Editorial
The University Must Take Responsibility
Like most colleges in this country, Stanford has become a hotbed of student protests against the impending war against Iraq. These demonstrations come from a rich history of protest here at the University, and so the recent outpouring of events relating to Iraq should come as little surprise to Stanford students. As a paper committed to encouraging political awareness on campus, the Stanford Review welcomes efforts that foster understanding and awareness for issues of which the typical Stanford student frequently has little knowledge, an unfortunate product of our so-called "bubble."

Last week's student anti-war strike could have been a useful vehicle for those concerned with the upcoming war to voice their concerns in a reasonable and orderly fashion; instead, most of the Stanford community attempting to work in its classes was disrupted by the raucous rabble in Main Quad. Rather than demonstrate common courtesy to students who, oddly enough, chose to attend classes on a weekday, the protest's organizers flagrantly violated University policy restricting noisy demonstrations in the Quad.

It wasn't as if the administration hadn't raised this issue, either. A letter sent to the protest's organizers -- which included, we might add, the Young People's Socialist League and the Young Communist League -- reminded them of the University's official stance denying the use of Main Quad for student demonstrations, and took special note to ensure that no amplified sound equipment would be used in the Quad.

What would have appeared to the rationally minded as an example of an administration attempting to protect the rights of its students, who pay upwards of $40,000 to attend Stanford for a single year, to attend their classes instead turned into a farce. University officials stood and watched as the protestors carried on in Main Quad, disrupting classes with their rowdy, loud behavior aided by the liberal use of amplified sound devices.

The administration of Stanford University, in other words, decided it would be a better decision to let a gang of class-skipping students take over the center of campus in rowdy disregard for the rights of the school's more academically dedicated students. In doing so, the administration has stated implicitly that political activism is more important than the education or consideration of its students.

There is no reason why the administration should not have told the protestors to move to White Plaza, where the strike could have proceeded reasonably and without infringing on the normal flow of the academic day. Indeed, such a move might have aided the protestors, whose cause would have benefited from a more courteous stand toward the rest of the Stanford community, regardless of their thoughts on the war against Iraq.

The administration's callous disregard for rule-abiding students is particularly unforgivable, and we say so not from a pro-war perspective but from the vantage point of students whose educations were disrupted.

To make matters worse, there is then the matter of the 26 professors who cancelled their classes in support of the strike. It is one thing for professors to have strong opinions on the war against Iraq -- indeed, at such an opinionated place like Stanford, the absence of such fervor would seem rather odd -- but it is another thing entirely for professors to flaunt their duties as educators and either encourage students to skip classes for purportedly educational purposes, or to make the decision for their students and cancel classes outright. Some of these professors are now using their review days during Dead Week to cover material they should have dealt with on the day of the strike; others are simply short-changing their classes by a day.

Neither is a good deal when you consider that we as students pay a not inconsiderable amount each year to be educated, not to have our classes canceled on account of our professors' political views. It is doubtful that those professors who did not cancel their classes could empathize terribly well with their fellow educators who canceled classes, adding to the disruption of the day.

Some professors claim that their class cancellations were designed to encourage students to educate themselves about the issues at the protest -- an argument that loses all face when you remember we pay our university tuition to pay for classes, not for extracurricular instruction outside of the purview of the syllabi we received at the beginning of the year. We pay these professors to teach our classes, not to encourage us to skip them and in so doing participate in an event that breaks university policy.

That the university administration has as yet taken no disciplinary action on these pariah professors on the basis of breach of contract and fostering an unsafe learning environment is again unflattering, to say the very least. At its worst, the administration is proving either unwilling or incapable of controlling its own student and faculty populations.

If this university wishes to continue to stand for something right and decent, it has a duty to protect the rules and customs that have gotten it this far. If rules are unfair or discriminatory against a group or a particular form of student gathering, then the rules in question should be discussed and, if necessary, modified. The right way to change policy, then, is to do so within the established rules and do so while mindful of the community affected. The wrong way is stand by and let rules go unenforced; doing so creates an atmosphere of irreverence to rules and disrespect for the Stanford heritage and community. Both, it seems to us, are worthy of respect and preservation by the Stanford community, least of all the administration running it.

The organizers of the protest last week are certainly guilty of having ignored University policy and its request that such policy be minded, but the party most culpable to the Stanford community so harmed by the strike is the administration itself. The protestors were unabashed in their aims and motivations, but despite their disregard for university rules, the activists were acting within the bounds allowed to them by the administration. This is an administration that refused to follow up on its own request, has proven unwilling to enforce its own university policies, and has proven to be completely disrespectful to the rights of its hard-working students as a whole.

The Stanford Review rebukes the administration for these blunders, and asks in the name of all the affected students that timeless question: what, may we ask, is to be done?

This editorial expresses the joint opinion of the Editorial Board of the Stanford Review, which consists of the Editor-in-Chief, the Managing Editor, the Opinions Editor, and the News Editor.

Page last modified on Thursday, 02-Mar-2006 00:21:55 MST.