Category: Stanford/Ministry News

For­get stuff­ing the turkey–we stuffed our apart­ment this Thanks­giv­ing! Not only did Glen’s broth­er and Paula’s col­lege room­mate trav­el down from Wash­ing­ton state, but we were able to host over 20 Stan­ford stu­dents in our home for lunch on turkey day (near­ly 30 total peo­ple)!

Let me tell you–that’s an awful lot of peo­ple to cram into one apart­ment!

In case you’re won­der­ing why they did­n’t head home to vis­it their fam­i­lies, all the stu­dents were inter­na­tion­al stu­dents (most­ly from Sin­ga­pore). Trav­el­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly and get­ting jet lagged is a big has­sle (and pret­ty expen­sive) for such a short break from school.

For many of them, this was their first real cel­e­bra­tion of Thanks­giv­ing. Think about it–how many oth­er coun­tries cel­e­brate the pil­grims’ sur­vival? To my knowl­edge, only Cana­da…

Sev­er­al of our guests were already fol­low­ing Christ, but many have yet to expe­ri­ence God’s trans­form­ing love. The King­dom of God flows through rela­tion­ships, and so please pray that God would use our hos­pi­tal­i­ty as a cat­a­lyst for spir­i­tu­al growth in these stu­dents’ lives.

Cook­ing for so many peo­ple was a huge task, as was seat­ing them. Thanks to Greg, Rachel, and Ailin for help­ing to pre­pare the food, and many thanks to South­bay Chris­t­ian Cen­ter and Three Cities Assem­bly for loan­ing us chairs and tables, and a heap of thanks to Pas­tor Mike Brown of Inter­na­tion­al Assem­bly of God (as well as his wor­ship leader Paul) and Josh Wong and Ming Fai Wong for help­ing to cart the chairs and tables to our place. We could­n’t have done it with­out you!

UPDATE: our Pho­to Gallery has been updat­ed with pic­tures from the Thanks­giv­ing feast!

Today’s edi­tion of the Stan­ford Dai­ly had an inter­est­ing arti­cle about Hil­lel (the Jew­ish cam­pus min­istry at Stan­ford). [Hil­lel’s web­site]

They were able to lease some prop­er­ty on campus–for a whop­ping $15,000,000. Yes, that’s 15 times 10 to the 6th pow­er. Fif­teen mil­lion bucks. If I read the arti­cle cor­rect­ly, that was $5,000,000 for the lease and oth­er ini­tial costs, $5,000,000 for ren­o­va­tion, and $5,000,000 to cre­ate an endow­ment fund for the cen­ter. They’re still work­ing on the last $10,000,000.

Wow. I remem­ber when I was a stu­dent back in Louisiana, and we were able to pur­chase a house and a six unit apart­ment com­plex for less than 1% of that price (a rel­a­tive­ly pal­try $90,000).

Does­n’t look like we’ll be get­ting a Chi Alpha house at Stan­ford any­time in the near future–unless you’d like to charge $15,000,000 to your cred­it card!

Accord­ing to Sev­en­teen mag­a­zine, Stan­ford is the fourth-coolest cam­pus in Amer­i­ca. What I want to know is–how in the world did we fail to attain the num­ber one spot?

In any event, the Stan­ford Dai­ly has a some­what tounge-in-cheek (yet appre­cia­tive) response.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I was unable to find the orig­i­nal arti­cle online. Here’s the Stan­ford Dai­ly’s sum­ma­ry:

“Stan­ford rev­els in its rep as the best of the West, and even more impor­tant — what oth­er school can boast its own cam­pus mall!” the arti­cle said. “Stress relief is big on this cam­pus of noto­ri­ous over­achiev­ers: Stu­dents are aggres­sive­ly casu­al, the most pop­u­lar for-cred­it sport is wind­surf­ing, and almost 20 per­cent of those who go on to grad­u­ate drop out for a semes­ter or two along the way (part of a for­mal pol­i­cy called ‘stop-out’).”

The mag­a­zine described the cam­pus as look­ing like an upscale taque­ría, and praised the warm weath­er, the sub­ur­ban set­ting that “feels secure” and the prox­im­i­ty to San Fran­cis­co.

The mag­a­zine also includ­ed a pic­ture of biki­ni-clad bik­ers, not­ing “own­ing a bike is prac­ti­cal­ly required.”

The Uni­ver­si­ty was even not­ed for the qual­i­ty of boys on cam­pus. “As for boys — ever see the hunks snapped in the tabloids with Chelsea Clin­ton before she grad­u­at­ed from here? Hope she left some for the rest of us. Boy-girl ratio: 48:52.”

Well, tonight will see the annu­al prac­tice of a par­tic­u­lar­ly dev­il­ish Stan­ford tra­di­tion: Full Moon on the Quad.

In most of our minds, the only cul­tur­al ref­er­ence we have to full moons involves lycan­thropy (that’s a 50 cent word refer­ring to were­wolves).

At Stan­ford, Full Moon means some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent (and I’m not sure the metaphor of man turn­ing into beast is entire­ly inap­pro­pri­ate).

For Stan­ford stu­dents, Full Moon on the Quad is a major cul­tur­al ini­ti­a­tion: fresh­men head to the quad and get roy­al­ly smooched (kissed with­in an inch of their lives) by seniors. As you might imag­ine, the evening has more than a hint of debauch­ery about it.

Here’s an excerpt from the Stan­ford Dai­ly: In the­o­ry the very idea of it is quite roman­tic — lovers kiss­ing under the gen­tle moon­light amidst a sea of end­less stars, a beau­ti­ful church hangs as a back­drop, and all around you frol­ick­ing naked peo­ple dance drunk­en­ly to tech­no music. Well, on sec­ond thought, Full Moon on the Quad is devoid of all romance. (full arti­cle)

FMOTQ is a true Stan­ford tra­di­tion… and one more evi­dence that Stan­ford needs Jesus!

There are lots of web links relat­ed to this fes­ti­val, includ­ing a poem, tame pho­to gal­leries (here’s one and here’s anoth­er), and a mild­ly humor­ous essay enti­tled Got Mono?.

This week­end was Stan­ford’s home­com­ing cel­e­bra­tion, high­light­ed by a vic­to­ry over the Ari­zona Wild­cats!

Read­ing the Stan­ford Dai­ly news arti­cle about this home­com­ing, I was once again struck by how influ­en­tial this school is. I already knew that four of our nine Supreme court jus­tices are Stan­ford alum­ni, but I did­n’t know that Stan­ford could also boast of Robert Mueller (the F.B.I. direc­tor) and for­mer U.S. Sec­re­tary of State War­ren Christo­pher.

What a mis­sion field–today they learn, tomor­row they lead!

Ehud Barak, for­mer Israeli Prime Min­is­ter and Stan­ford grad, spoke in Memo­r­i­al Audi­to­ri­um last night.

Read the school paper’s write-up, which con­tains sev­er­al inter­est­ing anec­dotes, such as this one about how Barak, who served in the Israeli Defense Force for over 30 years and is often described as Israel’s most dec­o­rat­ed sol­dier, illus­trat­ed the need for ruth­less resolve as he recount­ed some of his most mem­o­rable oper­a­tions against Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants. He told the audi­ence about a suc­cess­ful raid he led on a hijacked air­plane, and he described the exe­cu­tion of a Hamas leader he car­ried out while dis­guised as a female brunette — “with every­thing in place,” he laughed, ges­tur­ing toward his chest.

of course, such an event could not pass with­out protest (albeit peace­ful)

and in an inter­view before­hand he made an obser­va­tion that I found par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to my call­ing as a cam­pus mis­sion­ary: Though Barak ulti­mate­ly left his mark on the world not through acad­e­mia but rather through the mil­i­tary and pol­i­tics, he said that he con­sid­ers uni­ver­si­ties to be at the fore­front of inter­na­tion­al lead­er­ship.

“Some­how, the uni­ver­si­ty is the place where the lead­er­ship of the future in all areas of life is formed,” he said. “Since the best and the bright­est are com­ing through … these insti­tu­tions, they have a great influ­ence on the lead­er­ship of this nation and nations as a whole.” (source uni­ver­sal remote divx )

Wow–the Car­di­nal was just trounced by the ignobly-named Waz­zu, with a final score of 36–11.

Paula and I were able to attend because I did the morn­ing devo­tion­al for the Waz­zu team (the team chap­lain is the Steve Barke, the Chi Alpha direc­tor up in Pull­man, and he asked me to fill in for him while his team was on the road).

In any event, they gave me a pair of comp tick­ets right in the mid­dle of the fan Cougar sec­tion. Not only did we see Stan­ford get spanked up and down the field, but we did it while sit­ting in front of a for­mer cheer­leader and her slight­ly ine­bri­at­ed com­pan­ions who let the whole world know what they thought of Stan­ford’s lack of prowess.

It was a sad, sad day for Car­di­nal fans, but the Cougar fans must be ecsta­t­ic.

On the up side, the oppos­ing coach had a nice com­ment to make after the game: I feel like this Stan­ford team is about ready to explode and do real­ly well on offense, so I think our defense did a nice job of keep­ing them at bay. It won’t be too long before Stan­ford gets their offense going. I think their penal­ties were a result of a lot of frus­tra­tion on their part. They’re going to spoil some­body’s Sat­ur­day real soon, and I’m just glad it was­n’t ours. (source)

Yes­ter­day Paula and I had the chance to get togeth­er with Stan­ford Law Prof Jeff Str­nad (who’s quite a swim­mer).

Any­way, we were walk­ing through White Plaza on our way to meet him, when all of a sud­den we were con­front­ed by a clip­board-wield­ing grad­u­ate stu­dent ask­ing us if we want­ed to ‘talk to a robot.’ We looked around and saw a Dalek-like con­struct sit­ting out­side, appar­ent­ly engrossed in con­ver­sa­tion with a stu­dent. I was extremem­ly inter­est­ed, but we were almost late for our meet­ing with Jeff and so we passed.

We had a great lunch at the Stan­ford Fac­ul­ty Club, which has great food a cheap prices (but you have to be a mem­ber or the guest of a mem­ber to eat there).

As we were leav­ing, Jeff men­tioned that the guy at the table next to us was a Nobel lau­re­ate in the field of eco­nom­ics. I did­n’t catch the name, but I fig­ured it would be easy to go online and fig­ure out which prof at Stan­ford had won a Nobel in the eco­nom­ic sciences–I did­n’t count on 8 lau­re­ates in one field!

Over­all, Stan­ford lays direct claim to 23 lau­re­ates (14 of whom are still liv­ing), and indi­rect claim to many more, among them nov­el­ist John Stein­beck, who attend­ed Stan­ford but got a C in his fresh­man Eng­lish class and dropped out before grad­u­at­ing.

Wow–what a school!

As you may recall, a few weeks ago I leapt atop the pedestal that usu­al­ly holds The Thinker and mused about Stan­ford’s spir­i­tu­al con­di­tion.

I was puz­zled that the pedestal was bar­ren, but I did­n’t know where The Thinker was. I was even more shocked when I lat­er passed by the same area and saw that even the pedestal had gone miss­ing!

It turns out that The Thinker was on tour in Aus­tralia and Sin­ga­pore (which explains the bar­ren pedestal)! Now Rod­in’s rumi­nat­ing repos­er is restored, and he’s been giv­en a new place on cam­pus (which explains the miss­ing pedestal).

Buried in the news piece is an inter­est­ing lit­tle fact–Stanford has the third-largest col­lec­tion of Rodin sculp­tures in the world!

I just ran across a real­ly inter­est­ing arti­cle about life in the Stan­ford dorms from the per­spec­tive of a fac­ul­ty mem­ber who’s been liv­ing in Don­ner House for 16 years.

One excerpt on the late-night scene: By day, fresh­men man­age the ins and outs of aca­d­e­m­ic and res­i­den­tial life; they are ded­i­cat­ed stu­dents, loy­al friends, com­mit­ted musi­cians, gift­ed ath­letes, devot­ed com­mu­ni­ty vol­un­teers. But an RF soon learns that this every­day world is to some extent a con­ces­sion on their part: they’re gen­er­al­ly very nice peo­ple and bear us no par­tic­u­lar grudges. They’ll play our detail- and sched­ule-laden game if that’s what we real­ly want. But when the adult world puts on its bathrobe and gets ready to turn in, anoth­er real­i­ty bub­bles up in the hall­ways and lounges.

Late at night, when the every­day has lost its grip, con­ven­tion, habit and expec­ta­tion fall away in a gen­er­al lib­er­a­tion from the demands of the clock. There is no eti­quette for paja­maed encoun­ters over Proust, MP3s, the Bud­dha, the Band. There are no cour­te­sies between two stu­dents with tooth­brush­es in hand and some­thing on their minds. Dur­ing these clock­less nights, stu­dents begin to find and edu­cate them­selves. The con­ver­sa­tions are not always tony ones on reli­gion or phi­los­o­phy; stu­dents also mix it up on the design of the dorm T‑shirt, the no-car pol­i­cy for frosh, the virtues of Willy Won­ka, the dif­fer­ence between “mankind” and “human­i­ty.” And these dis­cus­sions take place in the non­tra­di­tion­al space of no per­cep­ti­ble time at all.

The late-night com­mu­ni­ty stu­dents seem to cre­ate auto­mat­i­cal­ly is an impor­tant, per­haps even vital, rite of pas­sage from the world of inher­it­ed ideas to the world of real thought. In this noc­tur­nal place of chaot­ic chal­lenge and rev­e­la­tion, new worlds can be con­tem­plat­ed, along with the lat­est crush. And it was an invi­ta­tion to this con­ver­sa­tion that I refused when I remind­ed Bri­an of the time.

Except in the class­room, most of us at the Uni­ver­si­ty have lit­tle to do with under­grad­u­ate life. When we do become involved, we are often rep­re­sent­ing the University’s author­i­ty to its most insistent—and some­times troublesome—students. As a res­i­dent fel­low, I’ve had my share of dif­fi­cult dis­cus­sions. It falls to the RF, for instance, to tell a stu­dent that, delight­ful per­son that he is, he’s an ugly drunk. Or, as the care­tak­er of the whole com­mu­ni­ty, an RF will have the unpleas­ant task of let­ting a few stu­dents know that their par­tic­u­lar brand of hilarity—sexist, homo­pho­bic, or just plain loud or smelly—is a pain in the col­lec­tive tush. I remem­ber once hav­ing to remind a group of young men that when our facil­i­ties super­vi­sor (a won­der­ful woman who took vir­tu­al­ly every oth­er thing about dorm life in stride) was in the men’s bath­room, they need­ed to refrain from using the uri­nals. And I remem­ber rather twitchi­ly see­ing the stu­dents out, care­ful­ly shut­ting my door and col­laps­ing in laughter—at the sheer ridicu­lous­ness of hav­ing to remind smart young peo­ple of such a nor­mal cour­tesy; at the very real impor­tance of it; and final­ly, at the fact that no one had ever told me I’d have such a con­ver­sa­tion in my own home.