I was on my way home from class when a stranger, laden with cameras, intercepted me. He spoke fractured English and, after 30 seconds of mutual incomprehension, I pointed him toward Memorial Church, hoping it was where he wanted to go. It is the sort of exchange that happens frequently here on campus, where tourists have become as much a feature as bicycles and palm trees.
It struck me later that Stanford is different things to different people. Students and faculty are here for learning and scholarship, while tourists come to see the buildings dedicated to learning and scholarship. In a way, it makes sense. After all, the big sightseeing draws in Washington, D.C. are its monuments, not the mere mortals who run the country.
Bridging the gap between insiders and visitors are the student tour guides--shouting, walking backward, arms windmilling in front of a wide-eyed entourage. They get to practice their language skills in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish or French while helping to reduce the frequency of awkward encounters with students like me.
Visitor Information Services keeps track of the facts and figures: 200,000 tourists came to the Farm last year, many arriving by the busload. It is tempting to be flattered by the attention. Tourists are like reporters walking unannounced into your house and asking to take a few photographs of your beautiful home. While you might resent the intrusion, the idea that the place where you eat, sleep and live is considered worthy of photographic record cannot help but give you a feeling of pride.
Yet any such feeling of importance is misplaced, because living, breathing Stanford people are rarely the focus of either the tourist's attention or his lens. Occasionally, visitors will approach one of us with a camera--but only so we can take a picture of them in front of Hoover Tower. Stanford students quickly gain a sixth sense about waiting on the boundary of the camera's field of vision. Should we accidentally step into the shot, we feel compelled to apologize.
And so, although students and tourists see each other every day on campus, walk by the same buildings and see the same sights, they understand them quite differently. The bookstore, a magnet for both groups, is a case in point with its three discrete levels.
The basement is the student's domain, filled with textbooks and course readers. It is pure functionalism with its unadorned concrete walls and steel shelves. The second floor is a tourist dreamland, the place to purchase Stanford T-shirts, hats, mugs and postcards. In between is the main floor, a no-man's-land of checkout counters and best-selling fiction. For the student, the bookstore is a necessity. For the tourist, it is a chance to buy a slice of Stanford's reputation.
Once, three of my friends and I took a break from a play rehearsal and went on our first ride to the top of Hoover Tower. The student elevator operator began reciting the usual facts about the landmark. "It's all right," we said, "we're students." That did not mean that we already knew what he was about to tell us. It meant that, as students, we didn't care about tourist knowledge.
Tourist knowledge is facts and figures, dates, heights of buildings. Tourists want to hear about the institution and its greatness and see the stained-glass windows of its church or hear anecdotes of Herbert Hoover and Wallace Stegner. Students are too preoccupied with the present to be bothered with Stanford's past, beyond a rudimentary recognition of family names and infamous Big Game plays. We are more likely to set our watches to the chimes of the clock tower than listen to its melody.
Robin Moroney is a junior from the Isle of Man.