Student tour guide, walking backward in sneakers, shows off the 'splendor' of Stanford
The free one-hour tours begin at the new Visitor Center – with daily departures at 11 a.m. and 3:15 p.m. – and end in White Plaza.
Undergraduate Brandon Payette leads a prospective undergraduate tour of campus.
BY CHANTAL JOLAGH AND KATHLEEN J. SULLIVAN
At Stanford, Brandon Payette learned that democracy – the rule of law, representative government and separation of church and state – can be hard to promote internationally. And he learned that the discovery of oil in a developing country can actually harm its fledgling economy.
He also learned how to walk backward.
It's a skill Payette, a political science major from Minnesota, puts to good use as he leads groups on guided walking tours around campus.
Still, it can be hazardous, he told a group of visitors one recent morning.
"First of all, I'm going to be walking backward throughout the entirety of the tour, and although I've been giving tours since the spring of freshman year, I have yet to grow eyes in the back of my head," Payette said with a smile at the start of the one-hour tour.
"So if you guys could do me a huge favor and warn me if I'm going to run into another person, a bicycle, small child or a mountain lion – you never know what you'll find on the Stanford campus – that would be much appreciated."
The crowd – composed of nearly two dozen parents, high school students and tourists – chuckled, then fell in behind the leader, who led his charges down the shaded curving sidewalk in front of the new Visitor Center and into the bright sunshine.
As he walked, Payette talked about the history of Stanford, which was founded by Jane and Leland Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Jr., who died at 15 of typhoid fever. The university, which opened its doors in 1891, was built on 8,000 acres that Leland Stanford bought for his Palo Alto Stock Farm, where he bred and trained horses.
"So the campus still carries the nickname 'The Farm,'" said the 20-year-old junior, who was wearing a polo shirt, khaki shorts and white sneakers.
The campus, Payette told the group, is like a small city. It has a post office, a police department, a fire station and a gas station.
Among the Stanford facts gleaned from a campus tour: Hoover Tower is 285 feet tall.
Unlike a small city, Stanford has a skyscraper: the 285-foot-tall Hoover Tower.
As some parents fanned themselves with campus maps, everyone craned their necks to gaze up at the campus landmark, which houses the world-renowned library and archives of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace.
When they arrived in front of the Main Quad, Payette stopped and gestured toward Palm Drive, a mile-long roadway lined with Canary Island date palm trees.
"Palm Drive is the main entrance to the university," he said, as visitors snapped pictures of each other with palm trees in the background. "It leads to the Palo Alto train station. It's only a short ride to San Francisco."
After a short walk, just past Serra Grove, Payette pointed out the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center, telling the tour group that inside the building, each of its two lecture halls contains a revolving stage, allowing one professor to prepare lab demonstrations behind the scenes while another is finishing a class.
It's just one of many "random facts" about the university that Payette memorized during a 10-week training course for prospective student tour guides. Among some of the other tidbits about Stanford he likes to toss out during tours:
- The entire campus has Wi-Fi.
- Green Library has the second largest collection of DVDs in the nation, next to Netflix.
- Members of the Stanford faculty have won 26 Nobel Prizes since the prize was established in 1901.
At Memorial Church, which Jane Stanford built as a memorial to her husband, Payette shared another historical morsel as the group gathered under the massive mosaic on the front of the church that depicts Christ welcoming the righteous into the kingdom of God.
"The murals inside portray an equal number of men and women because Jane Lathrop, the wife of Leland Stanford Sr., strongly believed in equality," he said.
Payette opened a heavy wooden door and the group followed him inside. They walked in single file up the center aisle of the church, which was dedicated in 1903, marveling at its stained glass windows and its mosaics depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments. One visitor whispered to another: "This is impressive."
The next stop was Green Library, the main research library.
"Green Library is our largest library on campus, with almost 3 million volumes," Payette said. "It is also one of the best places on campus to study, in particular the Bender Room, which has some of the most comfortable couches I've ever pretended to study in."
Later, Payette, who had to pass a 15-minute quiz to become a tour guide, decided it was time to give a quiz of his own.
The campus tour for undergraduates lasts for about an hour.
"Looking around, what do you think most of the buildings have in common?" he asked.
His listeners ventured a few guesses.
They're old? They're still heated by steam? They're brown?
"Almost every building on campus has red-tiled roofs to maintain cohesiveness," Payette said.
As they nodded and looked at the red-tiled roofs around them, Payette said the general plan for the university – sandstone buildings connected by arches and long arcades and topped with roofs of red clay tiles – was the result of a collaboration between Jane and Leland Stanford and Frederick Law Olmsted, a renowned landscape architect who also designed New York City's Central Park.
The tour ended in the center of campus in White Plaza, near a fountain nicknamed "The Claw," a popular destination for students on "fountain-hopping" days.
"There are 23 fountains on campus, and fountain-hopping is where you try to jump into as many fountains as possible in a short amount of time," Payette said. "It's especially popular after sporting events or campus dances, or on Friday afternoons during spring quarter when it's warm outside and all of our seniors have a severe case of senioritis."
Payette works at the Visitor Center for 20 hours a week during the summer and around 12 hours a week during the school year.
Asked what he likes best about the job, Payette said:
"My favorite part of the job is the other tour guides. We have a really awesome staff of around 80 super cool, really amazing Stanford students, so going to work is much more enjoyable than it would be without them. My other favorite part of the job is that with so many tourists who are experiencing Stanford for the first time, the splendor of Stanford never wears off. The beautiful campus stays fresh for me because of these visitors who still appreciate it."
Chantal Jolagh is an intern at the Stanford News Service.