrument called an interferometer, the silicon sliver was able to measure such extraordinarily tiny magnetic forces.
A primary reason for measuring atto-newton forces is to develop a new kind of microscope: a "magnetic resonance force microscope" that will not only picture individual atoms in three dimensions but also tell different kinds of atoms apart. The instrument will revolutionize the study of biological molecules and electronic materials.
A KNOCK-OUT STRATEGY
Dr. Stanley N. Cohen, a professor of genetics, and Dr. Limin Li, a postdoctoral fellow, isolated a key gene involved in human breast cancer by using an innovative strategy of their invention called random homozygous knockout (RHKO). With the new method, the scientists can simultaneously inactivate, or knock out, both copies of a gene in a cell without knowing the gene's identity or function. By identifying the gene inactivated in cancer-forming cells, researchers can isolate genes called tumor suppressors, normally necessary to stop cancer. In this case, they isolated a defective gene in breast cancer that is not necessarily familial. This is significant because most breast cancers arise through spontaneous mutations rather than through inheritance. The results of their research were published Jan. 10 in the journal Cell.
SEX AND THE SINGING FLY
The gene for sex was found in fruit flies, surprising even its discoverers and making headlines around the world. Geneticists had believed that no single gene could oversee a complex behavior. Then, last December, Bruce Baker's lab at Stanford, working with scientists from three other universities, discovered that a gene called "fruitless" was in charge of virtually every step in the male fruit fly's elaborate courting ritual, including his choice of a mate, his love dance and serenade, and the final sex act. Could such a gene program the rituals of human sex? The scientists don't know yet. But they say there's sure to be much more than genes at work shaping a human love song. (See also Background.)
CHARLIE, PHONE HOME
A single Atlantic bluefin tuna may be the world's most valuable fish - worth $10,000 to $70,000 on the Tokyo fish market. Nobody knows for sure if current international treaties are strong enough to protect the tunas from over-greedy fishing. So far it has been impossible to do a tuna nose count. These huge ocean nomads travel thousands of miles a year and scientists don't know if the bluefins are a single ocean-wide group or several smaller populations. Now Stanford biologist Barbara Block is leading a high-tech tracking effort to find out. She is using test-tube-size computer tags that can continuously record a fish's location, its temperature and other details about its activities.
This winter, Block and colleagues from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the National Marine Fisheries Service attached tags to almost 200 tuna thanks to help from Cape Hatteras, N.C. sportsfishers. The sportsfishers caught the giant fish, weighing 250 to 500 pounds and pulled them on board boats where the scientists performed a quick surgery to attach the tags, and returned the tuna safely to the water.
PAY FOR NATURE
How much in dollars is the environment worth? A recent study set the price at $33 trillion for the services ecosystems provide humankind.
In a pioneering book, Nature's Services, published in February, Stanford ecologist Gretchen Daily reveals that national and global economies soon may have to spend trillions of dollars to replace services that humans now get from nature for free. Some of these services, including pure water and arable soil, may be irreplaceable at any cost. In the book, Daily and 30 ecologists and economists propose ways to assess "ecosystems services" and place a value on them so that policy makers and business leaders can calculate their worth in their plans. The authors propose privatization: Why not create revenue-producing institutions that will make it profitable to invest in preserving nature's resources?
IN CASE YOU WERE ON THE MOON...
In case you left the planet for a few days, you might have missed the
fact that Tiger Woods won the Masters golf tournament, breaking records
all over the course. The youngest person (21) ever to be the champion
has been likened to Jesus, Mozart and Gandhi by his admirers. The former
Stanford student - and if his mother gets her way, returning
student - had earlier won his third consecutive U.S. Amateur title.
During Woods' two years at Stanford, he won 10 individual tournament
titles, including the 1996 NCAA individual championship. Since turning
pro last August he has won three PGA events and more than $1.5 million.
MAKING HISTORY
Men's volleyball won its first-ever NCAA Championship in Columbus, Ohio, this May by beating its long-time nemesis UCLA in five games. The team had reached the Final Four three times before but never gotten the final victory. The Cardinal's Matt Fuerbringer - one of the only two players in NCAA history to be a four-year All American - and Mike Hoefer combined for a block on the championship point in a dramatic rally-scoring fifth game that featured nine ties. Stanford senior outside hitter Mike Lambert, a 1996 U.S. Olympian, shook off a cold spell to score five kills in the deciding game. The victory gave Stanford and its head coach, Ruben Nieves, a 27-4 overall finish.
THE FOURTH CROWN
Every year the national competition gets stronger in women's volleyball, and every year Coach Don Shaw's recruiting gets better. Kerri Walsh, who entered Stanford a year ago, earned Freshman of the Year and All-American honors and helped Stanford win the NCAA Championship for the third time. In the 1996 title game in December in Cleveland, Ohio, Stanford beat Hawaii in three quick games. Walsh led the team in kills with 17; Kristin Folkl (who was chosen All American for the third straight year) had 16; and Debbie Lambert had 10. Stanford's Pac-10 Conference crown was its fourth in the last six years.
BIG MEET
For track and field Coach Vin Lananna, it was a soaring day at Angell Field at the Big Meet with Cal. Earlier this year, both his women's and men's cross-country teams won NCAA Championships. And now, for the first time in 25 years, the men beat Cal, 85-78, and the women won, 84-70, ending a three-year losing streak. Of the 36 potential points in the throwing events, Cardinal women won 34.
OH, SWEET 16
"For a few days - the most exquisite week in Farm basketball history, when both women's and men's teams had reached the third round of the NCAA championship tournaments - all things were possible," wrote one of our columnists in May.
For the first time in 55 years, Stanford men's basketball team made it to the Sweet 16. For the women it was their natural place. They had won two national championships and been in the Final Four six times. After winning 25 straight games the women lost in the semifinals to Old Dominion 83-82. The men ended the season with a 12-0 home record and a 12-6 Pac-10 record. But they lost against Utah 82-77 in the final game. Coaches Tara VanDerveer and Mike Montgomery signed 5- and 6-year extensions of their contracts.
PENSION TAXES MAY SOCK IT TO YOU
Diligent savers beware - you can get hit with very high taxes if you save too much for your retirement in tax-deferred pension plans, magazines and newspapers have warned their readers in the past few months. All were quoting from a new study of taxation on 401(k) accounts by economists John Shoven, Stanford's dean of humanities and sciences, and Harvard's David Wise, who spends summers on campus at the Hoover Institution. Shoven and Wise say they were surprised to find that marginal tax rates could reach above 90 percent on inherited pensions and 60 percent or more when retirees or their spouses take distributions from tax-deferred pension accounts that have accumulated $1.5 million or more. Only a small portion of the American work force faces
these high rates, Shoven said, "but the households that are affected
probably account for a significant portion of total personal
savings."
TALKING ABOUT TRILLIONS
Americans may be better off financially than they think because the consumer price index is overstating price inflation by about 1.1 percent a year, a congressional commission headed by Stanford and Hoover economist Michael Boskin concluded last December. The commission's report caused an uproar among retired persons' groups and put Boskin, the Tully Friedman Professor of Economics and senior fellow at Hoover, at the center of national attention. The Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index recommended that Congress and the president act to stop annual automatic adjustment of tax brackets, Social Security checks and other federal spending programs by the index. In March the Clinton administration agreed on a framework budget accord that takes some of Boskin's recommendations to reduce the federal deficit into account. For Boskin, that's not enough. "The accord did little to deal with long-run budgetary problems that amount to trillions of dollars . . . that will be driven by upcoming demographic transitions when the baby boomers retire in the year 2001," he recently wrote.
OUR MOST FAMOUS ONES
Newsweek magazine raided Stanford for its "100 Americans for the Next Century." The list included six faculty and alumni names: Condoleezza Rice, Stanford provost and professor of political science, a specialist in Soviet affairs; Paul Goldstein, the Stella W. and Ira
S. Lillick Professor of Law, an expert on copyright law in cyberspace; Gretchen Daily, the Bing Interdisciplinary Research Scientist in the Department of Biological Sciences, who studies the economics of the environment; former student Tiger Woods, now a pro golfer who is turning the sport on its head; Jerry Yang, MSEE '90, one of the founders of the Internet search engine Yahoo!; and Paul Romer, professor of economics at the business school, whose theory on growth argues that new ideas and high-tech innovation are key production components.
Romer also made Time's list of "The Most Influential People in America in 1997." "His answers may just revolutionize the study of economics," the magazine wrote.
Several top-ranking Washington, D.C., insiders left the nation's capital to offer Stanford students their take on government. The trappings of power left behind, they now can share their invaluable experience:
William J. Perry returned in February as the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor in the School of Engineering and at the Institute for International Studies. He had been secretary of defense since early 1994. Perry had co-directed Stanford's Center for International Security and Arms Control before going to Washington.
Coit D. Blacker, senior fellow and deputy director of the Institute for International Studies, returned to campus in fall 1996 after a two-year stint as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director of the Office of Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs (the same post held by Provost Condoleezza Rice at the National Security Council during the Bush administration). Blacker is the author of books and monographs on security issues, including Hostage to Revolution: Gorbachev and Soviet Security Policy.
Bill Bradley, a former New Jersey senator, will be the Payne Distinguished Professor for the 1997-98 academic year, splitting his time between Stanford and the University of Maryland. At Stanford's Institute for International Studies, he will deliver five public lectures, which will then be edited for publication. Payne professors also typically participate in the institute's seminars, honors programs and research forums.
Michael S. Wald, the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law, returns to Stanford in September after three years as deputy general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services and a brief stint as general manager of San Francisco's Department of Social Services. Wald is an expert in the areas of family and juvenile law.
Deval L. Patrick, former assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Justice Department, didn't exactly take a sabbatical when he left Washington in January. Patrick commuted from Boston to Stanford each week teaching "Current Issues in Civil Rights Law" as the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor during the law school's winter term.
Former Ambassador James Goodby, the U.S. negotiator for nuclear security and disarmament in 1995 and 1996, spent two quarters at Stanford as the Payne Distinguished Professor at the Institute for International Studies.
OUR PULITZER PRIZE
A thoughtful historical analysis on one of the most frequently evoked terms, the "original intent" of the Constitution, won Stanford's American history professor, Jack N. Rakove, the Pulitzer Prize for history this year.
In the book Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, the fourth he has written, Rakove, the Coe Professor of History and American Studies, said he attempts to reconstruct what the nation's founders really intended when they crafted the Constitution. It portrays a historically complex document defined by compromises, class anxiety and political necessity.
Rakove, who earned a doctorate in history from Harvard University in 1975 and joined Stanford's Department of History in 1980, said he spent the "better part of a dozen years" working on Original Meanings with the hope that it will be "the standard work for historians about the framing and ratification of the Constitution."
AND ALSO THE NOBEL
The discovery was made 24 years ago in 1972: A rare type of helium, called helium-3, became a weird and wacky kind of liquid, called a superfluid, when cooled to within two-thousandths of a degree of absolute zero.
Superfluids act much differently from ordinary liquids. If it were possible for a person to jump into a superfluid, she would float but could not swim. No matter how hard she kicked her feet or stroked with her arms, she would go nowhere because the superfluid would flow without any resistance past her thrashing limbs. This total lack of viscosity, or stickiness, has some other strange consequences. If you swirled a beaker of superfluid and then set it on a desk, the liquid would continue to spin indefinitely. If you left the beaker open, the super-slippery liquid would appear to defy gravity by creeping up the sides of the container and flowing down onto the table until none was left inside.
Douglas Osheroff, now Stanford's J.G. Jackson and C.J. Wood Professor of Physics, was a graduate student at Cornell then. But his work has had some important consequences: It has helped scientists to better understand the basic physics of high-temperature superconductors, and superfluid helium-3 has been used to test models of the primordial universe as it expanded and cooled following the Big Bang. For that reason Osheroff and his Cornell thesis advisers won the Nobel Prize for Physics last October.
LIGHTS, CAMERA: IT'S THE ACADEMY AWARDS
Each of the four Stanford faculty members elected to the National Academy of Sciences this April has spent years working to solve different scientific riddles: Gerald R. Crabtree, an associate investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor of pathology and developmental biology at the School of Medicine, has focused on tracking the cellular messages the immune system uses to marshal its forces against pathogens and other invaders. David M. Kreps, the Paul E. Holden Professor of Economics at the Graduate School of Business, has studied the area of dynamic choice behavior and economics in which individuals make choices through time. Robert L. Metzenberg, visiting professor of biological sciences, has dedicated his career to understanding the genetic control of metabolism. And Richard W. Tsien, the George D. Smith Professor at the School of Medicine, has made critical contributions to understanding how ion channels are involved in cellular signaling in heart and brain cells. While their work covers a wide range of interests, their careers have one thing in common - they have all made "distinguished and continuing achievements in original research," according to the academy standards. The academy, a private organization of scientists and engineers established in 1863 by an act of Congress, named 60 new American members and 15 foreign associates this year. Currently, 105 Stanford faculty serve on the academy.
Nine Stanford faculty were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences this April to honor their contributions to science, scholarship, public affairs and the arts. The new members are: B. Douglas Bernheim, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Economics; Steven Boxer, professor of chemistry; Uta Francke, professor of genetics and of pediatrics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator; Martin Perl, professor of physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; Marjorie Perloff, the Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities; Condoleezza Rice, professor of political science and provost; Renato Rosaldo, the Lucie Stern Professor of Anthropology; Paul M. Sniderman, professor of political science; and James A. Spudich, the Douglass M. and Nola Leishman professor of Cardiovascular Disease. The arts and sciences academy includes more than 200 Stanford faculty among its 4,000 fellows and honorary members.
THE 'GENIUS' GRANTS: NO STRINGS ATTACHED
They couldn't be more different: Barbara Block, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the Hopkins Marine Station, is the founder and co-director of the Tuna Research and Conservation Center; Anna Deavere Smith, the Ann O'Day Maples Professor in the Arts, blends theatrical art, social commentary, journalism and intimate storytelling to create a new form of theater. But the MacArthur Foundation recognized the excellence of both Stanford faculty with no-strings-attached "genius grants," of $245,000 each over five years. The grants can be used in any way by the recipients. Block, who studies everything about tuna and related fish, from their genes to the way their muscles generate heat, said she would apply the funds to her work studying schools of ocean fish. Smith, acclaimed for her one-woman shows Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 and Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities, has been working on a series of dramas called "On the Road: A Search for American Character," that explores the conflicts and searing questions that are transforming American identity - and American theater.
IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST
Eric Beerbohm, a junior majoring in political science, and Amori Yee Mikami, a junior majoring in psychology, each won $30,000 Truman scholarships this year, bringing to 38 the number of Stanford students to be so honored since 1977. The prizes are awarded annually to undergraduates who are committed to a career in government or public interest and public service organizations.
ON THE RHODE
Olivia White, a senior majoring in physics and mathematics, was named a 1997 Rhodes scholar. She is the 76th Stanford student to win a Rhodes award. On that same day, Gabriela Teodorescu, a history major, and Robert Yeh, who earned a degree in human biology, each won British Marshall Scholarships. Also, four Stanford students were named Goldwater scholars: Felix Y. Feng, a junior in biological sciences from Palo Alto; Michele Hwu, a junior in biological sciences from Seattle; Peter M. Kasson, a sophomore in biological sciences from Chapel Hill, N.C.; and Debleena Sengupta, a sophomore in chemistry from South Setauket, N.Y.
From an all-campus blackout to Physics Professor Doug Osheroff winning the Nobel Prize and Chelsea Clinton choosing the Farm, students had no lack of excitement this school year. These are the top newsmakers of the year, according to the Stanford Daily, an independent student newspaper published on campus.
ANOTHER WINNER
For the second year in a row, a Stanford professor shared the Nobel Prize in physics. Physics Professor Doug Osheroff, 51, was one of three Americans named as 1996 Nobel Prize winners this year.
IN THE DARK
In early October, the entire university suffered a four-hour power outage after the campus generator, Cardinal Cogen, was damaged by rats in the switch gear. The outage led to continuing disruptions in electricity, air conditioning and computer access during the days afterward. It also shut down Internet access for a host of Silicon Valley companies.
The two rats found in the underground conduits had been exposed to extreme temperature and voltage.
The incident was the first major power outage at Stanford since the generator became the university's main power source in 1988.
POLITICS AS USUAL
In the fall, author Dinesh D'Souza and civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson locked horns in a debate in Memorial Auditorium over affirmative action and Proposition 209.
D'Souza, who authored The End of Racism and Illiberal Education, supported Prop. 209, California legislation eliminating state and local government affirmative action programs. It was passed by voters in November.
Jackson did not support the measure. He emphasized the need for affirmative action to ensure equal opportunity. "Most of the people in the world tonight are nonwhite, young, poor and don't speak English, Jackson said. "We must train our youth to live in that world."
D'Souza argued affirmative action is the "wrong way to go about moving in increments to a race-blind society."
The two were part of a series of political speakers on campus that included appearances by all third-party presidential candidates, including Ross Perot and Ralph Nader.
PRESIDENTIAL NOD
Of all the schools the first daughter could have chosen, Chelsea Clinton chose Stanford. Clinton, 17, is a National Merit semifinalist and standout student at Washington's Sidwell Friends School. She hopes eventually to study medicine. She will become the second child of a sitting president to attend Stanford. President Herbert Hoover's son Allan, Class of '29, attended Stanford while his father, himself a Stanford alumnus, was president. Although Stanford was always under consideration, Clinton was expected to study closer to home. In addition to Stanford, more than 3,000 miles away from the White House, Clinton also considered Princeton, Yale and Brown universities.
"Planes run out there and phones work out there. E-mail works out there, so we'll be all right," President Clinton said. While at Stanford the weekend before making her decision, Clinton attended a dance performance and a fraternity party and purchased a Boysenberry Bliss from Jamba Juice.
WAVES OF HATE
More than 300 students gathered in White Plaza on an afternoon in April to rally against homophobia, racism and sexism on campus.
A rash of hate crimes had occurred on campus during the month, and student emotion ran high.
"Hate breeds, and so long as people allow things to go past them, it's going to continue," said doctoral student Suzie Walker, one the protest organizers. She added that the rally's purpose was "to combat all hate crimes."
Among the events that aroused student anger were an incident of anti-gay vandalism in the Bollard eating club at the Suites, as well as racist and anti-gay slogans plastered on the door of an apartment in Mirrielees.
WEENIES ROASTED
On Nov. 23, the Cardinal football team crushed its eternal rival, California, 42-21 in the 99th Big Game.
The win clinched Stanford's second straight bowl appearance under head coach Tyrone Willingham, an accomplishment the Cardinal followed with a victory over Michigan State New Year's Eve in El Paso, Texas.
After a dismal start, football finished the season with a winning record, surprising a great many fans en route. The team had a 2-5 record midway through the fall.
The game, played at Berkeley's Memorial Stadium, was never close, with the Cardinal jumping out to an early 17-0 lead. Cal's attempts at a comeback fell flat.
Big Game, known for enthusiastic crowds that sometimes get out of hand, was not without a taste of violence once again. A Cal yell leader - eventually cleared of all charges - allegedly incited the crowd to attack Stanford's Tree, Chris Cary, whose costume was torn to shreds.
Cary raised funds in White Plaza for a new costume, which debuted later in the year.
TITLE AFTER TITLE
Stanford's men's and women's volleyball teams played their school proud this year, both ending the season with national championships. They added to men's and women's cross-country titles earlier in the year. Then came men's and women's tennis - both NCAA champions - bringing the total number of championships to a record-breaking six.
A STAR IS BORN
Kate Starbird surpassed all expectations as she led the Cardinal women's basketball team through a nearly flawless season this year. Starbird went on to win the Naismith Player of the Year award and be recruited by the Seattle Reign. The highly lauded team also included seniors Jamila Wideman, Charmin Smith and Tara Harrington, who helped the team to win after win before a disappointing loss in the Final Four to Old Dominion.