(Courtesy of Star Black)

Poet Dana Gioia ’73 MBA ’77 was appointed Poet Laureate of California by Governor Jerry Brown on Dec. 5. During his two-year term, Gioia will serve as an advocate for the education and practice of poetry by giving public readings, educating civic and state leaders and bringing poetry to students less acquainted with the arts through a cultural project.

Gioia intends to focus his efforts on small- to mid-sized communities and on civic institutions such as high schools and public libraries.

“We need to cultivate the things we share in common as citizens,” he said.

In an interview with The Daily, Gioia recalled childhood afternoons spent at Hawthorne Public Library, which he said was the only cultural institution in his hometown of Hawthorne, Calif. during his youth. He acknowledged the library for establishing the foundation of an education that he continued at Stanford University and Harvard University, making him the first in the family to attend college.

As a Stanford undergrad, Gioia was editor-in-chief of now-defunct literary magazine Sequoia. He served as poetry editor at Sequoia, and book editor for The Stanford Daily while a student at the Graduate School of Business (GSB). After graduating from the GSB, he spent the next 15 years at General Foods Corporation, where he eventually became vice president of marketing.

From 2003 to 2009, he served two terms as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and fronted initiatives including Operation Homecoming, a writing workshop hosting and anthologizing the writings of the military community, and Poetry Out Loud: The National Poetry Recitation Contest.

Gioia currently teaches at the University of Southern California as the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture.

“The one real constant in my career has been that I tried to create a life in which it was possible for me to write poetry,” Gioia said.

He credits his mother, a working class Mexican woman who recited poetry to Gioia during his childhood, for the establishment of verse in his life. He described his early impressions of poetry as “spell-like” — akin to the effect of music and song.

“A poem creates a spell of heightened attention that allows us to relax our defenses and imaginatively enter a new idea or experience,” he said.

Gioia has published four books of poetry, among other books, translations and essays. He was a 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for his book of criticism “Can Poetry Matter?” and a recipient of the 2002 American Book Award for his book “Interrogations at Noon.”

“My whole career as a poet, a critic and a public advocate of poetry has been based on the notion that people will respond to a good poem well-presented,” Gioia said, referencing Poetry Out Loud, which has reached nearly three million students nationally over the past decade.

“I’ve seen how encounters with art and creativity can change the lives of students,” he added. “Poetry awakens and enhances and enlarges people’s humanity — and that means something different for each person.”

Contact Irene Hsu at ihsu5595 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

1. Madden in real life: Forty-nine-yard screen pass touchdown catch vs. California

Any Heisman highlight film for McCaffrey must feature this play, which demonstrates every facet of McCaffrey’s game as a runner and a receiver.

McCaffrey takes a screen pass in the backfield and before he can even turn his head completely around, he’s hit and wrapped up by a linebacker, who was all over the play. McCaffrey shows off his strength by staying upright and running through the tackle.

Then, 280-pound defensive tackle James Looney gets two hands on him and appears to be in position to bring him down. The 205-pound McCaffrey keeps his legs churning and escapes the tackle. Despite all the hard work, McCaffrey has only made it back to the line of scrimmage at this point.

Now, it’s all about McCaffrey’s ability to change direction. With linebacker Hardy Nickerson racing in from the right side, McCaffrey slows to a stop before jumping to the right, avoiding any contact with Nickerson, who lunges by him without laying a hand on him.

It’s off to the races for McCaffrey, whose acceleration sends him flying by the defenders who were once at his side. Again, the change of direction — this time with a single firm planting of the left foot — sends Cal safety Griffin Piatt sprawling to the ground and McCaffrey moving back to the middle of the field.

With about 27 yards to the endzone, McCaffrey recognizes he’s miles ahead of just about everyone except for two final players, corners Darius Allensworth and Darius White. He patiently follows the blocking of his receivers, Michael Rector and Francis Owusu, before making one final cut to the right side and plunging into the endzone.

Vision, acceleration, change of direction, strength — it’s all on display for McCaffrey here. As my colleague Vihan Lakshman said on the KZSU call of this play, this was Madden-style moves happening in real life.

2. The #WildCaff is born: Seventy-yard cutback touchdown run vs. UCLA

Oct. 15, 2015 will forever live on as the night on which the #WildCaff legend was truly born.

McCaffrey put on a show with a school-record 243 rushing yards and a school-record 4 rushing touchdowns, possibly the best single performance of the college football season to that point against the nation’s No. 18 team. And a large portion of that performance came from McCaffrey’s duties as the Wildcat quarterback.

Twice, McCaffrey took a snap directly out of the Wildcat, with no motion whatsoever, and took the carry into the endzone, including a 9-yard score and this 70-yard score.

In addition to his ability to score out of the Wildcat, in the third quarter Kevin Hogan handed it off to McCaffrey at Stanford’s 30-yard line, and the sophomore initially followed his blocking left. The play appeared slow to develop, but all of a sudden, McCaffrey planted his left foot, pivoted, hit the turbo button and exploded through the huge hole that had opened on the right side. From there, it was all about breakaway speed — no one was catching him at the 5-yard line this time.

Back in his days as an assistant coach, David Shaw talked about how he teaches running backs to deal with cutbacks.

“We teach our backs that sometimes, a giant cutback lane will open on the backside A gap, if they see it they should take it, but they shouldn’t be looking for it all the time,” Shaw said. “It’s like a $20 bill. If you are walking down the block and see a $20, you should take it, but if you spend your whole life walking around looking at the ground hoping to see a $20 bill, you’ll get hit by a bus.”

Well, McCaffrey saw a $100 bill, picked it up and ran away before the bus even turned the corner. And just like that, the #WildCaff was born.

3. The Swiss army knife: touchdown throws

All season long, McCaffrey’s calling card has been his versatility — this week, he was named the Paul Hornung Award winner as the nation’s most versatile player. He can run the ball between the tackles and outside of the tackles, he can take passes out of the backfield and lined up in the slot, he can return kicks and punts, he can run the option and he can run the Wildcat. Yet, the one tool missing from his resume was the ability to throw. Against Colorado, we found out he has that one too.

Despite Stanford already owning a 35-10 lead, Stanford whipped out a new play from the playbook. Hogan pitches the ball to McCaffrey who’s running right on the halfback option. McCaffrey sells the run, then quickly pulls the ball up into a throwing motion before throwing the ball with perfect touch over the Colorado defense and into the waiting arms of Austin Hooper, who takes it into the endzone.

Against USC in the Pac-12 Championship Game, McCaffrey took the ball from a pitch on the reverse while running right. Still moving to the right, McCaffrey sends a beautiful throw to Kevin Hogan in stride for another touchdown pass.

Quite literally, Christian McCaffrey can do it all. His quarterback rating also happens to be higher than DeShaun Watson’s, the Clemson quarterback named a Heisman finalist.

4. Hei5man: Kick-return touchdown vs. California

At this point in the season, the Heisman campaign for McCaffrey was already in full swing. Despite another 7:30 p.m. start time, McCaffrey gave another Heisman-worthy performance to continue vaulting his name up the charts.

The major component missing from his resume was the lack of a kick-return touchdown despite taking kicks back all season long –- he had returned two kicks over 60 yards already, but neither finished in the endzone. Against Cal, that bullet point found its way onto the Heisman resume.

With under a minute left in the second quarter, McCaffrey obliterated the need for the two-minute drill offense by taking the lane given to him by his blockers and showing off superb breakaway speed. He initially took the kick up the middle but kicked out to the right sideline while breaking an arm tackle. From there, it was all about the speed as McCaffrey outraced everyone on his way to a 98-yard kick return touchdown.

The touchdown largely contributed to another school-record performance, this time with 389 all-purpose yards, the record which McCaffrey again broke in the Pac-12 Championship against USC.

5. Who you gonna call? Sixty-seven-yard catch vs. USC in the Pac-12 Championship

For the first (and only) time, Stanford trailed USC in the Pac-12 Championship. The Trojans scored a touchdown to take a 16-13 lead with just over three minutes left in the third quarter. The Stanford offense had sputtered so far in the second half, with just a combined 22 yards on its two drives. On the other side, the USC offense scored back-to-back touchdowns to open the half. Momentum had swung squarely in the Trojans favor, and Levi’s Stadium was rocking for USC.

Stanford had only thrown the ball eight times thus far all game, as opposed to 38 runs. Yet facing a third-and-six, it was absolutely a passing down. With the season on the line, needing to give its defense a breather and retake some momentum, who did Stanford call upon? The #WildCaff.

McCaffrey ran the angle route out of the backfield, shook off linebacker Olajuwon Tucker with a single cut and made the catch in stride right at the first-down marker. From there, it was off to the races.

He cut in-and-out while waiting for Devon Cajuste to come in and deliver a monster block on USC safety Chris Hawkins. Because he waited for the block, USC cornerback Kevin Seymour caught up and made a shoestring tackle to keep McCaffrey out of the endzone, dragging him down at the 6-yard line.

Stanford’s favorite matchup all season long has been an opposing linebacker on McCaffrey, and it paid off yet again with the season on the line.

McCaffrey finished with 207 rushing yards, 105 receiving yards and a grand total of 461 all-purpose, a school-record and the fifth-best total in FBS history, not to mention a passing, rushing and receiving touchdown. Oh, and he broke the 27-year-old record of 1988 Heisman winner Barry Sanders for the most all-purpose yards in a single season in college football history, while needing seven fewer touches to do it.

6. McClutch: Tiptoeing 30-yard run down the sideline at Washington State

With 3:27 remaining, Stanford trailed Washington State by one and had just taken over at the Cougars’ 39-yard line after Quenton Meeks’ interception. However, the Cardinal had struggled to move the ball on offense all day – to that point, the Cardinal had managed just 275 yards of offense, their lowest total since the season opener at Northwestern.

Stanford runs Power to the left side and there didn’t appear to be much room. McCaffrey was first hit at the 38-yard line and should have been brought down for a short gain. He immediately escapes a second tackle aimed at his legs, all while accelerating into the second level of the defense.

Starting at the Washington State 34-yard line, McCaffrey tiptoes down the sideline with incredible speed. He breaks another diving arm tackle at the 25-yard line and manages to stay inbounds while stumbling forward in reacting to the attempted tackle. Finally, McCaffrey is spun down at the 9-yard line.

If McCaffrey is stopped at the line of scrimmage, as most running backs would have been, who knows whether Stanford marches down the field to put Conrad Ukropina in good enough position to hit the game-winning field goal. Without that field goal, Stanford doesn’t win the Pac-12 North.

7. Sometimes-I’m-not-down-at-the-one-yard-line McCaffrey: UCLA touchdown runs

All season long, it seemed like McCaffrey had the propensity to fall just short of the endzone on his runs. When you have Remound Wright, arguably the nation’s best goal-line back, in the wings, it’s not a problem. Even still, though, McCaffrey made a statement by finishing with a school-record 4 rushing touchdowns against UCLA

McCaffrey finished three chances on runs starting in UCLA territory.

First, McCaffrey showed off his own ability to be a power runner, pushing through his own blocker, Bryce Love, and UCLA corner Jaleel Wadood (who later became more infamous as the victim of “The Catch”) at the 1-yard line to plow into the endzone from a 9-yard run out of the Wildcat.

Just six minutes later in the second quarter, McCaffrey took the handoff out of the I-formation and raced through the wide-open lane created by his blockers to sneak into the left side of the endzone untouched for a 28-yard score.

After the 70-yard score that stands at No. 3 in this list, McCaffrey scored his fourth and final touchdown on another handoff out of the I-formation, this time running right. McCaffrey sailed right into the lane created by his blockers and again absorbed contact again at the 1-yard line to plunge into the endzone.

This game and performance put McCaffrey on the national map for the first time, despite yet another 7:30 p.m. start time.

8. Running back or receiver? Fifty-yard touchdown catch vs. Washington

The only FBS player to lead his team in both rushing and receiving yards, McCaffrey put on a show against Washington, finishing with over 100 rushing yards and 100 receiving yards for the first time in his career.

In the third quarter, McCaffrey ran a wheel right down the right side of the field, blowing through the zone coverage in the flat, making the catch in stride and not losing a step in breaking a final tackle before strutting down the sideline and into the endzone for a 50-yard score.

Though Derrick Henry, the other running back named as a Heisman finalist, might be able to stake claim as the best true running back in the nation — though McCaffrey finished with an equivalent yards per carry average and just 139 less rushing yards — McCaffrey certainly separates himself from Henry when it comes to serving as a receiving threat out of the backfield. McCaffrey finished the season with 540 receiving yards in comparison to Henry’s 97.

9. Off to the races: UCLA 96-yard kick return

McCaffrey largely struggled returning kicks over the first few games before breaking out a 67-yard return the previous week against Arizona. However, this return truly marked his entrance into college football as one of the best kick returners in the nation.

McCaffrey found the lane created for him by his blockers and kicked out to the left sideline at the perfect time. He wasn’t quite able to outrace UCLA kicker Kaimi Fairbairn — if you were averaging 269 all-purpose yards per game, you’d get tired too — for the score and was dragged down inside the 10-yard line.

McCaffrey finished the game with 369 all-purpose yards, just 10 shy of what was then the school-record held by Glyn Milburn.

10. Goodnight, Marvell Tell: Fifty-yard run vs. USC in the Pac-12 Championship

Among the plethora of long runs to choose from, McCaffrey’s 50-yard scamper against the Trojans stands out for the way he made USC safety Marvell Tell completely whiff.

On Stanford’s first drive of the second quarter, McCaffrey takes a first-and-10 carry behind the right guard, splitting the nose tackle and linebacker and speeding into open space. With Tell standing directly in front of him, McCaffrey fakes to the right and cuts slightly to the left, all while maintaining his forward momentum to burst past the defenders at either side. That slight change of direction sends Tell sliding by McCaffrey to the ground without even putting a hand on McCaffrey, enabling him to sprint for another 35 yards before he’s pushed out of bounds after a gain of 50.

McCaffrey’s elite ability to change direction while maintaining speed propelled him to plays just like this all season long.

Contact Michael Peterson at mrpeters ‘at’ stanford.edu.

(NINA ZUBRILLINA/The Stanford Daily)

Stanford student athletes have a lot to manage with 20 hours per week of practice, weight training, conditioning and games — plus the normal academic requirements of any other student. Many wake up as early as 5 a.m. and practice for three to four hours, six days a week. Though student athletes are supported through their academic advisors, coaches and teachers, along with the numerous programs and policies Stanford has implemented, there is still room for improvement.

Academic assistance

The University has implemented a number of policies and programs to help athletes balance their different commitments.

Stanford’s assistant athletic director Austin Lee said Stanford strives to create a supportive environment that prevents students from being deterred from difficult classes because of their challenging schedules or fear of being barred from sports competitions because of NCAA academic requirements.

Academic programs for athletes include regular group tutorial sessions, intentionally scheduled to be convenient for athletes’ schedules, as well as drop-in hours for athletes. Group tutorials are usually offered twice a week for two hours in several popular subjects such as economics and computer science.

Hideki Nakada, assistant coach of the women’s soccer team, explained that coaches, athletic academic advisors and professors also work together to aid student athletes.

“Some players cannot make certain practices because school is the first priority,” Nakada said. “We have one player who misses every Wednesday.”

When Sameer Kumar ’19, a member of the men’s tennis team, traveled to Seattle for a tournament, he missed classes from Wednesday through Friday.

“[Professors] do a very good job of helping you make up your work if you miss class,” Kumar said.

Professors and coaches have even figured out a system for when student athletes have to miss midterms — coaches often proctor the exams for the athletes.

Academic conflicts

A major conflict that occurs for student athletes is finding classes that do not conflict with practice schedules.

“When scheduling for the fall, we didn’t get our practice schedule until after we signed up for classes,” Kumar said. “So we had to go back and change our schedules accordingly.”

Kumar has learned to accept the fact that sometimes his first choice for a class is simply not feasible.

Helen Stroheker ’18, a sophomore on the rowing team, has had to meet with her professors multiple times to figure out timelines for her work and to discuss pushing back deadlines whenever she’s in season. Last year, her course CEE 31Q: “Accessing Architecture Through Drawing,” which had 16 students, was moved up by one hour so that she would be able to attend.

Lee explained that the athletics department tries to help students organize their schedules.

“Very often we [the academic advisors] meet with students to see what their options are in terms of taking this class in another quarter or taking it at a different time with a different instructor. And if there is a more of a discussion that needs to happen with the coaching staff, we help facilitate those discussions,” Lee said.

But according to Lee, advising athletes academically is more than just talking to students about class schedules.

“There’s a whole set of NCAA rules and regulations that the varsity athletes have to follow, and how we track that is different from other students,” Lee said.

Lee said the NCAA rule that six units a quarter must be “degree-applicable” creates a burden for certain athletes. For example, pre-med students must take many required classes that are considered optional electives courses and not degree-applicable. Thus, pre-med students could find themselves in a situation in which they are not meeting the NCAA requirements while still taking a full course load.

Academic performance: stigma, stats and reality

According to Kumar, athletes can also sometimes feel as though there are lower academic expectations for them.

“[Professors] definitely try to help you a lot and want you to do well,” Kumar said. “But they might think, ‘You didn’t get into this school completely off academics.’”

Kumar also got a similar sense from his peers. In his first quarter here, he has heard non-athletes say things like, “If a class is full of athletes, it’s probably going to be an easy class,” or “There’s an athlete in my class who got a B, which means I can get an A.”

Despite these stigmas, evidence suggests that Stanford student athletes are some of the most academically high-performing college athletes in the country.

The most recent Graduation Success Rate (GSR) report released by the NCAA revealed that Stanford student athletes had an overall graduation rate of 98 percent. Eleven women’s programs and eight men’s programs achieved GSR scores of 100 percent, and Stanford football’s GSR of 99 percent, is significantly higher than the next best Pac-12 school, UCLA, with a score of 89 percent.

According to Lee, student athletes are not overrepresented in the population of students on academic probation either.

Behind these positive statistics, however, many student athletes still find themselves struggling.

Stroheker, who is taking 19 units this quarter and spends about 24 hours a week rowing — including traveling back and forth to the boathouse — is generally working during all of her free time between classes.

“You do have to choose to prioritize athletics and academics over your social life and other extracurriculars,” Stroheker said.

“I think that Stanford does a great job of helping academically balance school with sports without giving athletes too much help,” she added. “Where I see the biggest need for improvement is helping people find balance in their lives and achieve mental health.”

Areas for potential improvements

One of the actions Stanford has taken to help athlete mental health in the last year is hiring a dedicated nutritionist and a sports psychologist to work with student athletes.

Kumar suggested that tutoring could meet more often and be available for more classes. The only tutoring relevant to his classes this quarter was economics tutoring, which met only once a week from 6-8 p.m.

“If you miss a class or have midterms coming up, it can get pretty tough because it’s only once a week,” Kumar said.

Although student athletes see areas where academic support could be improved for athletes, quitting or regretting their participation in a sport seems to be rare.

Nakada has been a college coach for nine years, and during his three years at Stanford, there have been no cases in which a women’s soccer player has quit. In Lee’s seven years at Stanford, he reported that only about four or five recruited students decided to quit early in their freshman fall quarters.  

Evidence suggests the passion athletes feel for their sport, combined with the resources Stanford provides, is enough to preclude student athletes from quitting.

“I love tennis; it’s my passion so I wouldn’t give it up,” Kumar said. “I made a lot of sacrifices for it, but it’s also given me a lot of rewards.”

Contact Pascale Elisabeth Eenkema van Dijk at pevd ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

(Courtesy of Madeleine Lippey)

A group of fraternity brothers from Yale University found their seats at the back of the room, slouching in their chairs as they lazily perused their phones. Owing to their limited knowledge of sexual assault, they waited in reluctant anticipation of the morning’s speaker, until Ted Bunch, a bulky former college football player, walked on stage and addressed the crowd.

“Men, we need to start crying more,” he said.

Madeleine Lippey ’18 recalled that the men in the back of the room straightened up and began to pay close attention to Bunch’s engaging workshop on healthy definitions of masculinity and consent at the New York FEARLESS conference on Sept. 18.

“Ted Bunch runs sports camps for guys ages 12-18 and talks to them about masculinity and consent while they are literally throwing around a football,” Lippey said, recollecting Bunch’s workshop at the New York conference. “This is just one example, but that energy sustained itself throughout the day.”

Lippey organized the first FEARLESS symposium on sexual assault as a model to bring diverse groups of people, from fraternity brothers to parents, into a single space. She hopes to bring the conference to Stanford in the spring.

“The overall goal of the conference was to figure out a way to take this conversation that was being had in so many places and in so many separate strands and really unify it in one place, make it as inclusive and intersectional as possible,” she said.

The FEARLESS conference is one of the many recent student-led initiatives for sexual assault education. Since the Stand with Leah movement in 2014 and the Brock Turner incident last winter, students have used various tools including workshops, theater programs and academic seminars to educate each other about sexual assault prevention.

“There have been a lot of conversations about administrative response, which is super important, but I think that we wouldn’t even have to worry about administrative response if [sexual assault] didn’t happen in the first place,” Lippey said.

The FEARLESS conference

Lippey came up with the idea for the conference during her summer internship at the Joyful Heart Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering and healing survivors of sexual assault.

However, her work with sexual assault began in high school when she founded the Do Write Campaign, a nonprofit organization that encourages dialogue through the online exchange of creative writing and expression. As part of her foundation, Lippey held mini conferences in countries such as South Africa, India and Myanmar to empower women with diverse experiences ranging from domestic violence to sex trafficking.

“I felt very strongly about anti-sexual assault activism because most of the girls who did these conferences with me had experienced some form of sexual abuse,” she said.

Working closely with two individuals at Yale involved in their school’s anti-sexual assault coalition, Lippey reached out to colleges in New York, where the Joyful Heart Foundation is based, to hold the conference in the area. She also networked with students at these universities to create “deliberately diverse” delegations of interested student representatives who attended the event.

“It felt like there was a real camaraderie around this issue between really different groups of people that I had never seen before,” she said. “My 60-year-old dad, who is very conservative and doesn’t really know that much about this, was there. And literally, after watching ‘The Hunting Ground’ [a documentary about sexual assault on college campuses], there were tears in his eyes.”

The conference featured four workshops, including the call to men to become involved, a demystification of university sexual assault, the role of parents in teaching consent and an examination of the rhetoric of rape culture through creative expression.

According to Lippey, the FEARLESS conference is expanding this year to the Yale and Stanford campuses. Lippey is currently looking for co-sponsorships and recruiting students to become involved in an organizing committee that will be responsible for putting on the event in April 2016, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

In order to make the content more community-specific, she plans on substituting the parent workshop in New York with an academic perspective on sexual assault. Instead, she would like to hold the parenting workshop during Parents’ Weekend to “build momentum” for the conference.

“We are trying to figure out a way to emulate the spirit of this conference that we thought was really successful and really moving in New York and bring it here,” Lippey said.

Tanvi Jayaraman ’16, co-chair of the ASSU sexual assault prevention committee, learned about FEARLESS through her friendship with Lippey. She said the conference is a great model to approach this issue by providing both education and action items for attendees.

“It comes at a really good time near the end of the year, when people can reflect on what they want to do or change for the next year, and it’s after recruitment for Greek life,” Jayaraman said. “You leave the conference with this impetus to do something, and I think that’s really, really key.”

Leading up to the FEARLESS conference, Lippey is launching a campaign for comprehensive sex education at Stanford, which she feels is integral to sexual assault prevention.

Sex education

Having attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Lippey laments the lack of sex education at her high school. In fact, seniors from her class put condoms on bananas in the front of the dining hall as part of a senior prank to spoof their school’s substandard quality of sex education.

Her failed attempts to bring sex education to her high school reflect similar experiences among other Stanford students. According to a preliminary survey that Lippey emailed out to Stanford students in October, 68 percent of the 135 respondents did not feel they had comprehensive, medically accurate sex education.

One such student, Tashrima Hossain ’19, said that her only exposure to sex education was through a middle school class in Texas taught by a teacher who felt “uncomfortable” with the material. With no direction from her parents, Hossain found herself relying on information from social interactions.

“A lot of what we know about sex comes from friends, and sometimes that’s dangerous, because there are myths and things that are not actually true,” Hossain said.

According to a mentor who works at a research center at Stanford and who previously worked at Planned Parenthood, Lippey added that insufficient levels of sex education could be attributed to a gap in the early 2000s during which California was the only state in the nation to offer federally-mandated sex education in public schools.

In addition, she said many high schools assume that colleges will provide formalized sex education for students, while colleges assume the opposite.

“There’s this assumption that when you get to college, you’re supposed to know everything there is to know about sex, and you’re supposed to go to the fraternity party and just have at it — and that’s the problem,” Lippey said.

She said that bridging this gap for freshmen should be a priority in order to address the sexual assault epidemic.

“With my work on sexual assault, I am really of the belief that the two are so inexplicably intertwined,” Lippey said. “If you are a freshman going into New Student Orientation [NSO], and so much information is being thrown at you about sexual assault, and you don’t even know what sex is, you’re not going to fully understand it.”

To remedy this issue, Lippey believes that formalized sex education should be a mandatory part of the freshman curriculum, whether through NSO or through a class taught by the Peer Health Educator in the dorms. In either case, she said conversations about anatomy, safe and consensual sex and hookup culture should be held in tandem with those surrounding sexual assault.

Based on her experience at NSO, Hossain said she supports Lippey’s ideas and forwarded Lippey’s survey on sex education to her freshman dorm, Donner. She added that incoming freshmen all have very different levels of experience with sex education and would benefit from mandatory instruction.

“Because we come from so many different backgrounds, I think it’s good for Stanford to find a way to reconcile those differences,” Hossain said. “In the same way that we have PWR to ensure all of us are brought to the same level of essay-writing skills, having a formalized class would bring us to a certain threshold for our knowledge of sexual education.”

Currently, freshmen are required to take an online course on sexual assault called “Haven,” as well as participate in mandatory activities during NSO such as “The Real World: Stanford,” a bystander intervention theatre program.

Although she feels these programs are beneficial, Lippey said they can seem “foreign” or “overwhelming.” Hossain added that many of her peers skimmed online materials and did not take all of the information seriously.

“A lot of teenagers and incoming freshmen lack formalized experience and are ignorant about their lack of experience,” Hossain said. “And that leads to issues on campus where people don’t really understand what’s okay and what’s not okay.”

However, Hossain said that the small-group discussions held in her freshman dorm following NSO events did resonate with her. During these discussions, students worked through how to act in specific scenarios while also sharing their own concerns and questions about these issues.

“It was cool to hear other people’s insights and to have a safe space to talk about it,” Hossain said. “If we have more things that are less formalized and more focused on just talking about sexual assault, it creates a less condoning culture and a more aware campus.”

Another program to encourage this kind of open dialogue is the Peer Health Educators program, led by Jayaraman. The program will consist of training student educators who can provide information on topics such as healthy sexuality, the gender spectrum, communication and respect.

“We are envisioning this as a brand new program where students can use these peer educators as touchpoints for resources and education on these topics of gender-based violence,” Jayaraman said.

She said the peer educators would serve as the student outreach force for the office of Sexual Assault & Relationship Abuse Education and Response (SARA). They would begin the program with a fundamental workshop or presentation on these topics followed by a “potluck” of more specific workshops from which students could choose.

Jayaraman is currently talking to students and staff, community centers, SARA, Residential Education, Vaden and the Stanford Sexual Health Peer Resource Center to firm up the curriculum. She envisions that peer educators could present to freshman dorms, community centers and student groups.

“Primary prevention targets the culture behind the community or society that eventually leads to a sexual assault happening,” Jayaraman said. “Students, in the end, learn best from other students and their peers, and especially as freshmen, that’s a really powerful tool to utilize.”

Approaching prevention

As a staff member for the Clayman Institute of Gender Studies, Jayaraman has worked closely with sexual assault programming since her sophomore year. During that year, she said she came to realize that the majority of her peers had been impacted in some way by gender-based violence, motivating her to get involved.

Through her years of experience, she said that a multi-pronged, community-specific approach to sexual assault is the most effective way to spur cultural change.

“As I’ve become more and more involved, I’ve realized the need and the urgency for this education to be given through every outlet,” Jayaraman said. “If students can get it from various channels and they hear about it all the time, that’s how we create a campus culture of respect.”

She also said that her ASSU committee is planning on being able to fund student initiatives for community-based education programs. For example, she partnered with the Spoken Word Collective to put on a spoken word event during the first week of November in Xanadu’s backyard in order to provide a healing space for survivors of gender-based violence.

“The issue of sexual assault manifests itself in very intersectional and nuanced ways with people of varying identities, and the best education for people in those communities comes from within,” Jayaraman said.

Lippey also became passionate about this issue when she worked as ASSU Executive Fellow during her freshman year. Her past work inspires her to become a victims’ rights lawyer in the future.

“In freshman year, I fell into what I feel like I’m supposed to be doing for the rest of my life, which is an awesome feeling,” Lippey said. “And now, I’m just trying to sustain that and really make that a big part of my experience here at Stanford and the experiences of other people too.”

Jayaraman agreed with Lippey’s conviction to make an impact on the Stanford community.

“If there’s something that I can dedicate these four years of my undergraduate time to, it is to make a dent in changing the campus culture that results in the violation of someone else’s dignity,” Jayaraman said. “That’s something I feel that no one should stand for and I think that if everyone works together on ending this issue, it will happen.”

Contact Deepti Kannan at dkannan ‘at’ stanford.edu.

“Hitchcock/Truffaut” documents the famed interviews between Hitchcock and one of his biggest admirers, the French New Wave director François Truffaut. At only age 29, Truffaut catapulted to instant stardom and renown with a string of films released between 1959 and 1962, including “The 400 Blows,” one of the best movies about adolescence ever conceived. When he was traveled to New York, American reporters asked Truffaut to name his favorite director. “Monsieur Hitchcock,” he responded without hesitation. The reporters were shocked: They couldn’t believe that Truffaut, the creator of such serious and mature films, would find value in a commercial hit-maker like Hitchcock, who at that time was merely considered an “entertainer” in America. Thus, the stage was set for a meeting of magnificent minds. Truffaut contacted Hitchcock during his stay in America. He then made arrangements to interview Hitchcock about his life and career, talks which would be recorded, transcribed and released as a book. Hitchcock, flattered that a critic took his work as seriously as Truffaut did, immediately accepted the proposition. Over the course of a few months in 1963, Truffaut and Hitchcock bantered about film, art and life, aided by their English-French translator Helen Scott.

Kent Jones, the doc’s director, spends much of the first half detailing the cultural impact of the resulting book, which was first released in 1966. People by the likes of David Fincher and Wes Anderson pop up to detail their admiration for it. Much of the middle half is devoted to selected analyses of Hitchcock’s works, including Scorsese’s analysis on the psychological underpinnings in “Vertigo,”Hitchcock’s most beautiful film.

None of this information is particularly revelatory to film fans. The middle chunk’s goal is to cement the legitimacy of Hitchcock’s oeuvre, but it doesn’t seem as though it’s a task worth pursuing in a day and age where the name Hitchcock has become synonymous with “great director.” The best this documentary can do is introduce younger viewers to the name of Hitchcock, of which “Hitchcock/Truffaut” does an admirable (if repetitive) job.

At the cost of learning a lot about Hitchcock, we don’t get enough insights into the other two partners in this spicy cinematic threesome. Truffaut, despite being half the title, remains all but untouched. It would be interesting to see how Truffaut’s and Hitchcock’s styles of film converge and reflect one another, especially since the former openly admitted he was a disciple of the latter. Instead, Jones denigrates Truffaut’s mighty oeuvre of films (“Jules and Jim,” “Shoot the Piano Player,” “Day for Night”), pegging him as a “non-stylist” in a way that shouldn’t sit right with the knowledgeable viewer. And we learn almost nothing about Helen Scott, the woman who served as mediator between the English-speaking Hitchcock and the French-speaking Truffaut. So many questions spring up that Jones plain refuses to investigate. How did she get contracted to serve as collaborator between these two giants? What were her thoughts on film? Was she a fan of either director’s oeuvres?

Yet with all it ignores, “Hitchcock/Truffaut” still manages to spark new interest into the works of an unequivocal master of cinema. There are many people reading this right now who may have never even heard, much less watched, masterpieces like “Vertigo,” “Rear Window,” “Strangers on a Train,” “Notorious,” “Shadow of a Doubt,” “The Birds,” “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and so many other films by Hitchcock. Kent Jones, for all the hiccups he encounters in his first stab at filmmaking, manages to excite the inner cinephile in all of us. For when we crave more than the offerings of modern cineplexes, we can turn to handy-guides like “Hitchcock/Truffaut” (both the documentary and the book) to guide us to movie heaven. Hitchcock’s and Truffaut’s films will never go out of style, for great art can only age like fine wine.

“Hitchcock/Truffaut” is a solid companion piece to the superior interview book of the same name. Given its two prominent collaborators, it’s worth a look. It manages to reignite interest in a man who redefined cinema almost singlehandedly and it does so through the deadliest of passions: cinephilia. When you’ve got it, you won’t ever be rid of it.

Contact Carlos Valladares at cvall96 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

(UDIT GOYAL/The Stanford Daily)

This quarter, LaIR hours, or office hours for the introductory CS 106 classes, were relocated from Tresidder to the second floor of Old Union. Students feel that the relocation to Old Union has compromised the efficiency of the LaIR.

At the LaIR, CS 106 students put their names into a queue and wait for help from section leaders, who are undergraduate and graduate students that teach smaller discussion sections for the CS 106 classes through the CS 198: “Teaching Computer Science” program. In addition to teaching and grading assignments for their designated groups of students, section leaders also hold weekly office hours in the LaIR. The LaIR is open Sundays through Thursdays from 6 p.m. until midnight.

Before it closed on June 11, the Tresidder LaIR computer cluster had rows of desks with computers. Each computer was labeled with a number so that students could let section leaders know where they were sitting. In contrast, the LaIR at Old Union is in an open common space with few computers.

Each quarter, the LaIR is organized by the current CS 198 coordinators, and last winter, director of learning environment integration Beth McCullough informed the coordinators of the relocation plans. 

“We were told the LaIR could stay in Tresidder with a significantly reduced amount of square footage or it could move to the second floor of Old Union,” McCullough said in an email to The Daily. “Moving to Old Union seemed the better option given those two choices. I believe the motivation had to do with a need to create more office space.”

The decision to relocate the LaIR was made by the office of the vice provost for student affairs, which manages Tresidder and Old Union. According to Jeanette Smith-Laws, the director of operations and student unions for the vice provost for student affairs, the move was intended to create a more student-friendly environment for academic computing.

“Old Union is where students are. It is the place,” Smith-Laws said. “We wanted to have it feel like you could sit in other spaces and do that work and then interact with other people and not be so isolated.”

The new LaIR is located adjacent to the Tech Zone, which occupies Old Union Room 200 and contains computers and printers that are available to students. The Tech Zone is open 24 hours and is an asset to the new situation that, according to Smith-Laws, is an improvement from the resources in the old LaIR.

“[The Tresidder LaIR] hadn’t been upgraded in a long time,” Smith-Laws said. “The furniture, the equipment was in bad shape. It wasn’t the most inviting environment, and I think [Old Union] is a much better environment.”

The LaIR relocation to Old Union is a part of a greater initiative to create better spaces in Old Union for students.

“As part of that pilot, we are going to open Old Union up 24 hours, see how that works out and collect data from there,” Smith-Laws said.

Old Union currently operates from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m., and the Tech Zone is open 24/7.

Student response to the new location has been varied. Some students find Old Union to be a welcoming environment, praising the access to comfortable couches and food options.

“I personally like it at the Old Union because it is dangerously close to Axe and Palm and a plate full of chicken fingers,” said Matt Anderson ’19, a current student in CS 106A: “Programming Methodology.” “I always try to avoid getting them late at night but I seldom succeed in resisting.”

However, other students find the new location to be disorganized and inefficient, reporting longer wait times and confusion about the queue.

“The space is very long and narrow, with many different seating areas, so it is often the case that section leaders take a long time to find the student they are trying to help,” said Sinclair Cook ’18, a current CS 106B: “Programming Abstractions” student, in an email to The Daily. “I have been skipped multiple times because a section leader couldn’t find me.”

In contrast, the LaIR at Tresidder was a more contained space, which allowed section leaders to easily find students and move through the queue.

“I used the LaIR at Tresidder a few times last year,” Cook said. “I liked it because it was a dedicated space used solely for the purpose of CS 106. Also, because it was a single large, square room, it seemed like section leaders more efficiently found the students they were trying to help, which caused the queue to move faster.”

The current CS 198 coordinators, Nhien Tran BS ’15 MS ’16, Aaron Broder BS ’15 MS ’16 and Danielle Kain BS ’16 MS ’16 responded to complaints about inefficiency in an email to The Daily.

“We have not yet reviewed wait time data from this quarter, but wait times in the LaIR are typically longer in fall than in spring due to higher enrollments,” they wrote.

As of now, the LaIR will remain in Old Union for the foreseeable future. But if the data from this quarter shows unusually high wait times, another relocation may be possible, though no space is currently identified, McCullough explained.

“If a suitable, larger location were made available, we would be happy to explore that option,” McCullough said in an email to The Daily.

Contact Blanca Andrei at bandrei ‘at’ stanford.edu.

McCaffrey, who is also a finalist for the Walter Camp Football Foundation Player of the Year Award, is looking to become the second Heisman winner in Stanford history after quarterback Jim Plunkett won the award in 1970. He is the fifth Heisman finalist in school history, joining Plunkett (1970), John Elway (1982), Toby Gerhart (2009) and Andrew Luck (2010, 2011).

The other Heisman finalists are running back Derrick Henry of Alabama and quarterback Deshaun Watson of Clemson.

McCaffrey was one of the premier forces in the nation in all three phases of the game: rushing, receiving and returning. The sophomore is currently second in the nation behind Henry with 1,847 rushing yards, second in the nation among running backs with 540 receiving yards and second in the nation with 1,042 kickoff return yards.

In all, his 3,496 all-purpose yards lead the nation by a margin of over 1,000 yards, shattering the previous all-time record of 3,250 set by Barry Sanders in his legendary 1988 season. His 2,387 yards from scrimmage also lead the nation by a wide margin.

Although McCaffrey has drawn criticism for needing 13 games to set the all-purpose yardage record (as opposed to Sanders’ 11), he actually set the record in seven fewer touches than Sanders, the winner of the 1988 Heisman Trophy.

The 2015 Heisman Trophy will be awarded to one of the finalists in a ceremony in New York City on Saturday.

This post will be updated.

Contact Do-Hyoung Park at dhpark ‘at’ stanford.edu.

(Courtesy of Amr Hamzawy)

Amr Hamzawy is a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and an associate professor of political science at Cairo University. Before arriving at Stanford, Hamzawy played critical roles in the Egyptian political scene, both during and after the Arab Spring — including a term in the first parliament elected after Egypt’s 2011 revolution.

The Daily sat down with Hamzawy to discuss his work at Stanford and the state of Egyptian politics today.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): Why did you choose to spend time here at Stanford, and what’s the focus of your research here?

Amr Hamzawy (AH): Well, I had to leave Egypt. The background is I took a clear position against the military coup. I was in fact banned from travel for a year in Egypt in 2014, which was basically one of the tools the repressive government uses to intimidate opponents. In 2015 my ban was lifted. I was, however, banned from teaching at my home university, Cairo University. The environment was becoming increasingly fascist, increasingly repressive for anyone who expresses a different point of view opposed to the one narrative coming from the ruling establishment. There were increased pressures as far as I [was] concerned, as far as my family [was] concerned. My wife is an actress so she [had] been banned from working as well, and she has been pressured in different ways. So we decided, in fact against our initial wish, to leave Egypt.

What happened was I basically wrote to several colleagues and friends, and my first choice was CDDRL, where [Stanford professor of political science and sociology] Larry Diamond is a very good friend of mine and [Stanford professor of political science and former U.S. Ambassador] Mike McFaul is a very good friend of mine.

Stanford was a choice based on the reputation of CDDRL, my friendship with Mike and Larry and the excellent reputation of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, where [research associate] Hesham Sallam is at CDDRL. That’s basically what brought me to Stanford, and I wanted to be as far away as possible from Egypt. I keep saying it’s pretty far, and one of the greatest assets of the time difference is that you wake up and the day in Egypt has passed — so you take bad news in one shot, which is a big difference than following by the minute what is happening and unfolding all day.

In terms of my focus at Stanford, I am writing a book — it’s a research assignment so far — I’m working on a book where the working title is “Egypt’s Illiberal Liberals.” It’s an attempt to look at why the Egyptian middle class, which basically took out to the streets in 2011 to demand political freedom and democracy, decided to to give up on democratization and to once again move in the direction of calling on the military establishment to interfere and freeze pluralist politics.

One of the key issues which I am working on is how liberal, intellectual elites have been able to market the army interference and the military coup as a step to protect the nation state, to save society and to save the Egyptian identity.

TSD: You have studied and worked around the world. You completed a Ph.D. in Berlin, and you were also working with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Beirut. How does Stanford compare?

AH: It’s more of a vibrant intellectual environment. Of course I am not undermining the positive assets of my university in Berlin or of Carnegie in D.C. or in Beirut, where in different ways the environment has been inspiring as well.

But as of now, it relates to my role in the last four years because I went through two phases: the first phase where I was part of an attempt to make Egypt a democratic place — prior to 2011, [through] writing primarily, but post 2011… after I was elected to parliament — and a second phase where I [was] basically classified as a state enemy [in] July 2013. In a way, Stanford is an excellent place to reflect on the experience personally and to reflect in more of an objective manner — looking at what went wrong.

The big question in the literature is: Was it doomed to fail — was Egypt going to fail no matter what, or did key actors…commit key mistakes, tactical and strategic mistakes, which led Egypt to where it is today? That is sort of the big debate in the last two years, and Stanford is an excellent place to engage that debate and to try to contribute to it.

TSD: You founded a political party in 2011. However, you withdrew from Egypt’s current, 2015 parliamentary elections. Why?

AH: We founded the Egypt Freedom Party in 2011, and our platform has always been a liberal democratic platform — where you can compare our platform to the ideas of liberal parties in Europe or the U.S. — with a clear and pronounced commitment to a market economy and social justice, based on a socially responsible market economy as it’s framed in the European experience.

We fashioned a platform that enabled us to be elected to the “true parliament” — the only true parliament Egypt had in 2011 and 2012…. The level of competition was true, between people representing different shades, old and new. No one should imagine that 2011 eradicated the Mubarak regime. No, the Mubarak elite were very much out there, and it was their right. That’s very much what I believe in: As long as they are not implicated in human rights violations, they should be part of politics. We made the mistake… of trying to ban them from participating in politics. It was a shortsighted decision, which parliament took in 2012, and it backfired. It’s one of the big mistakes which I count as one of my own mistakes within the past four years.

At any rate, the elections of 2011… had the greatest voter turnout in modern Egyptian history of around 60 percent overall.

We had transparent management of the elections. Yes, religion was used, mosques were used, churches were used; but overall, it was a real breakthrough, so we participated, and I was elected to parliament. I tried to advance a democracy-based agenda — tried to push for security sector reform, transitional justice.

Parliament was dissolved six months after it started its work. The Assembly was sent home, and a year of increased tensions between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military establishment ended in a military coup in July 2013, basically freezing pluralist politics. Since then, what we have in Egypt is by no means a democratic environment or even a semi-democratic environment which would encourage someone like me to participate.

The one challenge you face is by participating you justify and legitimate that framework, that autocratic framework. When you participate in parliamentary elections in an autocratic or semi-autocratic setting or in a fascist setting, you have to have clarity with regard to how to weigh legitimating an unjust framework and becoming effective. My calculation is that I’m not going to be effective in the fascist environment, and I will only be used as a legitimating name.

TSD: You are known for criticizing the knee-jerk support that a majority of Egyptian liberals have shown Egypt’s current military regime since the 2013 coup. As a secular, liberal Egyptian yourself, has your criticism cost you any friends?

AH: Yes, many. On a personal note, that was the most shocking development in the last four years… to wake up to see most of [your friend and colleagues] giving up on democratic ideals and siding with the military establishment interfering in governance issues and freezing pluralist politics.

You see some of your friends not only buying into fascism — not only buying into the military dictatorship, but even playing the role of legitimating the dictatorship, of… justifying the bloodshed, justifying the military dictatorship, justifying the one-man show, which is backfiring.

TSD: What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding that Americans have about Egyptian politics today?

AH: I guess the biggest misunderstanding is a conventional one, which is to place your bet on the ruling establishment no matter what the ruling establishment is doing. The Americans did place their bet on Mubarak’s ruling establishment up until the very last day of the 18 days [of the 2011 Egyptian revolution], and then they shifted course.

In regards to [former Egyptian President] Mubarak and [current Egyptian President] Sisi you are placing your bet for regional issues, for international security concerns, for terror, on dictators who are basically creating more of an environment for terrorism domestically.

TSD: On a lighter note, you are a well-known personality in Egypt and the Arab world. In fact, you are married to an Egyptian movie star. Do people recognize you around the Bay Area?

AH: Yes, they do — Egyptians and Arabs. We were recently in San Francisco, [my wife] Basma and I, and she was stopped, and I was stopped by Egyptians and Arabs recognizing me. On campus, I get recognized by Arab students frequently, and so happily most of them are on our side — they are democracy fans, and so it’s pleasant recognition.

But we are enjoying being not recognized, because the last two years being recognized in a fascist environment as someone who is classified as a state enemy has been very unpleasant. There were incidents where people were shouting at us in the street. There was no physical violence, but you ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” There are some moments personally which get to be very difficult for you to digest.

Contact Michael May at mmay20 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Instead, as the Pac-12 champion, No. 6 Stanford will play in the 102nd Rose Bowl Game presented by Northwestern Mutual against Big Ten runner-up No. 5 Iowa, which suffered a tough 16-13 defeat in the Big Ten Championship on Saturday to Michigan State on a last-second touchdown that won the game for the Spartans.

“If the worst thing we can do is go to the Rose Bowl, I think that’s pretty cool,” said head coach David Shaw after the Cardinal’s Pac-12 title victory Saturday night.

In the two Dec. 31 Playoff bowls, No. 1 Clemson will play No. 4 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, while No. 2 Alabama will match up against No. 3 Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl.

Although he had stayed mum for the most part about his team’s College Football Playoff aspirations during the season, instead choosing to focus on things within the team’s control, Shaw was very unequivocal about his stance on where he feels Stanford should be with regards to this year’s Playoff after Saturday’s game.

“The question is, should there be an eight-team playoff? Absolutely,” Shaw said. “If you win one of the big five conferences, should you be in the playoff? Absolutely. Eventually I think we’ll get there. We’re not there now, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

In the Hawkeyes, the Cardinal will meet a third different Big Ten opponent as it makes its third trip to the Rose Bowl in the last four seasons. Stanford defeated Wisconsin 20-14 in the 2013 Rose Bowl, while the Cardinal lost to Michigan State 24-20 in the 2014 Rose Bowl.

Before this stretch of three Rose Bowls in four seasons, Stanford played in the “Granddaddy of Them All” just once in a stretch from 1973 to 2012. This will mark just the third time in Stanford history that the Cardinal will qualify for a third Rose Bowl in four years, matching similar stretches from 1925-28 and 1934-37.

Stanford will presumably be making its 15th Rose Bowl appearance in program history; the Cardinal are 6-7-1 all-time in the hallowed game. Meanwhile, Iowa will make its sixth Rose Bowl appearance in program history and first since 1991, a 46-35 loss to Washington.

Iowa is enjoying perhaps the best season in program history. The Hawkeyes went 12-0 in the regular season for the first time ever and rose as high as No. 3 in the College Football Playoff rankings before their close loss to Michigan State in the Big Ten Championship. Entering championship weekend, they were one of only two undefeated teams in the country along with Clemson.

The Hawkeyes are much like Stanford in that they play hard-nosed, power football behind a big offensive line, stud running back in Jordan Canzeri and a stiff, battle-tested defense, which should make the Hawkeyes very similar to 2012 Wisconsin and 2013 Michigan State, the Cardinal’s last two Rose Bowl opponents.

The 2016 Rose Bowl Game will mark the first ever meeting between the Cardinal and Hawkeyes.

The Cardinal and Hawkeyes will meet in the 102nd Rose Bowl Game on Jan. 1 at 2 p.m., with the game televised by ABC.

Contact Do-Hyoung Park at dhpark ‘at’ stanford.edu.

(NINA ZUBRILLINA/The Stanford Daily)

In LAW 116N: “Guns, Drugs, Abortion, and Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy,” students learn to disentangle fact from fiction in some of society’s most controversial policy issues.

The new freshman Introductory Seminar tackles tough subjects with a scientific rather than a moral lens, attempting to find solid empirical ground in the midst of impassioned debate.

Students use statistical analysis to address questions that range from “Does abortion reduce crime?” to “Is the U.S. death penalty racially biased?” (According to law professor John Donohue, who teaches the course, the answers are “yes” and “yes.”)  

“For a lot of these highly charged issues, there are quite an array of underlying empirical questions that can be answered, and yet people are still battling back and forth about them,” Donohue said.

“Facts have the potential to improve our democracy by making our battles over value judgments, as opposed to questions that can be resolved,” he added.  

LAW 116N is among this quarter’s most popular Introductory Seminars, having received over 170 applications for just 16 spots. Donohue believes this high demand comes from a growing interest in data-driven analysis, as well as the bestselling book, “Freakonomics.” Donohue co-wrote an influential paper on the abortion-crime link with one of the book’s authors, Steven Levitt.

That abortion research was the subject of Donohue’s latest class. He explained to students how he and Levitt had sought to explain an “incredible” drop in crime in the 1990s — at a time when many were predicting skyrocketing crime and a coming “bloodbath of teenage violence.”

Ultimately, Levitt and Donohue’s research connected the crime decrease to the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion. During the 1990s, the post-Roe v. Wade generation was just coming of age; Levitt and Donohue argued that that a decrease in unplanned births led to better overall outcomes for that era’s adolescents.

“I’ve definitely been forced to think about things I didn’t before,” said Isaac Justice ’19. “I wouldn’t say I’ve changed my opinions, but I’ve been opened to new ideas. Before [the class], I had just never thought about the effect abortion would have on crime.”

In addition, many LAW 116N students have received a crash course in statistics.

As an Introductory Seminar, the class is meant to be accessible to students without significant prior training. However, the class dives heavily into econometrics — the application of math, statistics and computer science to economic data. Students use a software package called Stata to analyze data from major empirical studies.

Donohue modeled the class after a course he teaches at Stanford’s law school, modifying the content to cater to a less-experienced group. This is his first time teaching undergraduates.

“When I told a friend who teaches at Berkeley what I was doing, he said ‘Oh my god, that’s impossible, you’ll leave the students behind,’” Donohue said.

But Donohue has been pleasantly surprised by his freshman students’ ability to keep up.

“The big challenge, which is part of the idea of the IntroSem, is…you throw students who haven’t gone through years of training in a particular discipline into contact with a professor who’s doing cutting edge research of some sort, and try to bring the students right up to the point of understanding,” Donohue said.

Students have learned to use Stata through a series of group projects. For their first project, Donohue simply asked students to play around with data from a study of Connecticut death penalty cases.

“The assignment was just to have fun,” Justice said. “It made the process of learning Stata a lot less painful than it could have been.”

For example, Justice and his group members tried to investigate if the “reality-TV-worthiness” of a death penalty case was more likely to result in execution, by analyzing the outcomes for especially odd crimes such as lovers’ quarrels and kidnappings.

Michael Bloomer ’19 said his group tried to find a combination of variables that would lead to the highest possible likelihood of a death sentence. In the end, they could find no stacking of variables more predictive of the death penalty than a black person attacking a white person.

“We think of the death penalty as justice, and it’s really very arbitrary,” said Billy Ferguson ’19.

Students said they have learned to look more critically at data and how it is presented. Ferguson described a study funded by tobacco companies that excluded lung cancer patients to make smoking appear beneficial to one’s health.

“You can do anything with numbers,” Ferguson said. “You can frame it in a way that does what you want. This class is teaching us how to know when the framing is wrong.”

Contact Hannah Knowles at hknowles ‘at’ stanford.edu.

(Courtesy of Madeleine Lippey)

In 2011, students from a fraternity at the University of Vermont circulated an email asking members whom they wanted to rape. In 2010, Delta Kappa Epsilon members at Yale paraded around campus chanting what The Yale Daily News would later deem “an active call for sexual violence.”

Greek life has often found itself at the center of the sexual assault discussion nationwide. Although this issue is not isolated to Greek life, media and society often buy into a negative stigma of frequent sexual assault in the Greek community, often painting Greek life in a negative light.

This year, many Greek institutions at Stanford and their members are pushing back against this stigma. Madeleine Lippey ’18, philanthropy chair for Kappa Kappa Gamma, started a campaign called No More to help bring awareness to the issue and spur tangible action.

During the summer after her freshman year, Lippey interned for the Joyful Heart Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for positive change in the sexual assault arena. Joyful Heart’s No More Campaign aired during last year’s Super Bowl. It showed NFL players holding up signs with the words “No More” written across the top. Each player’s sign advocated an end to an aspect of our culture that perpetuates sexual assault and rape culture.

“The most common ones are things like ‘No More she was asking for it’ or ‘No More boys will be boys,’” Lippey said.

Bringing the campaign to the Stanford campus, Kappa Kappa Gamma sisters stood outside in White Plaza a few weeks ago photographing passersbys who would write their “No More” statements on signs. The sorority, who has officially adopted combating sexual assault as its philanthropy project, wanted to involve everyone interested, but with an emphasis on the Greek community.

“We were really thinking about the communities that we wanted to reach the most deeply and that was fraternity life,” Lippey said.

Every fraternity on campus participated. Lippey cited SAE’s participation as the most impactful for her.

“Every single person in the documentary [“The Hunting Ground”] is familiar with SAE as Sexual Assault Expected,” Lippey said. “We walked in to SAE where they meet every week and they said to us: ‘Can we write No More SAE = Sexual Assault Expected?’ And to me that was the entire point of doing this. The entire point was to have men just stand up and say we’re not OK with this either.”

The first pictures that went up online of Kappa Sigma members received over 10,000 views in around three hours.

“I feel like people really listen to those men. Those are the men that are serving alcohol. Those are the men that are throwing parties,” Lippey said. “And then for young women to see those photos and understand that men don’t want this either is really important to them feeling safe at Stanford.”

This “safety” Lippey alludes to is what passionate students across campus are working toward.

One of those students is Scott Arkin ’18. A member of Sigma Nu, Arkin was inspired by his aunt’s involvement in “The Hunting Ground” documentary as well as an incident at Sigma Nu at Old Dominion to bring more education about the issue to campus.

Arkin organized a screening of the documentary with a post-screening discussion led by Yisrael Donnovan, manager of emotional and sexual health programs at Vaden. His hope was to spark dialogue, but the result was even more impactful.

“A bunch of guys in my house came up to me and personally thanked me for putting it on,” Arkin said. “That just really showed to me how many members are actually very concerned about this.”

Although fraternities like Sigma Nu are making a tangible effort to curb sexual assault, it is still unclear whether these events will actually change the culture and bring about the “safety” for which so many yearn.

“I think the most effective way to change it is from within,” Arkin said. “Fraternities tend to be very insular in how they operate and so it’s really hard if its only external pressure to cause a change.”

Arkin emphasizes how difficult it is to change fraternity mindsets solely through University regulations.

“It’s important that the administration also has harsh guidelines and just punishments for any perpetrators as well as any houses where, if it’s a house that isn’t safe, the University should take action,” Arkin said. “But unfortunately it doesn’t matter how legitimate the cause was. If the University takes a house from a big group of guys or tries to put them on probation, the guys in the house are going to think ‘this is bullshit’ even if it’s not.”

Lippey and Arkin both believe that the most effective change comes from peers working together to change the culture. Peers are more likely to make an influential impact on each other.

Matthew Baiza ’18, co-founder of One in Five, a student group dedicated to educating about sexual assault, agrees.

“We really need to try to work to change the culture,” Baiza said. “Not just at our campus but around the nation.”

In researching the climate on campus, the student group realized that what was missing at Stanford was students educating other students.

“We tried to look at the institutional efforts of the University,” Baiza said.

“With that we felt that the university could do more to work to educate people, to make them aware,” he added. “We saw that one thing that was missing was student involvement on the issue.”

From a fraternity to a sorority and even a Greek-unaffiliated group, all unanimously concur: Students need to be at the focal point of the issue if Stanford is going to be successful in changing a nation-wide culture.

Although the Greek system is often stigmatized, Baiza acknowledges that the problem extends further than the Row.

“It’s not just a Greek life issue,” he said. “It’s an issue that extends past Greek life and really is an issue for the general population at Stanford.”

The Greek community is pushing back, and so is the Stanford community at large. Students want Stanford’s prestige to extend beyond academics.

“We want to see the University take steps to be the leader that it says that it is and that we know it is,” Baiza said.

With initiatives like Lippey’s, Arkin’s and Baiza’s, Stanford seems to be moving forward, with the Greek community leading the way.

“There’s a real hotbed of activism and a hotbed of passion for this issue at Stanford and at universities across the country. And I’m an optimist,” Lippey said. “I find it hard to believe that nothing good can come from… good people trying to do what they can to change the culture. I think that if there’s enough people behind it, that’s when the culture will change.”

Contact Yael Lederman at yael3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

This team has come a long way since that season-opening loss at Northwestern. Through the highs of a dramatic victory over USC, a heartbreaking loss to Oregon, a record-breaking triumph over UCLA and countless more moments, this Stanford team has persevered on the back of its monstrous offensive line, game-changing efforts from Christian McCaffrey and the grizzled leadership of Kevin Hogan.

But they saved their best for last.

Behind a record-shattering night from McCaffrey, another brutally efficient game from Hogan and an inspired team effort for the ages, No. 7 Stanford (11-2, 8-1 Pac-12) rode its playmakers in one dramatic charge, fighting through late adversity to pull away from No. 20 USC (8-5, 6-3) in a 41-22 victory and secure the 15th conference title in program history — and presumably, a berth in the 102nd Rose Bowl.

“Just as a team, I’m very proud of the guys for sticking together after the beginning of the year and a couple of the ups and downs,” said head coach David Shaw. “Our guys were finding ourselves and then coming off and playing great football down the stretch as well as anybody in the nation.”

There simply aren’t words in the English language adequate enough to describe the titanic performance of McCaffrey.

What more can be said about sophomore running back Christian McCaffrey (left)? He broke Barry Sanders’ record of 3,250 all-purpose yards in a season with a record-breaking 461 all-purpose yards in the finest performance of his Stanford career. (SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily)

He recorded receiving, rushing and passing touchdowns, rushed for 207 yards and notched 105 receiving yards as part of a ludicrous 461-yard all-purpose day — by far a school record, and giving him a season total of 3,496 yards, shattering the all-time single-season record of 3,250 set by Barry Sanders in 1988.

After the game, the stage at the awards ceremony shook as Stanford’s players and fans, as one, stood and rocked in unison, chanting, “Heisman! Heisman! Heisman!” in commemoration of McCaffrey’s historic effort to push Stanford to victory.

And in his postgame presser, Shaw couldn’t have been more blunt about his opinion on the matter.

“[McCaffrey] here is the best player in the nation,” Shaw said. “I don’t know if there’s any question. There’s nobody in the nation doing what he’s doing. It’s not even a debate.”

But for as tremendous as McCaffrey’s effort was, the game took an equally gutty effort from Hogan, the team’s elder statesman, for the Cardinal to push past the Trojans for the second time this season.

McCaffrey wasn’t the only one to record touchdowns in three phases of the game — Hogan added rushing, passing and receiving touchdowns of his own as part of a 9-for-12, 144-yard effort in which he wasn’t asked to do too much as a passer but excelled when he was, completing all of his passes after the first quarter.

But more importantly, his quiet confidence was the consistent force that made sure that even when Stanford faced a USC comeback in the second half, Stanford never faltered, instead roaring back with aplomb to put the title squarely in the Cardinal’s crosshairs.

“It’s so fun when we get put in situations where we have to go through adversity because [Hogan] is the ice man,” McCaffrey said. “When I’m sitting there knowing that he’s our quarterback, I know we’ve got nothing to worry about because that’s one of the greatest leaders and greatest competitors I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“What he’s been able to do here with his arm, with his legs and to be honest, with his heart and his toughness, taking us to three Pac-12 Championship games in four years is unbelievable,” Shaw added. “It’s unmatched.”

Although fifth-year senior quarterback Kevin Hogan only threw the ball 12 times on a run-heavy day for the Cardinal, he didn’t have an incomplete pass after the first quarter and accounted for rushing, receiving and passing touchdowns to push Stanford to victory. (SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily)

Behind Hogan’s and McCaffrey’s efforts, Stanford outgained USC 417-357 and held the ball for 35 minutes, getting off to a fast start but using a late turnover generated by a rejuvenated defense to hold off a furious Trojans comeback and pull away in the fourth quarter.

USC started off incredibly slowly and Stanford dominated the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball in the first quarter, but the Cardinal were held to two field goals and a turnover on downs on three of their first four red-zone possessions to limit the Cardinal’s lead to 13-0 late in the second quarter.

However, the Cardinal broke out some trickery to hit the end zone in the fourth of those trips, with Barry Sanders taking the handoff and pitching it on a reverse to McCaffrey, who found Hogan in the end zone on a touchdown pass — his second of the year, and the first receiving touchdown of Hogan’s career.

“My job was easy,” McCaffrey said. “Those are always the scariest ones though when he’s that wide open. You’re just praying that you get it to him.”

But USC battled back, driving 71 yards for a field goal to cut the halftime lead to 13-3 and then driving 65 and 75 yards on its first two possessions of the second half to take a 16-13 lead.

And then the defense found its second wind and turned the tables in a big way.

With Stanford up 20-16 and USC driving down the field, senior inside linebacker Blake Martinez stripped the ball from USC quarterback Cody Kessler on his first sack of the season in the third quarter, allowing sophomore defensive end Solomon Thomas to scoop up the ball and run it back 34 yards for a touchdown.

Senior inside linebacker Blake Martinez (left) forces a fumble by USC quarterback Cody Kessler in the third quarter, which was returned 34 yards by Solomon Thomas to give Stanford a two-score lead. The sack was Martinez’s first of the year. Martinez led Stanford in tackles with 11. (SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily)

After that, Stanford’s secondary, led by the returns of top cornerbacks Ronnie Harris and Alijah Holder, put USC’s talented receiving corps on lockdown, limiting stud wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster to just 87 yards on his 11 receptions.

“When Ronnie’s back on the field, it’s just that energy, that fire, that passion,” Shaw said. “He made some great plays. He doesn’t back down from anybody. The rest of our guys felt that.”

Even when Harris had to leave the game because his injured ankle was bothering him, Holder and sophomore Alameen Murphy showed up with the finest performances of their young careers to absolutely shut Smith-Schuster down and limit Kessler’s downfield options.

“Alijah Holder is a spectacular treat,” Harris said. “He’s not even at 100 percent, and you guys just witnessed some of the stuff he can do. He’s going to be one hell of a player coming up these next couple of years.”

With Stanford up 34-22 with time winding down in the fourth quarter, the secondary forced a USC turnover on downs to effectively end the game. Stanford added a fourth-down conversion and a late McCaffrey rushing touchdown to reach the final 41-22 margin and put the Trojans away for good.

After returning in limited capacity from an ankle injury, fifth-year senior cornerback Ronnie Harris (center) brought “juice” to the team, according to head coach David Shaw, and did an admirable job of defending stud wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster, along with Alijah Holder and Alameen Murphy. (RAHIM ULLAH/The Stanford Daily)

Stanford took the Trojans’ best shot. And the Cardinal prevailed, reaffirming their status as not just conference champions, but kings of California.

“We knew it was going to be a battle,” Shaw said. “We knew it was going to be kind of a test of wills.”

And even though victories by Clemson and Alabama ensured that Stanford will almost certainly be left out of the College Football Playoff, nobody cares about that — because on this day in Santa Clara, the Cardinal came, saw and conquered to prevail in their ultimate goal all season: to win the Pac-12.

And it was as sweet as the smell of roses in Pasadena on Jan. 1.

“The Rose Bowl will never get old,” Harris said. “Neither will Disneyland.”

Contact Do-Hyoung Park at dhpark ‘at’ stanford.edu.

For a photo gallery of the Pac-12 Championship Game, click here.

McCaffrey truly did it all for Stanford, gaining 207 on the ground, 105 in the air, 149 on returns and even completing an 11-yard TD pass to quarterback Kevin Hogan, good for a total of 461 all-purpose yards. The performance put a cherry on top of a historic season for the sophomore, who broke Barry Sanders’ NCAA single-season all-purpose yards record with a two-yard scramble in the second quarter.

A resurgent USC kept the game close through three quarters, but ultimately the Trojans couldn’t keep pace with the Cardinal’s powerful offensive performance. Trojan quarterback Cody Kessler completed 22 of his 37 passes for a respectable 187 yards, but the senior lost a fumble in the third quarter that sophomore Solomon Thomas returned for a touchdown to put the game out of reach.

The remaining Stanford players were left with little to do on McCaffrey’s big night, but still managed a number of solid individual performances. Quarterback Kevin Hogan went 9-for-12 for 144 yards and a touchdown, and running back Remound Wright added 24 more rush yards on 8 carries.

The victory should pave the way for the Cardinal to appear in the 102nd Rose Bowl game, their third such appearance in the last four years.

Contact Andrew Mather at amather ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The goal came off a free kick from Corey Baird, whose kick made its way towards Langsdorf’s head. The forward, who had his back to the goal, flicked his head to send the ball over Wake Forest’s goalie, sealing the win for the team. The goal was Langsdorf’s seventh on the season and fourth game-winner.

The Cardinal had been the first to strike in the 18th minute, when junior forward Jordan Morris headed in a cross from senior defender Brandon Vincent, good for the U.S. Men’s National Team player’s 11th goal in the 16 games he’s played for the Cardinal this season and his 10th goal in the past 12 games.

Stanford maintained its 1-point lead for nearly the rest of the game, but Wake Forest’s Ian Harkes scored off a penalty corner in the 70th minute to equalize things and eventually send the game into overtime.

In the next step of its quest to reach its first national title game since 2002, Stanford will face fourth-seeded Akron on Friday, Dec. 11 at 8:30 p.m. at Sporting Park in Kansas City, Kansas, in the second semifinal match of the NCAA tournament.

This post will be updated.

Contact Alexa Philippou at aphil723 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The Cardinal — one of the most successful volleyball programs in the country — have lost this early in the NCAA tournament only three times in head coach John Dunning’s 15-year career on The Farm, with the other two times coming in the second round in both 2011 and, before that, 2005.

The loss also marked the first time Stanford has been swept since October 2013. The team has also not been swept by a nonconference opponent since September 2009 and hasn’t lost 3-0 to a nonconference opponent at home since September 2003.

“I thought Loyola Marymount played great,” Dunning said. “I think their coach is really good, I think their team played really well tonight, especially played well against us. I thought they did some really good things.

“And any other part of what you’d want to say… [is] that you’re miserable,” he added. “That’s just how you feel so you might as well be honest.”

Stanford did not play anywhere near its best volleyball, but did have the chance to win the first set with two set points. Cardinal service errors and some well-timed kills from the Lions allowed LMU to tie things up and eventually take the 1-0 set lead.

While the Lions easily won the second set, the third set was going in Stanford’s favor, with the team getting out to two five-point leads. LMU fought its way back, eventually taking as much as a three-point lead, and though Stanford kept the game close over the last few points, LMU would finish the match with a kill to end the Cardinal’s season.

“That just hurts, there’s no way around it,” Dunning said. “We had our chances and we didn’t do it, so that’s on us.”

The loss also marks the last game in the careers of seniors Madi Bugg, Jordan Burgess and Brittany Howard, who in their time on The Farm made it to the Elite 8 twice as well as the Final Four last year. The trio also went 61-3 at Maples Pavilion.

“I think that’s what I’ll remember even during this game, playing with our fans in our gym. It’s really special,” Burgess said about her class’s success over the past four years, particularly at home.

“What more could you ask or get from a group of people than what they brought here. And their legacy is huge,” Dunning added.

LMU scored the first two points of the match to get the Tigers out to an early lead. The score remained neck-and-neck for the next few points, but the Lions scored three straight to give the Lions a five-point lead at 16-11. After a Stanford timeout, the Lions kept the Cardinal at a distance, though they threatened to take the set, until Stanford went on an 14-8 run to take a one-point lead at 25-24, putting off a Lion victory for the time being.

At that point, Stanford would have two set points: The first ended with a service error, while the second was erased with a kill from LMU’s Sarah Sponcil. Another service error, this time from freshman libero Halland McKenna, and a kill from Lion Rachelle Suaava would seal the set win for the Lions with a score of 28-26.

While LMU’s .205 hitting percentage was nothing to write home about, Stanford struggled more so on the offensive front, hitting a .189 clip. While Howard had 5 of the team’s 11 kills, other usual contributors, such as freshman outside hitter Hayley Hodson and junior middle blocker Merete Lutz, got off to slow starts, as the two notched 1 and 2 kills respectively despite averaging 3.86 and 3.22 kills per set prior to Friday evening. Defensively, junior middle blocker/outside hitter Ivana Vanjak had 4 blocks to help Stanford come back, but it would not be enough to win the set.

Stanford won the first two points of the second set, but the Lions kept themselves in it, with both teams tying the score five times combined before either team had scored its 10th point. After that point, Stanford trailed LMU for the rest of the set, with the Lions going on to win 25-16.

While Stanford hit its best clip in the second set (.250), it also had its most attacking errors of any set (5). LMU, on the other hand, hit an impressive .571 with only 2 attacking errors and did particularly well on the serve, with 4 service aces in that set alone. By the end of the set, the Lions had three players with 8 kills, while Stanford’s best hitter had a mere 6.

For the third set, Stanford came out after the break with some of the energy it lacked from earlier in the match, and while the first few points were tight, the Cardinal eventually built two five-point leads, their largest leads of the evening. The Lions would fight back to tie the score at 20 off eight kills, three of which came from Sponcil. After three straight points for LMU, the Cardinal fought to keep their season alive, bringing the score within one at 24-23, but a kill from Jamie Lea would complete the sweep and end Stanford’s season.

“They [LMU] served very well, they passed very well,” Dunning said. “And we had to react, we had to change that and we did. I thought we served and passed much better in game three….They [LMU] were doing a great job, and we just didn’t slow them down quite enough.”

Lutz ended the game with a team-high 10 kills, while Burgess had a solid performance with a .320 clip.  While freshman phenom Hodson struggled, only recording 7 kills and hitting .148, Bugg’s 30 assists were enough to earn her 5,014 in her career, allowing her to become the third player in program history to reach the 5,000 assist mark.

Some players showed some life on the defensive front, as three had 4 blocks, but the Lions’ attack would prove to be too powerful, as three of their players ended with double-digit kills.

Despite an early and unexpected exit from the tournament and a season filled with ups and downs and plagued by injuries, the team had some flashes of success: Stanford beat eight ranked teams over the year, including a huge upset over then-No. 4 Washington, and had two streaks of six straight wins, including one extending into Friday’s game. Despite starting the season off 11-5, the team ended its last 14 games with a 12-2 record.

“I’m really proud of our team for all that we went through this year, beginning with injuries,” Dunning said, “and to get to the point that we were very excited we thought we really had a chance to just take one day at a time and keep stepping forward. And we’re not going to get a chance to see if we can be any better tomorrow.”

“It’s the way our season has been all year, even winning, it’s been just a roller coaster ride because all the different things,” he added. “And we just hit a little bit of a trough right here and that’s just the way the playoffs are.”

Contact Alexa Philippou at aphil723 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

This season, the team has shown a continuation of its success from 2014, winning the Pac-12 title once more, dominating the conference and earning a win in the NCAA Third Round, which the program hadn’t achieved under head coach Jeremy Gunn or since the early 2000s.

Saturday evening, the team has the opportunity to make a mark on the program’s history once more, when Stanford (16-2-2) takes on No. 1 Wake Forest (17-2-2) in Winston-Salem in the NCAA Quarterfinals. A win would advance the Cardinal to the College Cup, the final four of the NCAA Tournament, for the first time since 2002.

Stanford goes into the game having beaten its past two opponents — Santa Clara and Ohio State — by scores of 3-1. Both games featured particularly strong second halves, as the Cardinal scored all six of their goals of the tournament after halftime.

Someone different has stepped up in each postseason game to lead the Cardinal to victory: Against Santa Clara, freshman forward Amir Bashti scored a brace which, along with a goal off a free kick from senior co-captain and defender Brandon Vincent, erased Stanford’s early 1-0 deficit.

A week later, it would be U.S. Men’s National Team player and Pac-12 Player of the Year Jordan Morris, a junior forward, that would score the team’s first goal of the night as well as, after the game had been tied, the game-winner. Sophomore midfielder Corey Baird also scored to put the game out of reach with less than three minutes to play.

As Stanford enters Saturday’s game with two hard-fought but well-earned victories from the beginning of the tournament in tow, Wake Forest will likely be the toughest team it has faced all season, at least on paper. The Demon Deacons, ACC Champions, are the top team in the country as well as the top seed in the tournament. The team advanced to the quarterfinals with a pair of 1-0 wins over Charlotte and No. 14 Indiana.

Similar to Stanford, Wake Forest has lost or tied only four of its 20+ games. The team’s schedule includes wins over Santa Clara, Davidson and Louisville — common opponents it has had with Stanford, which also beat all those teams — as well as meetings with 11 ranked teams (including wins over then-No. 6 Akron, then-No. 2 North Carolina, and then-No. 4 Notre Dame). The Cardinal, in addition to having played several teams on the cusp of being ranked, have only faced off against five ranked teams this season, holding a 4-0-1 record against them.

The Demon Deacons have a plethora of offensive talent, with Jack Harrison and Jon Bakero leading the team with an astounding 8 goals apiece. Michael Gamble and Tane Gent have also contributed heavily to the Wake offense, each notching 6 goals, while Jacori Hayes has 5 of his own.

Wake scores an average of 2.24 goals per game — tied for sixth-best in the nation — and allows only .52 goals per match — fifth in the nation — while Stanford has a 1.85 goals per game average.

To counter Wake’s attack, Stanford will have to rely on its typically-sound backline of sophomore Drew Skundrich, sophomore Tomas Hilliard-Arce, junior Brian Nana-Sinkham and Vincent. The unit, along with junior goalie Andrew Epstein, has allowed only .70 goals per game, 11th-best in the nation.

If Wake’s offense is in full force, Stanford will likely have to offset it with its own attack, which has its own share of talent. For one, it boasts the only collegiate player that also plays for the U.S. Men’s National Team in Jordan Morris. The junior has missed five games due to national team duties, but in his last 11 game with the Cardinal has scored 9 goals and notched 3 assists. Overall, he has 10 goals in 15 games this season with Stanford.

Besides Morris, sophomore forward Foster Langsdorf has had a breakout season with 6 goals, second-most on the team. Vincent has come in clutch on penalty kicks and other set pieces, scoring 5 goals of his own and, along with Morris, has been named as a semifinalist for the MAC Hermann Trophy, awarded to the best player in college soccer. The team also has seven other players who have scored at least one goal this season.

“We got a well rounded team full of very good players,” fifth-year senior Eric Verso said. “We’ve been able to do very well even when he [Morris] hasn’t been here but having him on the field, we just know that he’s able to give us those special moments that no one else in college soccer can give us.”

Despite appearing to be the underdog, the team is not intimidated by the top-ranked Demon Deacs.

“I think no matter who we play, no matter where we go we have our mentality and if we go out here and approach each game like we do every game, I think we’re gonna do great,” Morris said. “They are of course a great team but we’re not going to be scared, we’ll respect them…but just go over there confident.”

“Coach [Jeremy Gunn] always talks about that we’re fitter, we’re stronger, we’re sharper,” Verso said. “We’ve been building all season for this, geting better each game, and we’re not scared of any team, we’re not scared of Wake. We’re going to go in there and play our game.”

The teams will face off at Wake Forest on Saturday, Dec. 5 at 4 p.m. The game will be broadcast on EPSN3/WatchESPN.

Contact Alexa Philippou at aphil723 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

It was a move meant to show the team that even though USC was ranked No. 6 at the time and Stanford was unranked, the Cardinal were no underdog — while USC’s status was anointed through preseason hype and speculation, Stanford had earned the right to be confident through its track record of big wins in big games.

We thought the stage was big then, but three months later, the stage has never been as big as it will be on Saturday for Stanford at Levi’s Stadium.

As the Pac-12 season comes full circle with the two teams that began conference play set to close it out, a Rose Bowl berth lies at stake for both the No. 7 Cardinal (10-2, 8-1 Pac-12) and the No. 24 Trojans (8-4, 6-3) in the Pac-12 Championship Game as Stanford seeks a return to Pasadena for the third time in four seasons and USC looks to salvage what once looked to be a lost season.

“It’s been a tough road, a hard road,” said head coach David Shaw. “Our guys have fought every single week. We’ve got one game left in our season before bowl season starts so we’re going all-in.”

What’s more: For the first time in a very, very long time, Stanford will be playing with national title hopes at stake this late in the season, with the Cardinal needing just one loss by Clemson or Alabama to have a clear shot at the College Football Playoff.

Not that the Cardinal will be checking those other scores, of course.

“I’m not on the committee and nobody on our team’s on the committee,” Shaw said. “We’re a football team. We have to try to win a football game. If we’re easily distracted by stuff that happens off our field, then we don’t deserve to win.”

Even though Stanford outdueled USC 41-31 on the road earlier this season, the Cardinal can’t be caught looking ahead in the most critical juncture of their year; these are two very different teams from the squads that took the field in September in Los Angeles.

“You have to treat them like completely different games,” Shaw said. “There’s no carry-over outside of looking at what worked and what didn’t work.”

“You’ve got to look even more intently at what they’ve done since we played them and what we’ve done since we played them. We’re a different team emphasizing different things since we played them back then.”

While Stanford ran a balanced, pro-style offense and USC ran a spread in that September game, both Stanford and USC have since re-found their identities as power-run teams — in fact, Shaw believes that the Cardinal and Trojans are the only two power-run teams left in the conference.

That USC game was the first in a stretch of a school-record nine consecutive games in which sophomore running back Christian McCaffrey eclipsed 100 rushing yards. Since then, all McCaffrey has done is become the centerpiece of the Stanford offense and presumably cement his status as a Heisman Trophy finalist.

Meanwhile, with the firing of Steve Sarkisian and the hiring of Clay Helton as head coach, the Trojans have also returned to their roots as a run-first team behind the two-headed rushing attack of Justin Davis and Ronald Jones, taking a lot of the onus off of the right arm of quarterback Cody Kessler.

“Both very, very talented running backs,” Shaw said. “[Jones] is just explosive. He’s so fast and so quick. It’s a great 1-2 punch. They’ve got a couple of other backs that they roll in there too, but those two have had really good seasons.”

Even with the running game likely to be the focus of USC’s offense, make no mistake: The Trojans’ absurd talent at wide receiver, led by stud sophomore JuJu Smith-Schuster, is poised to continue the recent streak of big plays that have plagued a Stanford secondary playing without its two best corners in Ronnie Harris and Alijah Holder.

“I know USC is watching our last couple of games and getting excited, because we’ve given up a lot of explosive plays in the last couple of games,” Shaw said. “We have to limit those with a very talented USC team.”

Luckily for Stanford, news on the injury front is promising for both Holder and Harris: Shaw said this week that Holder would likely play as part of a rotation at the very least, and that Harris was ahead of schedule in his recovery and could return as soon as Saturday.

Given that Smith-Schuster had a 153-yard day against a healthy Stanford secondary in September and the talented Darreus Rogers and Steven Mitchell, Jr. have also had successful seasons, the welcome injury news couldn’t have come soon enough, particularly with Stanford having allowed 100-yard receivers in each of its last two weeks.

“The biggest thing that we need to do is eliminate big plays,” said senior safety Dallas Lloyd. “If we can do our job and eliminate those big plays and make offenses work to move the ball incrementally down the field on us, then we’ll have a lot more success.”

Stanford’s front seven will also have a tall task ahead of it, as the Trojans’ running game has found its rhythm despite losing three starting offensive linemen to injury (Max Tuerk, Toa Lobendahn and Kahliel Rodgers) since the teams last met.

That very same battle on the other side of the ball might well dictate the game.

Although McCaffrey was held to below 100 rush yards for the first time in 10 weeks last Saturday by Notre Dame, the Trojans will be playing without two of the key pieces of its run defense in linebackers Cameron Smith and Lamar Dawson, giving McCaffrey and the Stanford offensive line a more favorable matchup to work with as the Cardinal will look to dictate the tempo of the game and hold the ball.

With fifth-year senior quarterback Kevin Hogan coming off of the best game of his career and finding his best rapport of the season with receiver Devon Cajuste, all phases of the Cardinal offense are clicking at the right time.

It’s just a matter of whether the Cardinal can show up on Saturday and play a big game on their biggest stage of the season — and if history is any indication, they’re absolutely prepared to do so.

“We know that’s what’s going to happen this week,” Lloyd said. “It’s going to be head-to-head, physical football. That’s what we live for; that’s what we train for all year.”

In 2012 and 2013, that determination was enough to give Stanford the edge in rematches against UCLA and Arizona State to give the team one last push into Pasadena. With another Rose Bowl — and possibly a Playoff berth — at stake, the Cardinal will no doubt have their eyes on the prize.

Stanford and USC will duel with the Pac-12 title at stake at 4:45 p.m. Saturday. The game will be televised on ESPN.

Contact Do-Hyoung Park at dhpark ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Michael Peterson: Stanford 38, USC 35

Stanford fans rightfully fear the Cardinal playing USC. The Trojans have as much talent as anybody in the conference — Cody Kessler, Juju Smith-Schuster, Adoree’ Jackson, Su’a Cravens and Ronald Jones are among the best at their respective positions in the conference. If Alijah Holder and Ronnie Harris can’t play on Saturday, Stanford could be in for a rough night trying to slow down Smith-Schuster, who is seventh in the nation with 109 receiving yards per game, and Kessler, the Pac-12’s second most efficient quarterback. However, Stanford owns a clear advantage when its offense is on the field. USC lost linebackers Cameron Smith and Lamar Dawson to injuries and has struggled for much of the year to slow down opposing offenses, surrendering 400 total yards of offense per game, which is 70th in the nation.

Against Notre Dame, the Stanford offense overcame its inability to truly establish the run to win in another brilliantly called and executed offensive game. However, against USC, Stanford should be able to do a much better job establishing the run, which will only help red-hot Kevin Hogan. I expect this game to play out similarly to the Stanford-Notre Dame game, where turnovers, red-zone performance or a big play here and there will determine the winner. Whoever has the ball last might very well win the game, but ultimately, Kevin Hogan pulls out another clutch fourth-quarter scoring drive to give Stanford the win in yet another back-and-forth, nail-biting classic in what’s becoming one of the better rivalries in college football.

Vihan Lakshman: Stanford 41, USC 37

This game feels eerily reminiscent of the 2013 clash between Stanford and USC: a revitalized Trojan squad playing its best football under an interim head coach versus a Cardinal team coming off of an emotional, field-storming victory at home over a would-be national title contender. But those kind of cute comparisons can only take you so far — the game on the field promises to be of a much different flavor than the defensive struggle of two years ago. Under Clay Helton, the Trojans have rallied around a physical brand of football and will almost certainly look to attack Stanford on the ground behind their massive offensive line and emerging running back in Ronald Jones — a formula that worked brilliantly for both Oregon and Notre Dame against the Cardinal. Meanwhile, the looming nuclear threat of Juju Smith-Schuster and Adoree’ Jackson could blow up Stanford’s bend-but-don’t-break style of defense at any instant. However, Stanford’s offense looks equipped to match Southern Cal blow for blow behind an absurdly efficient Kevin Hogan and the reemergence of his favorite targets, Austin Hooper and Devon Cajuste, who made the difference in this matchup back in September. Behind a big day from Hogan and a record breaking performance from Christian McCaffrey, Stanford rallies from an early deficit and holds on at the end to claim its third Pac-12 title in four seasons.

Do-Hyoung Park: USC 42, Stanford 21

HOW AM I THE ONLY PERSON NOT PICKING STANFORD IN THIS GAME? My god, people. And I’m usually the crazy optimist, too. Here’s the deal: Teams with physical fronts have been running roughshod over the Cardinal over the last few weeks. This defensive line is tired. USC has a very physical front and a supremely talented running back in Ronald Jones. Opposing No. 1 receivers have been racking up the yards against Stanford’s injured secondary. JuJu Smith-Schuster, Darreus Rogers and Steven Mitchell, Jr. are fantastic receivers. Stanford’s offensive line has gotten pretty bad push against the last two defensive fronts that it has played against (Cal and Notre Dame), and even though USC is injured at linebacker, the Trojans have more than enough talent to make up for a few injuries with their tremendous recruiting.

This game is going to be a back-and-forth affair, but ultimately, USC’s ridiculous big-play potential and newfound reliance on the power run game will prove to wear Stanford’s defense down, while the Stanford offense will be stopped just enough times, especially if the Trojans get good push on their defensive line, to put this game out of reach by the time the fourth quarter starts. I don’t want to believe it as much as you guys, but I just have a really, really, really bad feeling about this game. Stanford heads to the Holiday Bowl.

Winston Shi: Stanford 38, USC 37

Red zone, red zone, red zone. That’s what this game is going to come down to. Offenses thrive when they have space, and the exact opposite happens when defenses are backed up inside their own 20. Can Stanford continue to weather its overall defensive troubles by holding strong in Stanford territory?

Stanford did very well against Cal and Notre Dame by holding its rivals’ offenses to field goals in the red zone. Now, I give props to Stanford for what it did in the red zone against Cal: Cal scores touchdowns inside the 20 at a 65 percent clip. But Sonny Dykes also made many questionable decisions to kick on fourth-and-short against Stanford. And Notre Dame’s had problems winning in the red zone all season — they’re only a 56-percent team. Stopping USC will be harder.

USC’s red zone touchdown percentage is a sparkling 68 percent. The Trojans will be going up against what seems like an immovable object — Stanford’s defense only gives up red zone touchdowns a mind-numbing 44 percent of the time, a figure that’s likely unsustainable. I don’t know whether Stanford will be able to keep USC from getting into the end zone in the first place, but when the Trojans do get inside the 20, Stanford had better be able to hold them from there.

Oh, and the score? The game’s a coin flip. But I’m not picking against Stanford. Not when this is the last Stanford-USC game I will ever cover for The Daily. I don’t normally do sentimentality. But this one’s for all the Stanford teams that could never beat USC. How many seniors on the Stanford football team have the chance to go out with a winning record against the University of Southern California? The first Stanford loss I ever attended in person was against USC and I hope Stanford never loses to USC again. Certainly not on Saturday night.

Andrew Mather: Stanford 45, USC 34

This game, like almost every installment of this rivalry, is quite difficult to get a handle on. As much as I criticized the Trojans at the beginning of this season for being an incomplete team (most of which, I might add, turned out to be quite well-merited), I’ve been impressed with how well they handled the difficult circumstances they faced and still managed to look like the clear champions of the Pac-12 South. Furthermore, I think the Trojans have finally found a good coach in Clay Helton, and I have no doubt that they will continue to improve under him in the coming seasons and eventually deliver in the way their fans expect.

This game, however, isn’t about how future years will play out. This game is about which team is better right now. From what I’ve seen, that answer is still the Cardinal. The bottom line is that –Stanford is just playing too well to allow the Trojans a serious shot at the upset this weekend. Just watch the team’s game-winning drive against Notre Dame last weekend – everyone thought the game was over when the Irish took the lead with 30 seconds remaining, but Stanford’s players simply refused to lose. One Cardinal player after another stepped up, and somehow the team walked away with the victory.

I haven’t been David Shaw’s number one fan this year, but I think his remarks before the September Stanford-USC matchup perfectly encapsulate the Cardinal’s advantage. Before kickoff, Shaw made every player who had won two Pac-12 Championships stand, driving home the point that, regardless of Stanford’s low-ranking at the time, the team knows how to take care of business in big games. Though the Trojans and the Cardinal have effectively flipped positions since then, I think the basic point still holds: USC deserves the chance it’s been given, but Stanford has the experience, the will power and the wherewithal to come away with a solid victory. Ultimately, I’ll be surprised if the Cardinal don’t let the Trojans know it.

Senior setter Madi Bugg (above) notched 38 assists on Thursday against New Mexico State and is now only 16 away from notching her 5,000th. She would become one of three Cardinal players to ever have achieved such a feat. (RAHIM ULLAH/The Stanford Daily)

Three Cardinal players recorded double-digit kills, and the team combined for a .415 hitting percentage.

In the first set, Stanford took an early lead, but strong service from Western Athletic Conference Player of the Year Gwen Murphy quickly erased the Cardinal’s lead. The teams kept it close, but with the set tied at 11-11, the Cardinal went on a 9-4 run to regain control. Despite the Aggies fighting back to bring the score within 2, a pair of NMSU errors allowed the Cardinal to take the set 25-20, with an ace by freshman outside hitter Hayley Hodson to seal the deal.

As in the regular season, the Cardinal spread out their attack in the first set, allowing multiple players to record a significant number of kills. Hodson paced the team with 6, and senior outside hitter Brittany Howard and junior middle blocker Merete Lutz each registered 4 kills of their own.  

“Having such a diverse offense really opens up the court for us in terms of the other team being able to block us,” Hodson said.

Stanford drove this point home in the second set, hitting .481 while holding the Aggies to a mere .032 hitting percentage. Hodson opened scoring with a kill, and the Cardinal maintained the lead for the remainder of the set until the final score of 25-13.

The score was tied a whopping 13 times in the third set. The teams were neck-and-neck throughout, but with the score tied 13-13, consecutive kills from Hodson and senior outside hitter Jordan Burgess gave the Cardinal a 2-point lead and enough momentum to keep scoring. Stanford took the set 25-17 to complete the sweep and advance to the second round of the tournament.

Senior setter Madi Bugg continued to masterfully direct the offense and registered 38 assists on the night. She is now only 16 assists shy of the 5,000 career assists mark, a feat only two Cardinal players have ever managed. Bugg’s outstanding performance throughout the season has allowed the Cardinal to develop their trademark balanced attack and secure victories.

“We have a lot of talent,” Howard said, “and Madi is really good at getting us incorporated at the right times.”

Three Stanford players registered double-digit kills on the night: Hodson (13), Lutz (13) and Howard (12). Lutz also led the team with an impressive .579 hitting percentage, while freshman libero Halland McKenna and Hodson also notched 10 digs.

Playing in their 35th consecutive NCAA Tournament despite missing middle blocker Inky Ajanaku and some initial false starts, the Cardinal have rebounded and proven themselves to be an effective and accomplished team. The Cardinal will look to continue to assert their dominance on the court as they progress in postseason play, with Loyola Marymount University next up in the Second Round. The match will be held at Maples, and the Cardinal will use their home court to their advantage as they fight to advance in the postseason.

The Cardinal lead the all-time series with the Lions 3-0, although the teams have not seen each other since 2000.

On Thursday, LMU upset No. 13 Colorado State in the first round of the tournament, coming away with a four-set victory to snap the Rams’ 20-match winning streak. Senior setter Hannah Tedrow ranks 10th in the nation with 11.70 assists per set, while sophomore and junior outside hitters Sarah Sponcil and Jamie Lea lead the Lions’ attack with 3.55 and 3.59 kills per set, respectively.

“[LMU] has some really good players, and I think their coach is really good,” said Stanford head coach John Dunning. “We know we have our hands full. It’s just the next step.”

First serve for Stanford and LMU is at 7 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 4, in Maples Pavilion. The match will be streamed live on Pac-12.com.

Contact Olivia Hummer at ohummer ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Wednesday, Nov. 18:

• An individual was found shoplifting from the Campus Bookstore between 1 p.m. and 1:30 p.m.
• A car caught fire and was consequently destroyed and towed away. The cause of the fire is unknown, though foul play is not suspected. The incident occurred at on Mirada Avenue at 9:20 p.m.

Thursday, Nov. 19:

• An elderly man made a comment on the phone to SUDPS about an explosion at Stanford University. He later said the comment was a bad joke. The incident occurred at 11:40 a.m.

Friday, Nov. 20:

• An unknown suspect broke a car window and stole a backpack. The incident occurred outside of the Lyman Graduate Residences between 4:35 p.m. and 7 p.m.
• An individual was arrested for public intoxication at the Neukom Building at 11:45 p.m.
• Campus Security Authority (CSA) informed SUDPS that a female student had reported being forcibly fondled by a male student. The incident occurred on Campus Drive in late October.

Saturday, Nov. 21:

• An individual was arrested for public intoxication at the intersection of Nathan Abbott Way and Salvatierra Walk at 12:25 a.m.
• An individual was cited for being a minor in possession of alcohol at the Jerry student residence at 6:55 p.m.
• Two individuals engaged in an argument that escalated to violence. Neither party pressed charges. The incident occurred at Stanford Stadium at 7:45 p.m.
• An individual was arrested for public intoxication at the Stanford Stadium at 9 p.m.
• An individual wrote Big-Game-related graffiti on the lounge wall at Theta Delta Chi between 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.  

Sunday, Nov. 22:

• An individual was arrested for public intoxication at Munger between 1:30 a.m. and 1:35 a.m.

Monday, Nov. 23:

• An individual stole an unattended briefcase containing a laptop from a table outside of Tresidder Memorial Union at 7 p.m.
• CSA informed SUDPS that a female student had reported being touched on her backside by three males, who were on bicycles, as she was walking down Campus Drive in the middle of October.

Tuesday, Nov. 24:

• Two individuals were found prowling the bike racks on Serra Street at 6:15 p.m.
• An unknown suspect entered an unlocked office in the Varian Physics Lab and stole a laptop between Nov. 23 at 6 p.m. and Nov. 24 at 7 p.m.
• An individual climbed to the roof of Memorial Church and damaged a copper roof gutter. The value of the damages is estimated at $12,740. This incident occurred over a two-week period from Nov. 9 at 11 a.m. to Nov. 22 at 11 a.m.

Wednesday, Nov. 25:

• An individual was found in possession of concentrated cannabis at the Environment and Energy Building between 10:33 p.m. and 12:30 a.m.

Thursday, Nov. 26:

• An individual was found in possession of marijuana at the intersection of El Camino Real and Serra Street at 11:05 p.m.

Friday, Nov. 27:

• An individual was cited for driving without a license at the intersection of Palm Drive and Arboretum Road at 10:21 p.m.

Saturday, Nov. 28:

• An individual was arrested for public intoxication at the Stanford Stadium at 5:45 p.m.
• Two individuals were arrested, one for a suspended license and the other for being in possession of a controlled substance and a knife. The arrests occurred at the intersection of Campus Drive and Lasuen Street at 10:01 p.m.
• An individual was found in possession of marijuana at the intersection of Campus Drive and Lasuen Street at 11:10 p.m.

Sunday, Nov. 29:

• An individual was arrested for public intoxication at the intersection of Bowdoin Lane and Arguello Way at 1:05 a.m.

Monday, Nov. 30:

• An unknown suspect stole a reportedly U-locked bike from the bike rack outside of the Escondido V Highrise/Mirrielees at 9:30 a.m.

Tuesday, Dec. 1:

• An individual was cited for driving without a license at the intersection of El Camino Real and Embarcadero Road at 2 a.m.

There were eight alcohol transports reported between Nov. 18 and Dec. 1 as recorded in the Stanford Department of Public Safety bulletin.

Contact Blanca Andrei at bandrei ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The fax machine in the Athletic Department offices roared at the outset of what had already promised to be an auspicious National Signing Day — and then it never stopped. When the dust finally settled and the last of the paperwork from every corner of the nation trickled in, the Cardinal had secured the fifth-best recruiting class in the nation and, in particular, one of the top offensive line hauls of all time, as nearly a ton of front line talent pledged its allegiance to the Tunnel Workers’ Union.

On Feb. 1, 2012, Stanford announced with authority that its physical brand of football was here to stay, but as the old saying goes, they don’t hand out trophies on Signing Day. While the seeds of Stanford’s 2015 conference-best juggernaut of an offense were planted on that day, the roots of the Cardinal’s present-day success smashing opponents at the line of scrimmage sprung from something that the screeches of that fax machine could never hope to capture: the deepest — and most violent — of friendships.

Standing at 6-foot-5, 321 pounds and 6-foot-7, 301 pounds, respectively, former five-star (according to Scout.com) recruits Joshua Garnett and Kyle Murphy joined five other Stanford linemen — Andrus Peat, Graham Shuler, Johnny Caspers, Nick Davidson and Brandon Fanaika — in forming this imposing Signing Day jackpot.

However, to hear it from Stanford’s players and coaches, it’s unclear if the Cardinal brought in six or seven commits on that day.

Garnett and Murphy, the Cardinal’s current starting left guard and left tackle, respectively, and roommates for the past three years, have, by all accounts, morphed into a single entity.

“They’re two peas in a pod,” remarked Shuler, the starting center alongside Murphy and Garnett. “We joke around that we’ve got a married couple on the offensive line.”

“Personality-wise, they are one soul,” noted offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Mike Bloomgren. “We joke all the time that they don’t need to make calls at the line because they can just use ESP.”

Garnett, for his part, is well-aware of the locker-room punchline.

“A lot of people make fun of me and Kyle given that we’re always together like we’re connected at the hip.”

But no inseparable duo is complete without an appropriate nickname, and Garnett and Murphy have that box checked and double-checked. The pair, which comprises arguably the most formidable left side of an offensive line in the nation, has been christened the “Bash Bros,” a clear homage to its reputation for decimating defensive fronts, though its origins may be less well-known.

“I hope they didn’t give themselves that moniker,” Bloomgren chuckled.

To their position coach’s relief, the Bash Bros label did not originate with Garnett or Murphy, but from athletic trainer Lee Martin, who coined the phrase that has slowly taken on a life of its own.

Garnett still recalls that fateful day in the training room with Martin.

“One day we came down to tape…and [Martin] goes, ‘Oh look, the Bash Bros are at it again,’ when we walked in together. We kind of just stuck with it.”

“It’s a humbling nickname,” Murphy added. “We both like to come off the ball and get in dudes a little bit, so this must mean we’re doing something right.”

Many would argue that the pair has done more than just something right this season. Behind Kevin Hogan and his 44 straight starts, the Bash Bros rank second with 27 each and have joined Hogan as offensive captains. The duo has led the resurgence of an offensive line that has paved the way for a rushing attack that ranks 20th in the nation at 222 yards per game while also keeping Hogan’s jersey clean, allowing less than a sack per game in the Cardinal’s last three outings.

Moreover, the individual accolades are beginning to roll in by the handful. Garnett, who unofficially leads the team in pancake blocks, has been named one of three finalists for the Outland Trophy, awarded to the nation’s most outstanding lineman on either side of the ball. Murphy, who took over at left tackle following the departure of Peat to the NFL, earned a spot on the Outland and Rotary Lombardi Award watch lists and, like Garnett, will likely receive serious consideration for All-America honors.

“What makes them so special is the way they finish and how violent they play,” Bloomgren said. “When they get the opportunity to work some double teams and they go 2-for-2 with both a defensive lineman and a linebacker on the ground, I bet people are like, ‘That’s not really what I want to be up against.’

“From what I’ve seen, they’re the best guard-tackle combo [in the nation].”

Despite the bushels of awards and praise launched their way, Murphy and Garnett have remained as steady and focused (and violent) as ever.

“That’s obviously our goal and our mindset when we come out here,” Murphy said. “We want to be the two baddest dudes out here. We like to play with that confidence and swagger. We kind of think that for our offense to perform at the highest level possible we have to be at our best. We put that pressure on ourselves…to get the job done.”

***

Out of the millions of high-schoolers who played football between 2002 and 2010, only 262 earned the coveted five-star recruiting rating from Rivals.com, yet fifty-five percent — more than half — of those 262 five-stars never heard their names called in the NFL draft.

On the other hand, Garnett and Murphy, two five-star recruits in their own right, look poised to play on Sundays after they hang up their cardinal and white jerseys at the end of the season.

While they certainly arrived on The Farm with prodigious talent and minutes upon minutes of high school highlight reels, their current success as top-tier professional prospects and captains of the 2015 squad was far from predestined. Shaw has observed that the Bash Bros have “grown tremendously [as leaders] over the past three and a half years,” a development that has a lot to do with how their friendship has molded each of them.

Coming into Stanford, it may not have been obvious that Murphy, a quiet, unassuming SoCal kid from San Clemente and Garnett, the loud, charismatic Puyallup, Washington native, would form a special bond. But, in turn, they have each rubbed off on each other over the years and, in the eyes of Bloomgren, have converged towards a singular personality — that of a wise, respect-demanding leader.

“I’ve had the opportunity to know these kids since they were 17-year-old kids in high school,” Bloomgren said, “and really have watched them grow tremendously and really come towards each other.”

“Kyle was very unassuming and not very talkative in high school whereas Josh was just the opposite — he was always kind of the life of the party…Now you see Josh be more reserved depending on the context and the situation and Kyle has the ability to talk and get loud when he needs to now.”

“Kyle’s not a big smack-talker but when game time comes, just to see that you see that switch in him, you’re like, ‘I don’t recognize this guy,’” Garnett added. “And he just gets real nasty and I think that’s awesome to see as his friend who lives with him. On game day, you get to see that different side of him.”

Of course, leadership is only a small piece of the puzzle, but the Bash Bros’ on-field improvements have matched their mental development every step of the way. Both credit their current successes to the opportunity to see the field as true freshmen in the role of extra linemen in the jumbo and ogre packages.

“It was a long time ago but seems like yesterday,” Murphy reminisced. “It was great to get that experience in tight games against USC and Notre Dame and get that experience in pressure situations even if it’s in a minimal role of 10-15 plays. It gets you ready to be a starter unfazed. Last year in the tight games…even though it was my first starting, I had that experience to lean on and could just focus on playing football.”

In his freshman and sophomore years, Murphy frequently lined up as a tight end in jumbo formations and, in just the third game of his career, had a ball thrown his way. Murphy also lined up as a decoy receiver this season against the Huskies, though he admits that his opportunities to make a play in the passing game are “probably past me.”

Garnett, meanwhile, saw a lot of action as a fullback in heavy set formations where he got his feet wet on the biggest of stages after “getting to hit Manti Te’o head up” as a true freshman.

***

Four years after seeing their first snaps, the Bash Bros have passed on their tackle-eligible 98 and 94 jerseys onto the next generation of young Tunnel Workers and have now wear their standard 51 and 78 jerseys full-time. With their Stanford careers soon to come to a close, they hope to go out with another Pac-12 championship while managing to prepare for the next chapter of their lives.

Murphy, who studies science, technology and society, hopes to one day enter the finance and business world, while Garnett is a pre-med human biology major taking a full course load this quarter while serving up pancakes on Saturday.

Off the field, Garnett also served as president of his freshman dorm, Twain, and continues to keep in touch with many of his old friends from freshman year. Despite being an old married couple, the Bash Bros can indeed detach from the hip when necessary.

“It’s been great to have friends outside of football,” Garnett said. “You get annoyed hanging out with these guys 24/7. I love Kyle but we can’t be around each other too much. We talk too much smack about FIFA.”

Come Saturday, though, the only recipients of Murphy and Garnett’s smack will be the USC Trojans lined up against them — a smack of the most literal and painful variety. As they team up on the left side for one of the last times, it will be the culmination of a long journey, the road from former top recruits to college stars who built a formidable front line — and an inseparable friendship — in the process.

At the home of intellectual brutality, the Bash Bros are the gatekeepers and, on Saturday night, they have a chance to cap off their careers the way it started: with a Pac-12 Championship.

Contact Vihan Lakshman at vihan ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The CHE piece details how Division I athletic departments are relying more heavily on student and institutional backing to fund their operations: “In the past five years, public universities pumped more than $10.3 billion in mandatory student fees and other subsidies into their sports programs … The average athletic subsidy that these colleges and their students have paid to their athletic departments increased 16 percent during that time.” Post writers Will Hobson and Steven Rich wrote on what some would call the out-of-control spending by athletics, expenditures at least partially funded by student athletic fees.

Since these analyses looked mainly at public universities that are subject to open-records laws and FOIA requests, Stanford students may be wondering how their school’s athletic department is funded.

Firstly, varsity (NCAA-level) athletics at Stanford are not “subsidized” by students or the university. An op-ed that appeared in The Daily earlier this year wildly misstated that “the net annual cost (of athletics to the university) is thus around $67 million.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

In reality, the varsity athletics arm of Stanford’s Department of Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation (DAPER) does not rely on any student or institutional support to cover its expenses. Not only does DAPER not charge Stanford students an athletics fee (students at Cal contributed $1.44 million in fees to their athletics department in 2014), but the allocation that DAPER receives from the university ($12.69 million in 2013-14) is used to cover non-varsity athletics-related costs, including the P.E., Recreation and Wellness programs (i.e. intramural teams, gym upkeep and maintenance and wellness courses).

Furthermore, Stanford does not charge its students to attend regular-season home events, one of the only FBS-level programs not to do so. Thus, contrary to what was written in the aforementioned op-ed, Stanford is not “passing up other opportunities” “by spending so much on athletics,” because little if any institutional money is diverted away from educational programs. Our athletics department is essentially self-sufficient and thus has the prerogative to dictate its own spending policies.

In fact, Stanford’s DAPER actually paid the university over $20 million in the 2014-15 fiscal year. How is that possible, you ask? In 2014-15, DAPER awarded $20,591,001 in athletics-related student aid, which covers the tuition and fees, room and board and required textbooks for those athletes on scholarship.

In other words, the university charged DAPER that amount for the over 300 full scholarships the department awards each year, and DAPER then transferred that amount back to the university to cover the expense. Even if we assume that all or a portion of the university’s $12.69 million allocation to DAPER in 2013-14 went to cover varsity athletics-related costs (which it doesn’t), the university still received a healthy 62.6 percent return on its investment — how many academic or other campus departments can claim that?

If Stanford’s athletic teams do not receive financial support from student fees or university transfers, where does the money come from? As explained by the Buck/Cardinal Club’s (the athletic department’s main donor group) annual report and the Stanford varsity athlete handbook, DAPER receives funding from a variety of revenue sources.

The largest of these is private giving, which, when summed up, accounted for $49.63 million (42.5 percent) of the department’s $116.52 million 2013-14 revenues. Gate revenues (ticket sales) totaled $16.8 million (14.4 percent), media payouts were $17.5 million (15 percent) and NCAA/Pac-12 disbursements came to $4.77 million (4 percent).

In short, DAPER is a unique but financially healthy enterprise — despite the ever-rising costs of competing at the highest levels of intercollegiate athletics — and will likely continue to be so, provided its endowment, which is valued somewhere between $400-500 million and releases 5.5 percent per annum, remains strong. That is, unless the market hits the skids and/or other revenue streams dry up, DAPER’s varsity athletics unit should, theoretically, never have to receive direct institutional support or student fees to cover its costs, though I doubt it would refuse the extra help if ever offered.

Cameron Miller’s editor doesn’t really have anything funny to say for this contact line because all this talk of money scares him and makes him bitter that he needs to pay off student loans after college, so if you want to talk dollar dealings, contact Cameron Miller at cmiller6 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Articles about Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) were some of The Daily’s most read stories over the last two years, but an extensive account about what happened was never published.

During July 2014, a Title IX investigation of SAE was initiated due to concerns that SAE “caused, condoned and tolerated” a “sexually hostile environment” at its 2014 Roman Bath party in May. The Roman Bath was SAE’s annual toga party, with a pre-party tradition during which pledges tell jokes to the audience. After that party, concerns were raised about sexist jokes told by some of the members, and the Title IX investigation results that came out in December placed the fraternity on alcohol suspension, social probation and a two-year housing suspension to start in spring 2015.

In March 2015, the University opened a second Title IX investigation as a result of concerns that SAE had violated their probation and participated in acts of retaliation or harassment that month. In April, the investigation expanded to look into additional potential retaliatory behavior, including posts on Whatsgoodly, against a Title IX witness in Cabo San Lucas over the 2015 spring break. In May 2015, as a result of the investigation, the fraternity lost its housing indefinitely, and the University placed SAE on probationary status for three years.

SAE declined to comment publicly for every past article regarding the situation. Then their alumni advisor reached out to us in June 2015.

A new investigation

I had been working on the story for nearly three months when SAE members said they had a new source for me.

After almost two dozen emails and a month of radio silence, I finally scheduled a meeting with her: 9:15 p.m. outside the Gates Computer Science building.

The entire correspondence felt like something from a spy movie. I didn’t know her name and had never actually communicated with her directly. My email exchange had been with her acquaintance in SAE: one of the only people — or maybe the only person — who knew her identity.

During the 2015 spring break, this female student had allegedly posted a question on Whatsgoodly, an anonymous polling app. The poll was referenced in the Title IX decision letter that took away SAE’s housing on campus indefinitely, and the University considered the poll one of several “retaliation concerns” by the fraternity against a Title IX witness.

During the second Title IX investigation, the female student with whom I would be meeting decided against taking responsibility for the anonymous Whatsgoodly poll. She was worried about potential repercussions from the University. Over emails with her SAE liaison, we considered several different options to allow her to come forward anonymously. We finally decided on a private meeting between just the two of us.

But a few hours before our scheduled interview, she changed her mind — the risk of the University discovering her identity and opening up an investigation was still too great.

In the larger scheme of the case, proving that one Whatsgoodly poll was not authored by SAE would have had little to no effect on the University’s Title IX decision, and for all I knew, SAE could have made this student up. But I found it difficult to believe that they would go to such lengths to challenge a minor point in the investigation.

My experience with this source exemplified many of the problems The Daily faced when investigating SAE’s story. People on all sides were not willing to talk, and when they were, University accounts differed from source accounts, and source accounts could not be 100 percent confirmed.

Furthermore, the more I learned about the case, the more questions I had about the Title IX investigation process. SAE members and lawyers argued that they had not been provided with due process.

“I just do not think that the punishment fits the crime,” said one current SAE member who had gone through the investigations.

But first I needed to find out: What exactly was the crime?

The Roman Bath party

Every year, as part of its annual Roman Bath party, SAE hosts a pre-party event and invites the members of Stanford’s Pi Beta Phi (Pi Phi) to attend. As part of the 20-year-old tradition, each new pledge must stand in front of the crowd, say his name and tell one joke. If the joke does not receive enough of a response, audience members can throw wine and grapes, and the pledge is asked to sit in the rafters for the remainder of the event.

Sometime before the 2014 event, SAE’s president was contacted by Pi Phi’s president at the time. According to the University’s Dec. 11, 2014 Title IX decision letter, she asked him to “tone down the jokes told at the pre-party” and “to stay away from jokes that were racist or sexist.” However, in a screenshot of their exchange provided by SAE, the Pi Phi president did not explicitly mention racism or sexism.

“I’ve been receiving quite a few concerns/worries about the potential to cross the line with some jokes,” she wrote. “Obviously most jokes are just plain hilarious and great, but last year there were a number of people that were offended even if they were intended to be just a joke.”

Despite differing accounts of exactly what happened in the presidents’ exchange, both the Title IX decision letter and the screenshot agree that the SAE president responded that he could not necessarily control what the pledges would say, since the fraternity does not “censor” the jokes. But he agreed to remind them to “keep [the jokes] under control.”

Whether or not this message reached the new members is unclear. According to the Title IX letter, the president notified both the vice president and SAE’s New Member Educator, and while the latter told new members not to be insensitive, he noted that he may not have stressed the message enough. Pledges interviewed for the investigation did not remember being told to “tone down” their jokes based on prior concerns.

Yet that evening, after one pledge told a sexist joke and received a “big response,” according to the Title IX letter, several others, some of whom were drunk, began to search for jokes about women online. The result was at least six sexist jokes cited by the University, including “Why don’t women ever wear watches? Because there’s a clock on the stove” and “What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing: You’ve already told her twice.”

Speaking on behalf of the fraternity, Laird Cagan ’80 M.S. ’80, who has acted as SAE’s alumni advisor since 2003, confirmed this sequence of events. While he said that everyone agreed the jokes were offensive, he questioned the University’s categorization of the jokes as “sexual harassment.”

“It is important to appreciate that the University never established facts to bring the Bath Party jokes within its sexual harassment policy,” Cagan said. “That policy, Administrative Guideline 1.7.1, is very specific and requires much more than offensive conduct or even unwanted sexual advances or requests for sexual favors.”

“Does telling jokes at a joke party at a fraternity, where everyone knows the format, create a hostile living environment under Title IX?” he added.

The Title IX letter said witnesses uniformly described the pre-party as a “rowdy affair,” with some witnesses calling the climate “shocking” and “primitive.” It also stated that women were not able to “easily leave or remove themselves from the situation.”

SAE members present commented that although some women did get up to leave or walk around during the event, the environment did not seem unusual for a Roman Bath pre-party.

“Absolutely not out of the ordinary,” said one SAE member when asked about the environment that night. “It was like any fraternity party I have literally ever been to on this campus. It was no different.”

In their appeal, which included letters of support from several Pi Phi members, SAE argued against the claim that a majority of the women present sat in “stunned silence.” Members of Pi Phi declined to comment for this story.

SAE members and witnesses from the Title IX investigation, however, did agree that concerns about the jokes arose quickly after the pre-party. SAE apologized to individuals who brought concerns to them, and the jokes were discussed at a house meeting after an email sent to all fraternities from the Inter-Sorority Council on May 22 referenced the jokes. According to the Title IX letter, a more focused house discussion was not immediately held, and both Pi Phi and Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority (Kappa) canceled their remaining social events with SAE for the quarter.

What further complicated the situation were two transports from SAE that same evening. The first involved a pledge who, according to Cagan, had stumbled while climbing down a ladder from the rafters and had to receive several stitches on his forehead. The second involved a female student transported as a possible result of being roofied.

In the Dec. 11 Title IX decision letter, the University did not list any specific substantiated instances of SAE’s use of drugs or alcohol to incapacitate women. In a section titled “Other Concerns of Possible Drugging Incidents and Unwanted Physical or Sexual Conduct,” the letter stated “several concerns had been raised” regarding “suspected drugging incidents” and “alleged unwanted physical conduct.” However, it said that the “majority of women involved in these incidents were not willing to participate in this [investigation] or any other formal investigation.”

“Based on information available about other incidents, the University by a preponderance of the evidence is not able to substantiate what exactly occurred or whether what occurred could be attributed to SAE,” the letter reads.

“The number and nature of the concerns involving conduct against women at the SAE house, however, is concerning especially in light of the hostile climate at the Roman Bath pre-party in combination with the nature of SAE’s response to concerns raised before and after the pre-party,” it adds.

When students heard about the alleged roofie incident at the Roman Bath party, several blamed SAE. The fraternity claimed that its own concern to clarify that its members were not responsible for the drugging incident eclipsed much of its concern regarding the jokes.

SAE sources emphasized this point in regard to two meetings between their leadership and members of Kappa, the second of which also involved ASSU representatives. SAE members told The Daily that they were upset not at Kappa’s cancellation of their social events, but rather at an email sent by Kappa leadership that attributed the roofie incident to SAE. But based on witness reports, the University cited these meetings as “concerns regarding retaliation and intimidation” by SAE.

“[SAE members] indicated that they regretted the tone of the meetings, but felt it was necessary to defend their organization against the alleged drugging incident being presented publicly as a proven fact when that was not the case,” the Title IX letter reads.

The first Title IX investigation and appeal

The week following the Roman Bath party, Catherine Criswell Spear stepped into her role as Stanford’s first Title IX coordinator. During Spear’s tenure at Stanford, the Title IX office handled several controversial cases, including Brock Turner’s arrest for alleged rape and an investigation of the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band that led to its ongoing travel ban. Spear stepped down from her position on Sept. 11, 2015 and declined to comment for this article. The investigation of SAE became one of her first Title IX cases at Stanford and the University’s first organizational Title IX incident on campus.

Initiated on July 7, 2014, the case was based on two primary concerns: that SAE had created a “sexually hostile environment” and that SAE had been involved in the use of “high-grain alcohol and drugs to render female students attending SAE-sponsored events susceptible to unwanted sexual advances and actions,” according to the Title IX letter.

Simultaneously, Stanford’s Organization Conduct Board (OCB) also began an investigation that took place in November and December.

SAE received a Title IX decision letter on Dec. 11 and an OCB decision letter on Dec. 19. It appealed to the University on Jan. 14, 2015.

The results of the OCB investigation released on Dec. 19 found that SAE had violated University alcohol and hazing policies by providing alcohol to members under the age of 21 and by requiring pledges to climb into and sit in the rafters at the Roman Bath party. SAE “accepted culpability for these events” in its appeal.

However, SAE’s appeal also included several concerns about the Title IX process, as well as over 250 pages of support letters from SAE brothers, members of Pi Phi and other sororities, SAE chapter alumni and other interested parties.

Although the Title IX letter stated that unsubstantiated claims played no role in the Title IX decision, SAE members, representatives and lawyers questioned why the unsubstantiated incidents were mentioned at all if they had no effects. In an email to The Daily, University spokeswoman Lisa Lapin expanded upon whether or not substantiated instances of sexual harassment by SAE members had been found.

“It is important to note that this situation involved much more than ‘lighthearted jokes,’” Lapin said. “Many examples actually were found to be substantiated with respect to alleged sexual harassment. It is some of the additional allegations of sexual assault and misconduct that could not be substantiated or corroborated.”

However, Cagan, along with SAE members at the time, reported that the University had not told them about any of these substantiated claims and “refused to share any information regarding any unsubstantiated claims.” Despite Cagan’s research into SAE’s history over the past five years, he could not find significant examples supporting alleged sexual harassment.

According to Cagan, members were also never explicitly told to whom the Title IX office spoke or exactly what the claims against them were, besides the two general concerns — creating a sexually hostile living environment and incapacitating women with drugs or alcohol — mentioned at the start of the investigation. In fact, one of the row staff told SAE that “if it is just a bunch of jokes, you have nothing to worry about,” Cagan said.

Lapin clarified some of the details about the origins of the investigation.

“The transports were not the reason for the initiation of the original Title IX investigation,” she said. “The University has a legal obligation to respond when it knew or should have known about the existence of a sexually hostile environment. There were several reports to University staff at the end of spring 2014 that were forwarded to the Title IX office.”

In addition to breaking down the Title IX letter by sections and subsections and responding to particular claims, the appeal brought up two other primary concerns about the investigation process: “procedural irregularities” and “investigative bias.”

SAE’s primary concerns included a low number of witnesses and the investigation’s lack of timeliness. Only six of the 34 people interviewed by the investigator were Pi Phis, despite the Title IX letter’s claim that “[w]hile not all the Pi Phis who heard jokes found them to be offensive, the majority did.”

The Title IX Administrative Policy and Procedures also states the following with regard to investigation timelines: “A Title IX Investigation should normally be completed within 60 calendar days after the University has notice of an allegation of Prohibited Conduct. The Title IX Coordinator or her designee may extend this time frame for good cause, including University breaks.”

The SAE investigation took a total of 157 days from its initiation to its outcome letter. According to SAE’s appeal, the Title IX office also committed to and rescheduled the outcome delivery meeting with SAE leadership six times between October and December before they met in person at 4 p.m. on Dec. 11, 2014 — in the middle of the autumn final exam period. Given the delayed final meeting, the leadership was told they would be able to see the letter in advance but received only a one-hour period starting at 3 p.m. the same day.

Once they were given the letter, SAE leadership were initially told they had only five business days to complete an appeal. However, the University quickly altered this decision to give SAE more time.

Lapin explained that the delay in the investigation resulted from witnesses’ lack of availability over summer break, since the process was initiated in early July.

“Sixty days is a goal,” Lapin said. “For more complex cases involving multiple allegations and witnesses, it is not uncommon for an investigation to take longer.”

“With respect to the initial investigation, part of the delay was due to initial lack of availability of witnesses, in particular SAE witnesses and leadership,” she added.

But one past SAE member said that he had to take an incomplete on a class that quarter — and almost had to take a second incomplete as well — due to the stress and work that resulted from the investigation process.

SAE also argued that the investigator hired by the Title IX office was “a source of bias and discomfort.” SAE members reported that her questions seemed to assume guilt and that she demonstrated a “hostile” and “intimidating” attitude toward the fraternity members she interviewed.

“I just thought that she didn’t seem neutral,” said one past SAE member who was interviewed for the investigation. “Maybe because we were the accused, you can’t really expect to be treated fairly and neutrally.”

“She treated me like a criminal being charged,” he added.

While it acknowledged that the jokes were wrong, the appeal also questioned whether or not the Roman Bath activities constituted sexual harassment.

“I talked to many lawyers and other people knowledgeable about the law [around Title IX], and they said that there’s absolutely no way a joke-telling party at a fraternity house would constitute a hostile living environment for other students who don’t live there,” Cagan said.

“If any hostile environment has been created, it has been created against the SAEs,” he added.

But on Feb. 12, 2015, Greg Boardman, the vice provost for student affairs, upheld the original Title IX decision and denied SAE’s appeal. He explained that the investigation delays did not have a negative impact on the outcome decision and did not find that the appeal demonstrated bias by the investigator. He also addressed the concerns about the low number of Pi Phi witnesses.

“It is undisputed that some number of attendees, more than one and less than all, were upset and offended by ‘The Forum’ [the pre-party],” Boardman wrote. “It is unnecessary to quantify that number, and trying to do so misses the point.”

“The point is that having been advised by the President of Pi Phi to take care to ensure that there was an appropriate environment at ‘The Forum,’ SAE leadership failed to take the opportunity to guide members in a discussion regarding an appropriate environment by the event,” he added.

Boardman also highlighted the difference between intent and impact and SAE’s failure to recognize the distinction when it came to both sexual harassment through the jokes and also hazing. He explained that while a single crude joke was not sexual harassment, what happened at the Roman Bath pre-party was.

“‘The Forum’ involved an onslaught of jokes that rewarded this behavior by the membership,” he wrote.

Boardman’s response disregarded many of the points in SAE’s appeal due to the Title IX appeal requirement that new evidence be “not available at the time of the initial review.” SAE argued that while information brought up in the appeal had been available at the time of the initial investigation, they had not known exactly what specifics they would need to provide, since they had only received general bullet points about the charges against them and had not been able to view witness statements.

“SAE at all times knew the allegations against them and any and all information they wanted to provide would have been reviewed. They were given notice of the concerns,” Lapin wrote to The Daily in response. “The allegations were very specific.”

However, Boardman did make some changes to the original decision. SAE was allowed to live in its house until the end of the 2014-15 school year while on alcohol suspension and social probation. The fraternity could not hold social events in the house with invited guests, and alcohol was not allowed in common areas. SAE would also be eligible to reoccupy the house in fall 2017 if the chapter developed a plan for house management.

The second Title IX investigation and appeal

But less than a month later on March 11, 2015, the University notified SAE of a second Title IX investigation based on a possible party and concerns of retaliation and harassment against an individual to prevent her from reporting possible unwanted sexual contact on March 7-8.

On April 20, SAE received a second notice stating that the investigation would also look into whether or not members had harassed and intimidated a female Stanford student vacationing in Cabo over spring break because they believed she had been a Title IX complainant in the first investigation.

On May 18, Boardman delivered the results of the investigation, and SAE lost its housing indefinitely. For the remainder of the school year, the fraternity could not have alcohol or outside guests within the residence — with the exception of family members — and all members were immediately placed on probationary status for three academic years. Provost John Etchemendy denied SAE’s second appeal on Aug. 4.

The second Title IX decision letter, written by Boardman, references not only the possibility of alcohol and guests in common spaces on March 7-8, but also several other potential social events or instances of alcohol in common spaces later in the quarter.

“Not all reports to the University were substantiated,” Boardman said. “However, I conclude that the evidence establishes that, on a number of occasions, these restrictions were violated or recklessly ignored.”

In an interview with The Daily, SAE admitted that some members held an unofficial “Probation Party” in April, and a Facebook invitation brought the event to the University’s attention. However, it also argued that, despite the fact that members broke probation, the two primary events on which the second Title IX decision was made — an incident involving alleged intimidation by an SAE staff member and SAE’s alleged retaliatory behavior in Cabo — did not justify the outcome decision.

Witness accounts and University accounts differ with regard to what happened on the night of March 7 or in the early morning hours of March 8. All agreed, however, that an intoxicated female student, Beth Jones*, arrived at SAE on March 7-8 with some friends. While she stayed with her group of friends during much of her time there, she also spent some time alone with an SAE member (SAE A) who had never met her prior to this incident.

After Jones went back to her dorm, she said she may have been subjected to unwanted sexual contact sometime during that night but was not sure when or where it had happened.

According to a former SAE member who had been present, Jones had been at other dorms and houses before arriving in tears at SAE. When SAE A heard about Jones’ concern regarding sexual assault, he became worried, and an SAE staff member (SAE B) decided to go to Jones’ dorm to relay information to her resident fellow about what had happened at the house. Both of the other SAE members, and later Jones, confirmed that SAE A had not been involved with any sexual assault, according to SAE’s second appeal.

SAE B took a fellow SAE member (SAE C) with him — as a second witness to the conversations at the dorm, according to a former SAE member. The University saw this as another instance of intimidation.

“The protocol for urgent situations is to call the on-call residence dean,” Boardman wrote in the second decision letter. “It was not a reasonable or sensible decision for the SAE student staff member to bring a fraternity brother along with him to conduct private and sensitive student affairs work.”

When Jones’ resident fellow could not be reached, SAE B ended up speaking with a resident assistant (RA) at the dorm instead.

While the Title IX letter reports that the RA claims SAE B never inquired about Jones’ well-being, SAE’s second appeal claims that both SAE B and SAE C confirmed that this is false. Despite being listed as a witness to the event by SAE B, SAE C was never interviewed for the Title IX investigation. SAE C did later submit a personal statement confirming that SAE B had asked about Jones’ well-being, but the University chose to use the RA’s account of what had happened.

“In his testimony to Ms. Glaze [the Title IX investigator], the SAE staff member indeed reported that he thought he had asked how [Jones] was,” Etchemendy wrote in his appeal response. “I followed up with Ms. Glaze, who said that the staff member did not volunteer this information on his own, but only said so when she explicitly asked him about it.”

“Since the RA had nothing to gain or lose from this testimony, his testimony trumped the SAE staff member’s, who had a great deal at stake,” he added.

The second incident in question occurred in Cabo, where several SAE members decided to spend their 2015 spring break. Three specific instances of retaliation against Title IX witness Jane Smith* were cited in the University’s May 18 Title IX decision letter. Smith also wrote her own account of what happened in a Daily op-ed.

The first encounter referenced in the decision letter talked about a private room SAE had reserved on March 21 at a bar. Smith approached the room, and one SAE member, Jeff Taylor*, was acting as bouncer. The Title IX letter stated that when Taylor asked whom she knew there, Smith answered “something to the effect that she knew everyone,” and Taylor reportedly had a “rude and childish reaction.”

The letter also details two other interactions between Taylor and Smith and cites them as retaliatory behavior and verbal harassment. SAE’s appeal, however, argues that many of the descriptions referenced in the Title IX letter are unsubstantiated, subjective claims by Smith. It also explained that Taylor’s actions were not driven by the fact that he believed Smith was a Title IX witness.

The University also referenced anonymous polls targeting Smith on Whatsgoodly, but the co-founders of the app, one of whom is an SAE member, would not provide IP addresses or demographics about the posts to either the University or to SAE. Despite SAE’s objections that no evidence could attribute the polls’ authorship to fraternity members, Etchemendy emphasized that both authorship and participation in the polls mattered.

“There would have been a very limited pool of people who both could have participated in these polls (given the geographic range of a Whatsgoodly poll) and who would have been interested in doing so,” Etchemendy wrote.

“It defies belief that these respondents were not primarily members of SAE, though no doubt some friends of SAE, both male and female, also participated,” he added.

Smith, who felt unsafe after her interactions with SAE, ultimately went home early from Cabo. When the events from spring break were brought to the University’s attention, the Title IX office was obligated to investigate, and Stanford also opened an Office of Community Standards (OCS) case against Taylor as an individual.

SAE, however, questioned why Etchemendy did not wait for the OCS panel to come to a decision about Taylor before responding to SAE’s second appeal.

“[I]f the student disciplinary panel were to come to a different conclusion about whether one particular individual engaged in retaliation, that would express the judgment on one issue by a small group of individuals versus the judgment of a larger group of highly experienced advisors to Vice Provost Boardman,” Etchemendy wrote.

“Such an outcome would not in itself invalidate the reasoning that led to Vice Provost Boardman’s decision about retaliation by either this individual or by SAE as a chapter — much less about the broad array of incidents on which his decision was based, most of which are not at issue in the student disciplinary case,” he added.

However, on Aug. 14, 2015, the OCS panel found Taylor “not responsible” for retaliation by a vote of 5-0. Robert Ottilie ’77, a Sigma Chi alumnus and the lawyer who represented Taylor in the OCS case, spoke about how he believes a similar decision would have been made for SAE had the Title IX investigation given the organization due process.

“Having the benefit of a much more thorough investigation that was conducted by the individual student and those assisting him [through the OCS case], and having had the advantage of seeing a substantial amount of evidence, I think there were determinations made by the University — as reflected in that May 18 letter — that were not supported by all of the facts,” Ottilie said. “Those facts weren’t assembled.”

“There were findings made against SAE [in the Title IX investigation letter] that I think — given the benefit of the full record that was established throughout the summer — just aren’t supported by the full record,” he added.

A participant in the OCS investigation, however, explained that the University did not dispute the events that happened in Cabo — the jury only found that there was not enough evidence to determine Taylor’s motivation for his actions.

Cagan emphasized the difference in “due process” between the Title IX investigation and the OCS case, particularly in Taylor’s ability to know all of the claims made against him and to cross-examine witnesses. According to Ottilie, the OCS office allowed Taylor to see everything on file against him, including some of the Title IX witness statements. SAE, however, never had the chance to read the reports from either of the Title IX investigations or from any witnesses.

“I think it would have been helpful had a full and accurate record been developed before the organizational decision was made,” Ottilie said. “And I think that would have been the case had Stanford provided the organization the same hearing process that they provided to the individual. Because then [SAE members] would have had the opportunity to see what was in the file — views that supported their position — go out, and develop their own evidence and help contribute to the development of the evidentiary file.”

“Had they also had that opportunity, I think their result would have been the same as the individual’s result,” he added.

In a conversation with The Daily, Lapin clarified the differences between the Title IX and OCS investigations. SAE had received summaries of the Title IX investigations, but to protect witnesses, exact statements were not shared with the organization. In the OCS case, witness statements are shared with the accused individual but are considered confidential. She emphasized that the reason SAE was not allowed to see exact witness statements from the Title IX report was to protect those involved in the investigation.

“The University’s decision in the Title IX case stands that a student at Stanford was subjected to retaliatory conduct,” Lapin wrote. “That one individual in the OCS process was found not individually responsible for conduct does not overturn the University’s Title IX finding. That individual case does not overturn the University finding that the organization did retaliate through social media and events over spring break.”

According to one past SAE member, the only reason some SAE members had even found out about Smith’s name as a Title IX witness was through a flaw in the first investigation process that allowed all interviewees to see who had agreed to participate, through a shared Google document used for signing up for appointments.

Smith, however, never signed up on the Google document herself and was never informed about how her identity had been revealed, despite the University’s having promised her confidentiality as a witness.

In an email response to questions from The Daily, Smith emphasized that despite her concerns surrounding the process, discussions attempting to “delegitimize” Title IX are hurting victims more than helping.

“The rights of victims and witnesses in Title IX proceedings at Stanford are not respected or protected,” Smith said. “But even though the process is flawed, it’s better than nothing. Unless you’re proposing a solution, all you’re doing by attacking the Title IX office is undermining the limited access to resources and opportunities for justice that a victim has.”

“The conversation about due process should not distract us from seeking to improve procedure while empowering and protecting students who come forward,” she added.

Other concerns with Title IX and University judicial processes

Ottilie, Cagan and several other sources — both SAE and non-SAE — voiced additional concerns about “due process” in Stanford’s Title IX and judicial processes.

According to Ottilie, who said he had confirmed this with the senior University counsel in Stanford’s Office of the General Counsel a couple of years ago, the disciplinary procedures of OCS cases create a contract between Stanford students and the University. He said this would also be true in Title IX cases through the Alternate Review Process and Procedures and explained that although constitutional due process does not apply to Stanford as a private institution, contractual due process would.

“If the University were to violate their own provisions, it would essentially be a breach of contract,” he said.

“I have been alarmed at the conduct of their Title IX office really since its inception, and I think that alarm has been confirmed by two recent outcomes related to the Title IX office,” he added. “The first, of course, was the University imposed a secondary sanction on the SAEs on May 18.”

He emphasized that the May 18 Title IX decision not only did not give SAE a proper hearing but also was made before all evidence had been developed.

“The problem at Stanford, both in their individual cases but more so in their organizational cases, which they seem to treat differently, is they don’t have a hearing,” Ottilie said. “With no hearing, there’s no adversarial process.”

Ottilie spoke about how, as a lawyer who has dealt with several student law cases, he believes that Stanford also often assumes guilt of the accused. He explained that this bias is largely due to a lack of separation of roles in the judicial process.

Ottilie also works with the Student Justice Project, which focuses on student rights issues at Stanford. In 2011, it released a case study that alleged misconduct by officials assigned to Judicial Affairs cases, and in its second report in 2013, the group conducted an internal review of Stanford’s OCS process through testimonials from 24 individuals. Several of these individuals, all of whom had either been not charged after referrals to OCS or who had been charged and acquitted, reported that the system appeared to presume guilt of the accused.

“My experience at Stanford is the people that are going into that system are, in many many cases, not guilty of what they’re charged,” Ottilie said. “[Stanford has] brought bad charges.”

“And yet, the process isn’t set up, in my view, to let [the accused] prove they’re innocent,” he added.

Cagan said that he met with a number of attorneys, all of whom told him that “the facts and circumstances of the SAE case would be very favorable to SAE in a court of law and SAE would most likely prevail,” he said. He pointed to Corry vs. Stanford, in which California’s Leonard Law required that private colleges in California uphold free speech under the First Amendment by law, above any institutions’ private guidelines.

“There isn’t one allegation of physical assault since the Roman Bath Party to anything later — it’s all been speech, verbal communication,” Cagan said. “Why was SAE punished with the worst punishment in decades because of seven freshmen telling offensive jokes?”

A lawsuit under the Leonard Law would have required a single fraternity member to bring charges against the University, and none of the SAEs wanted to do so. Instead, they chose to refrain from making the case public.

“They wanted to work within the system,” Cagan said. “But I think the system failed them.”

Lapin explained that the Leonard Law was “inapplicable” in this case.

“The Leonard Law does not protect conduct that rises to the level of sexual harassment,” she wrote.

“SAE had organizational privileges withdrawn based on organizational conduct,” she added. “The Leonard Law prohibits discipline, under certain circumstances, of individuals, and here no individual was disciplined.”

The line between harassment and constitutionally protected speech, on campus and off, is a blurry one, constantly re-negotiated. Title IX defines conduct that creates “hostile environments” as pervasive, outrageous and interfering with educational opportunity, and prohibits such conduct. But who’s to say what counts as “pervasive, outrageous and interfering” in each specific situation?

“It’s an issue that is without an absolute answer,” said Joel Siegal, a San Francisco attorney who has argued Title IX cases in federal court.

On a national level, a Congressional bill was introduced this July that would make it more difficult for colleges to discipline alleged perpetrators of sexual assault. Two major fraternity and sorority organizations lobbied for the bill, while Title IX advocates have rallied against it.

Hannah Farr ’15, a Kappa alumna who frequented the SAE house, recalled her perception of the SAE Title IX investigation as a sorority member observing from the outside. She said that she wished there had been more communication from the University clarifying the accusations against SAE.

“There was a lot of talk among sororities about how we wanted to face this issue as a whole sorority group, but in my opinion, there was not a lot of transparency once again about exactly what was going on and what they were being accused of and what the danger was,” Farr said. “There was a lot of discussion about what we wanted to do but no material fact.”

Farr also spoke about how the fraternity was not given an outlet to voice its side of the story.

“I think that these guys were actually slandered last year on campus, because I didn’t really hear their point of view publicly,” she said. “And that just frustrated me.”

Almost every SAE source, including Ottilie, also said that he had been unaware that multiple University offices had been involved in the Title IX decisions or that it seemed like the Title IX office had had a disproportionate amount of power in determining the fraternity’s fate. Cagan said that he felt that “the actions of the Title IX coordinator were unusually harsh.”

“It seemed like she had an agenda to send a message, using SAE as the very first case without concern to the collateral damage to the SAE members whose reputations were unfairly tarnished,” he said.

However, the University emphasized that the Title IX office was not the only one involved in the decision.

“[I]n response to concerns brought to the University’s attention, Vice Provost Boardman requested that the Organizational Conduct Board, Residential Education and the Title IX office conduct a joint investigation,” Etchemendy wrote.

“It is worth mentioning that the opinion of the Title IX representative was by no means an outlier nor the harshest opinion represented in the discussion,” he added. “Several attendees [in the meeting discussing an outcome] felt that the chapter’s charter should be entirely revoked, but that was not Vice Provost Boardman’s ultimate decision.”

Moving forward

SAE members are working to move on from the situation, but for some, that has been easier said than done.

“That whole [investigation] process and then now not being able to live in the house — it sucks,” said one current SAE member. “I don’t get to go and hang out with all my friends every night, and it’s really causing a rift in a lot of my really close friendships where I wish I could be closer.”

“It’s kind of ruined my Stanford experience to be honest,” he added. “I don’t really love Stanford anymore.”

The second Title IX decision in particular affected the fraternity’s recruitment class last year. Only 12 of 33 pledges decided to remain with SAE after the second Title IX decision was released. Those who did decide to stay with the fraternity, along with the returning members, will still be under the three-year social probation.

“I don’t blame them for dropping out,” Cagan said. “I believe they have been treated unfairly. The way the probation was outlined, they would have to walk on eggshells for their entire Stanford experience.”

When reached out to for a comment in September, Brandon Weghorst, the associate director of communications for the national organization SAE, said that staff members and local alumni would be conducting a membership review of the Stanford chapter members within a few weeks.

“During that review, they will evaluate each brother in the chapter to determine if he is following our policies and membership expectations,” Weghorst wrote in an email to The Daily.

On the University’s end, the Title IX office is searching for someone to fill the position of Title IX coordinator.

Despite conflicting accounts and uncertain facts, the facts of which we’re certain boil down to the following: SAE was put on probation and had their housing removed for two years for telling jokes and creating a “sexually hostile environment” at a pre-party event and for violating University alcohol and hazing policies. The fraternity then lost its housing indefinitely for breaking alcohol and social probation and for “retaliation” on two counts: a staff member who disobeyed University protocol and SAE members who were found to have been rude to a Title IX witness, one of whom was deemed not responsible for retaliation against her.

There may have been other substantiated instances of sexual harassment by SAE members, the details of which the University cannot disclose. The staff member may have been intimidating on March 8, and the anonymous Whatsgoodly polls in Cabo may have had many SAE participants.

After months of talking to sources, reading official documents and exploring Title IX, I leave it up to you: Does the Title IX process provide sufficient due process for the accused or protection for witnesses and victims? Did SAE create a “hostile living environment” and deserve to lose their house indefinitely? Did the punishment fit the crime?

*Editor’s note: The Daily has chosen to change the names of students involved in the investigations in order to prevent repercussions against those involved.

Abigail Schott-Rosenfield and Skylar Cohen contributed to this report.

Contact Kylie Jue at kyliej ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Sandip Srinivas: In their respective divisions, Kevin Hogan and Cody Kessler are the quarterbacks with the highest number of career starts. These are two quarterbacks that have, to a certain degree, become the faces of this conference over the last few years. So yeah, to me, this matchup seems like a pretty big deal.

David Shaw has been talking all year about how much Kevin Hogan’s leadership has meant to Stanford, and his performance for the ages against Notre Dame only solidified that. But Kessler has been invaluable in his own regard: I for one have been really surprised by how USC has played following the Sarkisian fallout, and while his stat line might not totally convey it, Kessler seems like a big part of the reason why. USC’s chance to spoil Stanford’s playoff bid rests on Kessler, especially with Stanford’s depleted secondary, and though the Trojans might not prevail, Kessler will certainly be the one to give them a shot.

Do-Hyoung Park: A major part of why Stanford was able to storm the Coliseum in September and dispatch the then-No. 6 Trojans was because Kevin Hogan was able to outduel Cody Kessler in a battle of quarterbacks. But that’s not what Saturday’s game will become. With USC down two of its better linebackers in Cameron Smith and Lamar Dawson, the Cardinal are poised for a more successful day on the ground, and I’d be surprised if Stanford’s offense doesn’t run through Christian McCaffrey. And though Cody Kessler has had a few shaky weeks, Stanford will still be playing without Ronnie Harris, and USC might be the team most able to take advantage of weak opposing secondaries.

All that’s to say that it’s impossible to say who will have the “better night” because they’re going to be asked to do two completely different things: Kessler will almost certainly have a better statistical night because USC will throw the ball far more than Stanford will, even if it is getting back to its power run identity. Hogan will almost certainly be more efficient on his, like, 10 pass attempts. So what I’m saying is that this is a dumb question and I refuse to give a straight answer because it’s impossible to compare the two on an equivalent scale. Both should have pretty good days, though.

Neel Ramachandran: I tend to agree with Do here — it’s hard to compare the two quarterbacks, because they play in entirely different systems. On the season, Kessler has over 100 more pass attempts and almost nine attempts more per game than Hogan. USC possesses weapons in the passing game of the likes of JuJu Smith-Schuster, whose 1,302 receiving yards rank him among the nation’s best. Meanwhile, Stanford’s bread-and-butter is the run, which makes sense, given the fact that it has one of the best offensive lines and running backs in the country.

In my mind, Kessler will undoubtedly have the better night statistically — he throws the ball more, and has a great receiving core that matches up favorably against Stanford’s banged-up secondary. Notre Dame quarterback DeShone Kizer had no trouble moving the ball through the air when the Fighting Irish needed to last week, and Kessler, a more talented passer than Kizer, will do the same. While I think Kessler will have the “better” night, that doesn’t necessarily indicate that he means more to his team — like Sandip said, Hogan has proved time and again that his leadership is invaluable, and his command of the offense will be sorely missed next season.

Contact Sandip Srinivas at sandips ‘at’ stanford.edu, Do-Hyoung Park at dhpark ‘at’ stanford.edu and Neel Ramachandran at neelr ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Stanford, even with two losses, is still alive and kicking in the hunt for the College Football Playoff, and after these most recent rankings that put the Cardinal at No. 7, it could even be argued that Stanford has a pretty clear shot at the Playoff despite the extra loss it has.

This is Stanford’s reward for making it out of the deep Pac-12 and playing a marquee non-conference schedule (get with the times, Big 12), and despite all the media narratives of the Pac-12 having a “down year” and of the conference “cannibalizing” itself out of the Playoff, it’s pretty clear that the College Football Playoff committee sees the Pac-12 for what it is: the deepest conference in America.

If the Cardinal can beat USC on Saturday, they will jump a non-conference champion Ohio State and they will jump whoever loses the Big Ten title game between Michigan State and Iowa, meaning that the absolute worst that a Pac-12 champion Stanford can do is No. 5 in the final rankings.

That makes things pretty clear: Stanford only needs one team in the current final four to lose in order for the Cardinal to be playing in a national semifinal. (Again, if Stanford can beat USC, which is far, far, far from a given.)

There are arguments that can be made where a one-loss Ohio State or a one-loss ACC champion North Carolina could get in over a Pac-12 champion Stanford. I don’t buy them for one second. Not a single bit. Hopefully Michael will explain why in his column next to this one. With that in mind, here are my operating assumptions for this week’s “Who to root for” column:

• If Clemson loses, it will fall out of the top four. There are people arguing that Clemson would have a chance to stay in the Playoff even with a loss in the ACC Championship. These people are dumb and they are the people that your parents warned you about when you were growing up. After Notre Dame and Florida State, the Tigers’ best win is… Miami? North Carolina State? Yeah.
• No, Ohio State is not going to make a move. Forget name value and forget that they’re the defending national champions. This is a team that didn’t even win its own division, let alone its conference. If what the committee says about valuing conference championships is true, Ohio State doesn’t stand even a hint of a chance.
• The Big Ten champion is in. Congratulations, Big Ten. It’s been one hell of a year, and I commend you. Having the Nos. 4, 5, 6, 14, 15 teams in the country is no laughing matter.
• Oklahoma is in. Just like everyone was predicting, right?

All of this is obviously moot if Stanford can’t beat USC in the Pac-12 Championship Game on Saturday. I personally think that USC has a fantastic chance to knock the Cardinal off. But in the case where Stanford is able to hold on and keep its Playoff chase alive, here are the other games you should have your eyes on this weekend. Only two of them matter.

Championship Weekend

(2) Alabama vs. (18) Florida

The likelihood of this happening is about the same as that of the Pope walking into my dorm room and proposing marriage to me on the spot on Sunday. The poor, offensively-challenged Gators don’t stand an inkling of a chance against the Alabama Death Machine©, but since this is technically a possibility that could get Stanford into the Playoff, I’m forced to address it here anyway.

Ever since Florida’s quarterback got busted for juicing doing drugs taking sketchy pills, the performance of the Gators’ backup, Treon Harris, has drifted between “horrifying” and “shield your children’s eyes because they’re going to get scarred for life.” Florida still has a good defense, but that will only serve to make the final score of this game 24-0 instead of 54-0.

But yeah. If Florida somehow manages to pull off one of the crazier upsets in recent memory, Stanford would be in. But don’t count on it. Seriously, don’t.

(1) Clemson vs. (10) North Carolina

Which means that by default, this game is the one that will ultimately dictate whether Stanford has a shot or not. Clemson’s defense has looked like hot garbage over the last few weeks, and North Carolina’s offense has looked excellent all season. Set aside the pain that it will cause you by seeing a school be elite in both football and basketball at the same time and pull for North Carolina in this game, because it’s Stanford’s only fighting chance.

North Carolina will be playing with the largest of all chips on its shoulder after seeing itself ranked behind three two-loss teams, even after ravaging its schedule to the tune of an 11-1 season. This is its opportunity to make a statement and prove that it belongs, and a win over the No. 1 team in the country (a rank I don’t think Clemson deserves) is the one and only opportunity they’re going to get to do that. You’d best hope that the Tar Heels make a big statement.

***

By the way, if any North Carolina fans say that an ACC champion North Carolina should get in over a Pac-12 champion Stanford, please present this with my regards:

North Carolina out-of-conference schedule:

South Carolina (loss) 

North Carolina A&T (FCS — I’ve never even heard of them in my life)

Delaware (FCS — Joe Flacco graduated a long time ago)

Illinois

Stanford out-of-conference schedule:

No. 14 Northwestern (loss)

No. 8 Notre Dame

UCF (might as well be FCS, but totally not)

If you’re going to schedule two FCS teams and play an eight-game conference schedule, you damn well better go undefeated. And North Carolina failed to do that. Goodbye, see you next year.

Send Do-Hyoung Park suggestions for how to get the Pope to propose to him at dhpark ‘at’ stanford.edu.

As the normally pristine Stanford Stadium turf filled with thousands of shoes mixed with a handful of metallic gold helmets lodged in its surface Saturday night, fans and players reveled in one of the most stunning finishes in living memory. Justifiably overwhelmed by the moment, few thought about the relevance of what had just occurred. Few registered the ramifications of the field goal that tore hearts out of the Irish faithful. And few realized the slim glimmer of hope that remained despite all of the adversity the Cardinal have faced this season.

But yesterday, the College Football Playoff Committee turned that slim glimmer into a more robust supposition. Stanford is now ranked No. 7: That much was completely expected. But North Carolina is ranked No. 10, and Baylor is ranked No. 12. Both of those rankings lend credence to the belief that the Committee questions the strength of the Big 12 and ACC.

While the simplest path to the playoff for the Cardinal would be a win coupled with an Alabama loss, a Clemson loss should also allow Stanford to enter the playoff. UNC (Clemson’s opponent) would have to jump five teams after the win to make the Playoff. The team’s low ranking from the Committee this week suggests that even a resounding Tar Heel victory would not be enough for them to sneak in over Stanford.

Comparing the possibility of Stanford (Pac-12 Champions), UNC (ACC Champions) and Ohio State gaining a spot in the Playoff, Stanford surely edges out the other two opponents. The Committee will not put in two Big Ten teams since the winner of the conference title game is a shoe-in. The Buckeyes got unlucky with an ill-timed loss and weak strength of schedule, but such is life. Ohio State is a lock for the Rose Bowl now, but nothing loftier.

UNC, even with a victory over the No. 1 team in the country, has an extremely weak schedule compared with Stanford’s. The Tar Heels played two FCS opponents and lost to an atrocious South Carolina team. They will not jump that many spots with a victory. It would secure a New Year’s Six bowl for them, as well as a Playoff berth for the Cardinal.

But there is also one other scenario that most people neglected to mention. Pundits assumed that Oklahoma at No. 3 is a guarantee at this point, having locked up the Big 12 in resounding fashion. But the Sooners have a loss as ugly as UNC’s to South Carolina: They lost to a seven-loss Texas team, the same Texas team that lost to Cal and was clobbered by Notre Dame. Both of those two teams are in Stanford’s win column this year.

Furthermore, if the sub-500 Longhorns upset Baylor in Waco this weekend, one of Oklahoma’s marquee wins is watered down to a mere quality opponent victory in the Committee’s eyes. The ripple effects could also drop TCU lower since its win over Baylor is the largest bullet on its resume.

Suddenly Oklahoma’s immaculate C.V. boils down to one great victory in the Bedlam game, but not much more: A win against a Baylor team that will have lost three of its past four games, a victory at home to TCU where the Sooners conceded the last 16 points haplessly and were two yards from losing the game and a loss to a Texas team that already has seven losses!  Notwithstanding is the fact that other than Tennessee, Oklahoma’s non-conference opponents are relatively weak as well. I am not saying Oklahoma can or should be left out, but the Committee showed its disdain for the Big 12 schedule by dropping TCU from No. 3 to No. 6 in its final rankings last year after the Horned Frog’s 55-3 finale victory. If a 52-point drubbing can drop you three spots in the rankings, then a bye week certainly can, too.

Stanford though, must first take care of business in Santa Clara, which against a surging USC team is no easy task. A win guarantees the Cardinal at least a Rose Bowl appearance, with Ohio State as the likely opponenet. With some chaos in the ACC or SEC Championships or maybe even in the only Big 12 game of the week, Stanford will be in the playoff.

On Saturday, prepare for the worst but hope for the best. Maybe, just maybe, this is our year.

Tell Michael Spelfogel why Oklahoma will absolutely not drop out of the top four at mspel ‘at’ stanford.edu.

“We are very pleased to announce R&DE Stanford Dining’s new culinary education course, Jamie Oliver’s Cook Smart program, in the Teaching Kitchen @ Stanford,” said Eric Montell, in a statement from Stanford Dining. “We fundamentally believe in educating students in the use of healthy cooking techniques and sustainable ingredients, and we passionately believe that this knowledge can help them live healthier lives — at Stanford and beyond.”

The program, which is the first of its kind in the nation, consists of nine-week cooking classes taught by trained and certified chefs from Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE). This fall, the eight-person classes met weekly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The class curriculum teaches basic kitchen and food skills to participants in a hands-on, engaging fashion, which helps students gain confidence in their cooking abilities. In addition, the course teaches core principles of nutrition and sustainable food, using education modules developed by the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation.

“The partnership between Stanford Dining and the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation is incredibly exciting because it allows my team to really make an impact with Stanford students where better nutrition is concerned,” Oliver told Stanford Dining. “I’m extremely grateful to Stanford  Dining for working alongside us.”

According to the statement, the program intends to provide opportunities for students to build life skills relating to food, while supporting community building and helping to create a culture of health and wellness at Stanford. In addition, the class aims to inspire change through increased understanding of the food we consume.

Contact Albert Zhang at albertzh ‘at’ stanford.edu.