Student protesters arrested and suspended.
Early last Wednesday morning, protesters broke into, occupied, and barricaded themselves in the Main Quad’s Building 10, which houses the university president’s and provost’s offices. The group enumerated demands, including that university trustees vote on divestment from companies that the protesters say support Israel’s military, and that university president Richard Saller support the divestment proposal. The protesters damaged the inside of Building 10 and “committed extensive graffiti vandalism” on the Quad, according to a letter from President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez. “This graffiti conveys vile and hateful sentiments that we condemn in the strongest terms,” they said.
Thirteen people were arrested. “We are appalled that our students chose to take this action, and we will work with law enforcement to ensure that they face the full consequences allowed by law,” said Dee Mostofi, assistant vice president for external communications. The students who participated in the break-in have been suspended, and those who are seniors will not be allowed to graduate. One officer was injured during the arrests. Later that same morning, law enforcement officials removed the encampment from White Plaza. “The situation on campus has now crossed the line from peaceful protest to actions that threaten the safety of our community,” said Saller and Martinez, who reminded the community that “we value peaceful and reasoned debate but forcefully condemn any actions like those that were taken today.”
Wise on the border.
When Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez, an 8-year-old from Panama, died in a U.S. Border Patrol facility last year, Paul Wise saw it as a failure of the system. Wise, a professor of pediatrics and of health policy, was serving as a juvenile care monitor for the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso Border Patrol sectors. Anadith’s death was the first death of a child in Border Patrol custody since 2019, when Wise and other child health experts began traveling there to assist. “There are groups that dehumanize migrants. I’ll fight that. There are groups that dehumanize Border Patrol agents. I’ll fight that too,” he told Stanford magazine. “I try to be fair and pragmatic. But I’m an advocate for the kids and their families.” In his first report following Anadith’s death, he reiterated certain weaknesses in the system, including the need for “disciplined conveyance” of medical information, faster transfer of medically fragile children out of custody, and consults with pediatricians for high-risk children. “Anadith’s death focused the world’s attention on the extremes of vulnerability,” Wise said. “A child seeking asylum who has sickle cell anemia—you don’t get more vulnerable than that.”
Legally spawned.
Photo: Truman Chen, ’17, MA ’18
Last month, 60 Stanford Law School students took a break from torts and civil procedure to put on the 41st student-produced SLS musical. This year’s irreverent three-hour production, Only Mergers in the Building, tells the tale of fictional SLS alum Felicity Lemon, a Big Law partner and power-hungry candidate for the law school’s deanship.
The plight of the night owl.
If you went to bed early last night, pat yourself on the back. Stanford researchers surveyed 73,888 adults and compared their preferred sleep timing (aka their chronotype) with their sleep behavior. They found that early sleepers had the best mental health and late sleepers had the worst. Late sleepers who followed their nature—hitting the hay late at night—were 20 to 40 percent more likely to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder compared with night owls who made themselves follow an early or intermediate sleep schedule. That’s right: Regardless of preferred bedtime, everyone had better mental health if they went to sleep early. (Morning people everywhere just did a collective fist pump.)
Previous studies have indicated the importance of chronotype—the personal preference for sleep-wake time—but this new data shows that when it comes to night owls, it’s better for their mental health to live misaligned with their chronotype. “The big unknown is why,” said Jamie Zeitzer, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and the senior author of the study. It may have to do with neurological changes late at night that foster negative moods and impulsivity, or with social constraints that lead people to be isolated in the evenings. Zeitzer next plans to examine late-night behaviors, not just sleep timing. Until then, he advises night owls to start their shut-eye by 1 a.m.
Trophy hunting.
Last month, on both land and sea, Stanford women’s teams racked up enough victories to make a bear cower or a Trojan cry. The women’s rowing team won its third straight Pac-12 championship, sweeping every race on Lake Natoma in Gold River, Calif., en route to a second-place finish at the NCAA championships. On the Charles River in Massachusetts, women’s sailing claimed two of four national titles, in the ICSA women’s team race and ICSA women’s fleet race. The latter is the team’s first back-to-back national title. And at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, Calif., the women’s golf team captured its second NCAA championship in three years. Those golden hues of summer are coming in strong.
But wait, there’s more.
If you didn’t know that Sunday FLiCKS had fizzled out in the ’00s, we invite you to pause here and throw a wad of paper. Then cry tears of joy, because Annie Reller, ’24, decided she couldn’t leave the Farm before bringing FLiCKS back.
Plankton isn’t just the mortal enemy of SpongeBob SquarePants; it’s a collection of microscopic ocean organisms that are ubiquitous but poorly understood. Manu Prakash, an associate professor of bioengineering, is developing low-cost tools, like a rotating microscope, so citizen scientists can help monitor plankton migrations, contributing to our understanding of the ocean (if not 2D sea sponges).
Increased productivity, clear-mindedness, and focus? That’s the reported outcome of students temporarily ditching their smartphones for basic “Light Phones” in a study on mental health designed by their peers and run by doctoral student Angela Lee, ’19.
José Padilla, ’74, and Fred Swaniker, MBA ’04, are recipients of the 2024 President’s Award for the Advancement of the Common Good for their dedication to making a difference in their communities and the world through public service. As executive director of California Rural Legal Assistance, Padilla championed the rights of farmworkers and others experiencing rural poverty. (Read about him in a 2022 Stanford story.) Swaniker has supported innovation and responsible corporate practices in Africa and served as a global leader in social entrepreneurship.
The Native American Cultural Center is 50 years old. What began in two rooms in 1974 is now a thriving hub spanning the entire ground floor of the Old Union Clubhouse, where its staff, which includes 15 students, fosters a sense of community for Native and Indigenous students.
Blue Ribbon School? More like white matter school. A new study has revealed that even when taking into account home environment, there’s a direct link between the quality of a school a child attends and the development of white matter in their brain, with higher-performing schools correlated with accelerated white matter development (which is closely associated with reading skills).
The new Asian American Research Center at Stanford (AARCS), launched in May, will foster interdisciplinary research on Asian Americans, with inaugural projects investigating issues such as how teacher candidates consider their racial identities as they prepare to enter classrooms with social justice commitments, adoptees’ connections to birth cultures, and refugees’ experiences in relation to the criminal legal system.
In March, Stanford Medicine became the first center in the nation to treat a patient with metastatic melanoma using the first cell-based therapy approved by the FDA to treat solid tumors. Stanford is one of fewer than 30 centers around the country offering the treatment.
Stanford will resume requiring either the SAT or the ACT for undergraduate admission, beginning with students applying in fall 2025 for admission to the Class of 2030.
Note: The Loop sometimes links to articles outside of Stanford that may require a subscription to view.
