Stanford: A Culture of Community Awareness
This blog post is part of a Photo Essay Assignment designed to capture a part of Stanford culture. Written by Kenan Jiang, Chun Pan, and Julia Janssen.
In any given weekend, the Stanford campus is alive (bustling) with activity. From parties to sports games, art fairs to community service events, there is never a lack of something to do. Although Stanford students enjoy partying and relaxing on the weekends, they are also very socially aware and find ways to give back to their community. For example, this past weekend, students participated in a Tibetan Torch Relay showing solidarity with the fight for Tibetan freedom and Relay For Life, a 24-hour fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.
Professor Carson of Stanford University spoke at the student-organized Relay and made memorable statements about Tibetan freedom.
“If [the Tibetan] people are risking their lives to draw attention to human rights violations, then it is our moral obligation to respond.” – Professor Clayborne Carson, Department of History
The Relay For Life event brought together numerous organizations, including local high schools, colleges, and sponsors such as Google and Best Buy. In the event, groups walk around a track for 24-hours to support cancer research. Groups, which camp out in the middle of the track overnight, make sure that at least one member of the group is always on the track.
Tents set up for participants of the event.
Students camped out on Roble Field, taking a break from walking.
At night, candles lit within paper bags line the track to illuminate the way through the darkness for walkers, symbolizing hope in a dark time.
Candle-lit paper bags line the track.
These are just two examples of student activism on campus. There are many other groups which participate in community service activities, such as the Kiwanis, which is a community service club, and APO, a co-ed community service fraternity, in which the members are extremely dedicated to devoting their time in order to raise awareness for many different causes. If you were to wander around campus, you would find no lack of community awareness, whether you encountered students protesting the wages of Stanford custodians or speaking out against the actions of American leaders such as Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld.
Comments
It is great that so many students take part in bettering their community and the people in it. Also its nice that there are so many different clubs and organizations so you can choose what you want to participate in. China out of Tibet is a very current subject and its interesting to see how quickly students respanded and wanted to take action.
Posted by: Erica and Marie | April 16, 2008 10:20 AM
It is great that so many students take part in bettering their community and the people in it. Also its nice that there are so many different clubs and organizations so you can choose what you want to participate in. China out of Tibet is a very current subject and its interesting to see how quickly students responded and wanted to take action.
Posted by: Erica and Marie | April 16, 2008 10:20 AM
In the Netherlands we also have actions as fundraisers for different organisations and communities. Althought, I do not think that we have really an largescale project as a 24h fundraise an campus. I don`t live on campus so I can not say for sure, however I don´t think we have these big actions.
We do have action such as 24h without food to raise money for people in third world countries and some people are also very active for raising money and awareness for the third world countries or less fortunate people in society.
A few years ago they had an action on our university for selling bottles of water for 1euro and this money went to a project in Africa. I think almost everybody bought one or two bottles. Just because it was cheap and we helped someone to provide water.
This action on your campus is a very interesting and fun way of raising money. Do they have a lot of these activities?
Posted by: Daniella van der Eijk | April 16, 2008 10:29 AM
Usually there are small activities such as selling pins for breast cancer and things like that. The 24 hour Relay for Life is probably one of the biggest service events of the year
Posted by: Chun Pan | April 20, 2008 01:37 PM
Daniella,
Thanks for sharing the activities that happen at your universities!
I wonder if these kinds of activist events take place in high school in America too--it seems that every student I know at Stanford is so activist minded that I wonder where it begins... any one want to comment on that?
Alyssa
Posted by: Alyssa O'Brien | April 20, 2008 11:13 PM
These kinds of activist events do take place in high school. I feel like it was easier to hear about these events in high school because the schools are smaller so it's easier to spread the word. Here, the word is spread by mostly fliers which many people tend to not notice. However like Alyssa said, a lot of people are activist minded so they will actively seek out for these kinds of projects/events. In high school, I did service events such as fast for awareness and relay for life as well. In fact, I was at Stanford's Relay for Life on Roble field last year!
Posted by: Chun Pan | April 21, 2008 10:05 AM
Very much interesting post..
Thanks for sharing with us!
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