Category: Stanford/Ministry News

I just read this para­graph in the Ivy Jun­gle’s Cam­pus Min­istry Update and thought it worth post­ing here: In her recent book, Hillary Rod­ham-Clin­ton describes her­self as a Gold­wa­ter con­ser­v­a­tive pri­or to her col­lege years. The daugh­ter of a staunch Repub­li­can, it was in col­lege that she changed her polit­i­cal views. One cat­a­lyst for the change, she says, was the “MOTIVE” mag­a­zine pub­lished by the Methodist Church. The mag­a­zine, which ceased cir­cu­la­tion in 1968, was designed for col­lege stu­dents and helped her see the cause of social jus­tice. Regard­less of polit­i­cal your polit­i­cal views, this reminds us that col­lege min­istry mat­ters. Press on.

July 1st was our one-year anniver­sary here in the Bay Area… a year ago our life was full of card­board box­es and lots of oth­er fun stuff.

Wow–a lot has hap­pened this year.

Last night we had a great ser­vice with Chan Kei­th in Lodi, CA. A col­lege-aged lady who was vis­it­ing the church that night chose to fol­low Christ!

I love my job…

Also, Nic­ho­lette Lock­wood, a stu­dent from our for­mer min­istry in Spring­field, MO moved in last night. She’ll be stay­ing with us for a month this sum­mer.

Right now I’m focused on two tasks:
1) Help­ing to select the Chi Alpha leader for North­ern Cal/Nevada.
2) Help­ing to plan Chi Alpha’s Win­ter Con­fer­ence in 2004.

We got back from Reno yes­ter­day. It was a great trip!

If you ever need to trav­el to Reno, you real­ly ought to look into stay­ing at the Pep­per­mill, a hotel/casino. Their rates are great and the rooms are won­der­ful!

We stayed in three dif­fer­ent hotels this week­end (for per­fect­ly good rea­sons which I won’t go into here), and the Pep­per­mill blew the oth­er two away.

Stan­ford has now won 9 out of the last 10 Direc­tor’s Cups. The Direc­tor’s Cup is giv­en each year to the best over­all sports school in the nation.

The Car­di­nal claimed NCAA Cham­pi­onships in men’s cross coun­try and men’s water polo in 2002-03, in addi­tion to sec­ond place fin­ish­es in wom­en’s vol­ley­ball, men’s soc­cer, wom­en’s cross coun­try, syn­chro­nized swim­ming, wom­en’s ten­nis and wom­en’s water polo. In all, Stan­ford record­ed 12 nation­al top five fin­ish­es and 24 top 10 fin­ish­es. from the Stan­ford press release.

See the offi­cial NACDA page.

first pho­to: glen with a hand­ful of MS&E grads
sec­ond pho­to: our grads from the grad par­ty we had on Sat­ur­day. We’re miss­ing a few, but you get the idea.

This was a pret­ty hec­tic weekend–it was grad­u­a­tion time for a num­ber of our stu­dents!

This was my first Stan­ford grad­u­a­tion, so I was­n’t sure what to expect…

Here are some obser­va­tions:

1) Stan­ford does­n’t take grad­u­a­tion too seri­ous­ly. Less secure schools make every­body act for­mal and solemn, but Stan­ford lets stu­dents act cel­e­bra­to­ry at their cel­e­bra­tion. You can see a video of the apt­ly-named “Wacky Walk.” I heard there were streak­ers, but I did­n’t see any. It would­n’t sur­prise me if there were–it fits the school cul­ture.

2) The com­mence­ment speak­er was Ale­jan­dro Tole­do, the pres­i­dent of Peru. There’s a video snip­pet from his speech online. He’s got an amaz­ing sto­ry. He was raised in abject pover­ty, and through the inter­ven­tion of the Peace Corps was able to come to Amer­i­ca to get a degree, and ulti­mate­ly to become the first indige­nous pres­i­dent of his coun­try.

3) It was HOT! I’m just glad I did­n’t get worse sun­burn than I did.

4) After the main grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, there were around 70 small­er grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies for indi­vid­ual depart­ments. That was the one where they call stu­dents name by name and actu­al­ly hand them a diplo­ma. The one I attend­ed, for the major of Man­age­ment, Sci­ence, and Engi­neer­ing had a rather scrump­tious free buf­fet after­wards.

5) We’re real­ly going to miss our grads. Bye, guys! Don’t for­get to write!

I often tell peo­ple that Stan­ford alum­ni change our lives on a reg­u­lar basis. I came across an unex­pect­ed angle on that today…

Stan­ford alum­nus Tiger Woods is per­haps the best known (and loved) ath­lete in the world today. He’s also a key fig­ure in cloth­ing trends!

When Tiger Woods wakes up this morn­ing, he will not have to think twice about his out­fit. It was picked out for him a year and a half ago, just like the clothes he will be wear­ing Fri­day through Sun­day at the U.S. Open at Olympia Fields.

It is all part of the mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy for Nike Golf, which scripts Woods’ clothes for the majors and then ships the mer­chan­dise to stores around the coun­try a cou­ple weeks after each major. Woods’ pop­u­lar­i­ty and the tele­vi­sion expo­sure gen­er­at­ed by the tour­na­ments com­bine to increase sales of the select­ed items.

…

‘I was just inun­dat­ed with phone calls after he wore [a short-sleeved mock turtle­neck],” said Lyn­da Reis, the appar­el buy­er for Chica­go Ten­nis and Golf. ”I could not believe the response. There have not been too many things I’ve had so many phone calls about. And the men will come in and say, ‘I don’t know if I’d wear it play­ing golf, but it looks so cool on him.”’

That’s not exact­ly what I had in mind when I told peo­ple about the influ­ence of Stan­ford’s alum­ni, but it does illus­trate the point in a bizarre sort of way. Tiger–a role mod­el to us all.

Read about Tiger’s styl­is­tic influ­ence.

Today I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go and just spend some time on cam­pus watch­ing stu­dents in their nat­ur­al habi­tat. I was expect­ing to just sit down and set up my lap­top and work on ser­mon prep and mak­ing some phone calls all day, but instead I bumped into stu­dents I knew every­where I turned around!

Kwasi biked by after I set up, and then I bumped into Shaowei upstairs, and short­ly after that I bumped into Jim­my and a friend of his named Winona I had­n’t met before. Jim­my and I talked for sev­er­al hours about all sorts of stuff, and then Song showed up.

Song and I talked about dif­fer­ent ways to raise mon­ey for missions–he’s plan­ning to bike across Amer­i­ca this sum­mer. I hope it works out, ’cause it sounds real­ly cool.

I was both tick­led and sad­dened when I read the news in the Stan­ford Dai­ly today: Stan­ford To Ban Alco­hol At All-Fresh­man Dorm Events.

Begin­ning next year, Stanford’s all-fresh­man dorms will no longer be allowed to serve alco­hol at events in their lounges, hall­ways or out­door areas.

Seems rea­son­able to me, espe­cial­ly since almost all fresh­men are way under 21 and there­fore are not allowed to drink alco­hol. Nonethe­less, the move pro­duced con­tro­ver­sy: Junior Nic Kanaan, a res­i­dent assis­tant in Otero, said he believes the pol­i­cy will have unin­tend­ed neg­a­tive con­se­quences. “I think this new pol­i­cy will make a kind of intro­vert­ed drink­ing cul­ture that could poten­tial­ly be more dan­ger­ous, because it’s behind closed doors and you can’t see what’s going on…”

For­tu­nate­ly, the uni­ver­si­ty sim­ply reit­er­at­ed its log­i­cal­ly com­pelling posi­tion: Admin­is­tra­tors counter that allow­ing drink­ing in fresh­man dor­mi­to­ries is ille­gal, detracts from efforts to cre­ate a safe and com­fort­able atmos­phere and has failed to pre­vent seri­ous alco­hol-relat­ed inci­dents among fresh­men in recent years.

Per­son­al­ly, I can’t believe this is even an issue. It just seems clear to me that the uni­ver­si­ty is oblig­at­ed to pre­vent ille­gal behav­ior.…

Tomor­row Paula and I will be head­ing to Jen­ness Park with a bunch of our students–it’s retreat time!

Out speak­er’s going to be Scott Mar­tin, and I ful­ly expect the retreat to rock!