Community Day brings out big crowds under blue skies
Starting at the top of the Oval, a processional made its way down Palm Drive to the Stanford Family Mausoleum to kick off the Founders’ Celebration on Sunday.
BY ANNIE JIA
Unbounded by societal norms, tussock moth caterpillars swung freely onto children's shoulders Sunday during Community Day. Like its abundant caterpillars, Stanford always has refused to be tied down by convention, and this day, too, embodied a spirit of tearing down barriers, both to the outside world and in the pursuit of knowledge.
An estimated 8,000 people came to campus for the university's biennial open house. They were welcomed with blue skies and exuberant music.
The day began with a procession from Serra Mall to the Mausoleum, where the Founders' Celebration was held to honor Jane and Leland Stanford. In front of a sunlit crowd, Andrea Fuller, a sophomore from North Carolina, described her own journey to the West, which brought her on her first plane ride and made her the first member of her family to attend college.
"'When we arrived, we thought we were in the strangest country we had ever been in before,' wrote young Leland Stanford Jr. of his first visit to Turkey, though he could have been talking about my first trip to the university that his parents founded in his name. Everything I knew had transformed," Fuller said.
Law student Amy Chen spoke of the founders' character. "It is easy for us to stand here today in this splendor of a realized dream and miss the audacity, and in some ways absurdity, of [the Stanfords'] vision," Chen said. "Critics ridiculed the idea of establishing a university in the wilderness." Yet, she said, "the Stanfords' lives were defined by bold dreams and uncommon success."
The celebration combined an atmosphere of solemn respect with that of a county fair. A 19th-century stagecoach, the original C-spring Brewster Landau owned by Leland Stanford, carrying actors portraying Jane and Leland Stanford paraded down Palm Drive, followed by university administrators and flags, but it was the four high-wheel bicycles at the end of the line that attracted the most buzz.
Elsewhere on campus, dozens of tables and events combined education and amusement.
Thirty-seven student groups and many university departments invented endless ways to make learning fun. At the science fair, the Chemical Engineering Department demonstrated how to vigorously stir a mixture of polyvinyl alcohol and sodium tetraborate decahydrate to make slime. In the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital tent, children rubbed fake germs on their hands and watched soap kill them under ultraviolet light. Others spun a wheel to win prizes for answering questions about bicycle safety. Toddlers posed with therapy dogs for instant photos. On a grassy field, children threw beanbags at cardboard cutouts of fierce-looking viruses in the Asian Liver Center's exhibit on "knocking out" hepatitis B.
"I felt like we were really successful," said Amy Wang, a sophomore who helped coordinate the exhibit. "We ran out of prizes."
Robert Constantakis, a Palo Alto resident who earned a master's degree in electrical engineering in 1987 from Stanford, dug through a plastic bag of creations that his children, 7-year old Giselle and 10-year old Diego, had collected through the day. "We extracted strawberry DNA. We mashed up strawberries," Diego said. His father finally pulled out a sealed test tube with a mysterious liquid and foam. "Awww, it got mixed up," Diego said.
Matching students' creativity, community members were equally creative in choosing how they traveled to campus. Some families glided on kick scooters, some chose tandem bicycles, and some parents put their toddlers on mini-bicycles while they walked alongside. Then there was the Busycle, a bus powered entirely by its 15 pedaling passengers.
Along with various vehicles, several other events brought attention to the hot topic of sustainability. In the panel discussion, "Palo Alto and Stanford: Climate Change in Our Backyard," Stanford faculty and staff members joined Palo Alto environmental leaders to discuss collaborations to promote local environmental action.
"Today's point is that cities can do a lot to facilitate, but it's really the citizens we need to do the action," said Karl Knapp, senior resource planner in the Resource Management Division of the City of Palo Alto and one of the four panelists.
Full shuttles bused visitors to Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, a few miles from central campus. "Look at all these areas that are so nice. Look at it!" gushed one woman as she surveyed the wildflowered fields. A guided tour of the Leslie Shao-Ming Sun Field Station, Jasper Ridge's research center and Stanford's first green building, showcased revolutionary thinking. Along with solar panels and recycled wood, foot-long toy spiders hung from the building's sides. When woodpeckers begin to peck holes in the walls, explained the docent, the spiders, which are connected to motion sensors, drop down and climb up again, scaring the birds away. "We tried nets. We tried everything," she said. "You can buy the spiders at your local toy store."
Back on campus, a group of students from the Stanford Labor Action Coalition displayed banners and distributed fliers calling for changes to the university's living wage policy. Culminating in a rally and march to the Main Quad, the activities were centered around five student fasters, joined by seven more that day, who were lobbying to establish negotiations with university administrators (see story, page 6). "We're here because we're challenging Stanford to be the model employer that it claims to be," said Matt Seriff-Cullick, a chief student organizer for the event.
Community Day's grand finale came with a parade of drums. Taiko master Kenny Endo and Stanford Taiko held a "drum run" through campus ending in White Plaza, where they were the final featured act of "An Art Affair," a two-day arts festival sponsored by the Student Organizing Committee for the Arts. The rhythmic drumbeats and melodic fue—a Japanese flute—transported captive listeners to an ancient world.
"Wondering what people could do on the weekend with their families, with so many options, they came to Stanford," said Elaine Enos, executive director of Stanford Events, which coordinated Community Day. "And that's great."
In White Plaza, parents watched their children play in the fountain, and a Beatles tune, played on piano, drifted from a nearby tent into the late afternoon sun.
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