It started with our own birthday. Then we got an email letting us know that the venerable frosh humanities program known as SLE—and that’s pronounced “slee,” not “ess-ell-ee”—also celebrates a half-century this academic year. Oh, and we’d long been planning to cover the 50th anniversary of the closure of the Nursing School. A cover package began to take shape.
Everywhere we turned, someone knew of a golden opportunity. “Wasn’t Skylab in orbit then?” my boss wondered aloud. Sure was, and five seconds of web research revealed that Owen Garriott, MS ’57, PhD ’60, was on board. During our reporting, we discovered an even bigger milestone: The electrical engineering professor was Stanford’s first astronaut.
There were major events with Stanford connections: Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Fernando Alegría witnessed the September coup in Chile; the country’s former cultural attaché to Washington, D.C., escaped while disguised as either a nun or a priest. Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was fired in November, would give the university’s commencement address in June. Chinese-speaking students who were receiving an inadequate education in San Francisco public schools took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court and won, thanks to a recent graduate of Stanford Law School.
Such research can remind us that we are part of the long arc of history, one in which global problems such as inflation, war, and truth in media are cyclical or even perennial, and higher-education concerns such as student debt, mental health, and representation often persist.
There were happenings that changed the face of the Farm: B. Gerald Cantor committed 89 Rodin sculptures to Stanford. The athletics pool complex opened. The Native American Cultural Center and the Gay People’s Union each found a home.
To put together a commemorative story package that gives you the feel of the academic year of our founding, we combed the 1973–74 Stanford Daily, the Campus Report faculty/staff newspaper, and countless timelines. This was a full team effort, aided and abetted by freelancers Rebecca Beyer and Christine Foster.
Such research can remind us that we are part of the long arc of history, one in which global problems such as inflation, war, and truth in media are cyclical or even perennial, and higher-education concerns such as student debt, mental health, and representation often persist. There was an energy crisis then; there is a different sort of energy crisis now. And yet some things from 1973–74 are difficult to imagine. There was a palpable feeling of fear on campus, given that four members of the Stanford community had been murdered on university land in the span of 18 months. At the start of the year, the university’s police force was all male. A start-up rival league to the NFL managed to draft one Stanford player, then went belly-up in stranger-than-fiction fashion.
When it became clear that we would be covering both our 50th birthday and the university’s leadership transition in the same issue, we paused for a beat. Then we pressed on. Looking at where we’ve been helps us recognize that Stanford can weather change, and yet remain resilient and enduring.
Kathy Zonana, ’93, JD ’96, is the editor of Stanford. Email her at kathyz@stanford.edu.
