“It’s the last photo we took before the pandemic,” says Betsayda Puerta as she places a Polaroid of herself and her best friend into the time capsule. Soon after, a student drops in a COVID test kit. (“Unused!” she promises.) Such are the memories of the Class of ’22, most of whom spent a year and a half on campus before pandemic shutdowns scattered them around the world. It is only as seniors that they, as a cohort, have found themselves back in a mostly typical college environment. And they made the most of it, filling their time capsule to the brim. Now sealed and buried under the Quad is the stuff of Stanford. An Axe Committee badge from an epic football game, a copy of an honors thesis, a sketch of a friend. A face mask. Rubber ducks emblazoned with the Bridge Peer Counseling Center phone number. And one worn-out, recently replaced prosthetic leg. “As a tour guide, I walked over 1,000 miles backward in this leg,” says Mary Cooper. She carefully places it in the box and pats it goodbye. Then she turns to join her friends. It is time to take the next step.
Worn by Sleeping Beauty herself (Cardinal Ballet’s Eleanor Prince)
“I wanted to preserve something from the natural environment—who knows what the coastline will look like hundreds of years from now?”
“I’m adding a copy of The Black Pages, which details the Black experience at Stanford.”
200 bound pages of emails between college friends
Mechanical Engineering 218B robot and team
James Hatch founded the Forest, a student group that supports women’s athletics
“Spent two years co-authoring a book with my TA. Hopefully we got something right.”
