Weekend Roundup email newsletter: June 7 edition

June 7, 2020, 10:03 a.m.

Our Weekend Roundup is released on Sunday mornings during the school year and features an engaging rundown of the news from the previous week in the form of a briefing. It also includes editors’ picks from other sections. Subscribe here to receive emails like this.

 
 
 
 
Weekend Roundup email newsletter: June 7 edition
 

 
 

 
 
Black students stand in rows at the center of Main Quad during Friday's demonstration.
 
Stanford community members engaged in both in-person and virtual activism throughout the week as protests rocked the nation over continued police brutality and anti-Black racism, with the recent death of George Floyd being one of many examples. On Stanford’s campus, around 100 students and community members gathered at Main Quad on Friday to protest. The day before, students covered Jane Stanford Way with chalk messages of protest and solidarity, and hundreds of Stanford Medicine affiliates knelt in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds — the amount of time Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck — in a gathering calling for a commitment to anti-racism at Stanford Medicine and across the country.

With the majority of undergraduates scattered across the country, some joined protest marches in Minneapolis and elsewhere. Past and present members of the Stanford sports community took to social media to stand against anti-Black racism, and students engaged in virtual activism. The Stanford chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha — a historically Black sorority — spearheaded fundraising efforts that have raised tens of thousands of dollars for bail funds across the country. Led by Stanford Students for Workers’ Rights, students also placed more than 1,000 phone calls to Minnesota public officials demanding the defunding of police departments.

Community members are also petitioning for change at Stanford. More than 3,500 have signed a petition calling for more funding for the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford, and nearly 1,500 students have signed a petition calling for academic accommodations in light of the protests. Many instructors have responded by making final assignments or class meetings optional or canceled, but students have criticized professors in other classes — especially CS 102: “Working with Data” — for not making such accommodations.

Some virtual events have engaged with issues of police brutality and anti-Black racism as well. At a town hall on Monday, Provost Persis Drell said that Stanford has “to continue to work to address the causes of injustice, of inequity, of racial violence”: “These aren’t just societal issues, they are local issues too,” she said. On Tuesday, the Undergraduate Senate unanimously approved a resolution condemning police violence on and off campus. On Thursday, political science professor Hakeem Jefferson moderated a seminar on criminal justice reform that drew more than 1,600 attendees. And on Friday, more than 2,500 attendees attended a vigil honoring Black lives lost to police brutality and racial violence.
 
View of chalk along Jane Stanford Way, with the front of Main Quad on the right and Hoover Tower in the background
 
Stanford plans to bring half of its undergraduates back to campus in each quarter of the 2020-21 academic year including summer 2021, the University announced on Wednesday. Frosh will be on campus in the fall, and seniors will be on campus in the spring, but Stanford hasn’t otherwise determined which undergraduates will be on campus for each quarter.

Undergraduates who are on campus will live only in singles and two-room doubles in order to maximize social distancing. Stanford will continue to restrict gatherings, and online instruction will remain the “default” teaching option, according to the announcement.

Additionally, fall quarter instruction for all undergrads and some grad students will begin one week early and end before Thanksgiving break in order to avoid increased travel and a potential second wave. Students who were scheduled to study abroad will no longer be able to do so, regardless of class year: Stanford has canceled all fall study away programs, marking the fourth straight quarter of coronavirus-related interruptions to such programs.

While students may not know which quarter they’ll next return to Stanford, they’ll be able to come back to campus before the fall, at least for a few hours: Residential & Dining Enterprises released the beginnings of a plan to bring back students in waves to retrieve their belongings, starting this Monday.
 

 
Weekend Roundup email newsletter: June 7 edition
 
This week, the Opinions section included a variety of pieces reflecting on the national protests that are drawing awareness to police brutality and racial violence. Particularly powerful was an open letter to students by political science professor Hakeem Jefferson. In addition to numerous op-eds by Stanford students, The Daily Editorial Board compiled a list of Bay Area-specific resources for donation, education and activism, published as a companion piece to an editors’ statement of solidarity with the Black community and the ongoing protests. We invite our readers to reflect on these issues by responding to this week’s edition of Frankly Speaking.


 
A view of protesters walking in Evanston, Illinois
 
For Photo, Kamilah Arteaga explores digital art and visits Filoli House and Garden. In Arts & Life, Carly Tomar interviews Jones Lecturer Ruchika Tomar about her debut novel, “A Prayer for Travelers,” and Emily Zhang muses on the strange and sterile food art of the future. In The Grind, Lana Tleimat and Sarah Bloom document their experiences at protests in Columbus, Ohio, and Evanston, Illinois. In Sports, Daniel Martinez-Krams stands up for kneeling in protest of police brutality. In Satire, Richard Coca and Ben Midler reveal a leaked ad for Stanford Online University, and Patrick Monreal reports on the Faculty Senate’s latest controversial vote (no, not that one: They voted against the ‘Round Earth’ resolution, too).
 

 
  • New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb will join the Stanford Community Hour on Sunday.

  • Stanford Students for Workers’ Rights is holding phone banking sessions on Monday through Friday to demand the defunding of police.

  • Stanford activists are convening a coalition-building Zoom town hall on Thursday to discuss building “a united front in support of social justice.”

    Have an event you’d like featured in next week’s roundup? Let us know at [email protected].


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    We are what we think. Educate yourself. Be an ally. Be mindful. Remember what matters — literally.
     
     



    That’s all for this roundup. Though The Daily is suspending its print edition, we’ll continue to bring you updates on coronavirus, online spring and more through our email newsletters, social media platforms and our website, stanforddaily.com.
     
     
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