News Subscribe to Our Newsletter Sign up for Email Updates CGF In the News Press Inquiries Past Articles Calendar			Stanford Magazine January 2001   'It's Important Not to Make Promises We Can't Keep'  President John Hennessy addresses Stanford's land-use dilemma During an interview in his Building 10 office a few days before the final gup authorization, President John Hennessy reflected on what the University learned as it negotiated its new land-use agreement, and how it will use those lessons.  Stanford: Clearly, Stanford's policies, especially those involving land-use practices, will be subject to intense public scrutiny going forward. Has the University had to adjust to being more squarely in the public eye?  Hennessy: We've had to adopt a different mindset. I think we're already through it; we probably knew it was necessary even before we entered this planning process. But this kind of public involvement is new for us, whereas Berkeley, for example, has been there for a long time. We can either rail against it, or we can deal with it.  Given that greater public oversight of Stanford's development will limit its options, will the University have to lower its ambitions?  We probably will have to compromise. The key is to understand what those compromises are as you're making them. I think it's useful to remember that Stanford's rise to prominence is a relatively recent event—it's not more than 40 years old. We're still rising toward our peak. As a result, trying to decide how to go forward remains difficult. We know, for example, that we want to develop an interdisciplinary program in the neurosciences, an absolutely explosive area in which Stanford has tremendous strength—from psychology to the basic neurosciences to engineering. Bringing that all together presents the opportunity to have something that perhaps only one or two other institutions in the world could match. That has to be the thing that continues to drive us.  The General Use Permit and Community Plan govern the University's new construction for the next 10 years. Can you see beyond that when determining the needs of the academic program?  It's very difficult. Think back 50 years. There were no integrated circuits, computer science was not yet a discipline, the first electronic computer had been running for about four or five years, the first commercial computers were just being delivered. dna had not been discovered. People just don't realize the scope of change that has occurred. The technologies that built this world and that will sustain the economy for some time to come are probably not the technologies that will sustain it 50 years from now. We have to maintain some flexibility in our planning because we can't know what the academic needs of the institution will be in the future.  As land-use policies tighten, it seems likely that Stanford, and universities generally, will need to make a persuasive case that the public interest is served when academic programs grow. What would be the basis for that case?  What has made this area prosper? What has made the United States prosper? Clearly, one would have to argue that research universities in the United States have been a source of fundamental strength in the country. It's important for people to understand that it's not a God-given right that the United States has the most advanced technologies in the world and the strongest economy.  How do you respond to the argument that Stanford can afford to give up some of its land because it is a wealthy institution?  There is a sentiment that we're "rich." I find it hard to understand that sentiment when we are struggling to meet even the basic needs of our graduate students, faculty and staff. Here's a dilemma that we face: our students come to Stanford with the expectation that tuition will increase at something close to the cost-of-living increases across the United States. But our costs are going up according to the local cost of living, which for the past several years has risen at a much higher rate than in the rest of the country. The next dorm that we build is going to cost 6 or 7 percent more than it would cost nationally, and our salaries must increase at a much higher rate to keep pace with the local economy. I wish we were rich, because then we could start buying up houses in Palo Alto for our faculty.  How do you defend the University's past decisions to use its land for non-academic purposes such as the Stanford Shopping Center?  If you look at the founding grant, it states that the land should be used for the purposes of the University, including generating revenue. Now, when the Stanfords originally wrote that, they probably envisioned us running a ranch, raising horses or maybe growing grapes. Obviously, we use it in other ways, but every single penny goes to support the core mission of the University. The research park is a good example. The trustees a few years ago decided to dedicate a larger fraction of that income to deal with the housing crisis. The $7 million we're using to subsidize housing for our graduate students comes directly from research park income. Directly. The only reason we could find that money was because rents at the research park have gone up appreciably in the last few years. For us, it's always a question of figuring out how we balance all of the pieces that make the whole equation work out well.  How concerned are you that the contentiousness of this latest permit process will result in lingering ill will toward the University?  I think it's inevitable that there will be some people who think the University didn't do enough. It's critical as we go forward with anything, certainly anything related to land use, that we be absolutely clear about how the function relates to the core mission of the University. That concern about ill will is one of the reasons it's important not to make promises we can't keep. I would rather say "we can't do that" and have the possibility that somebody thinks we're not responding to them or aren't cooperating as much as we should than put ourselves in a situation where we make a commitment that some future president or Board of Trustees would have to break.  What's Up at the Dish?  Some of this might have been avoided if Leland Stanford had listened to Frederick Law Olmsted.  In 1886, Olmsted, the architect best known for his design of Central Park in New York City and commissioned by Stanford to develop a campus blueprint, had sized up the senator's sprawling ranch and determined that the ideal spot to locate the University was in the gentle folds of the Foothills that overlook San Francisco Bay. It was an ideal setting, Olmsted said, presenting "a fine, characteristic California" view. Stanford didn't like it, favoring the open plain below as a site for the campus center, and he got his way.  More than 100 years later, the oak-dotted meadows that Olmsted coveted haven't changed much. The only encroachments are the radio telescope-now affectionately known as "the Dish"-erected in 1962 to conduct atmospheric studies, a civil engineering field station, a solar observatory and facilities for student radio station KZSU.  In the past few years, the Dish area has become a de facto public park, attracting as many as 1,000 visitors a day. A network of ad hoc trails had appeared, including the popular "cardiac hill," so named by runners who appreciated its lung-busting slope. Its more pejorative nickname was "the scar." A broad ribbon of hard-packed dirt, it was representative of several Foothills trails that damaged habitat areas and promoted erosion, says Charles Carter, an architect in the University's planning office. Carter was a member of a working group charged with implementing a new management program for the Dish area launched last May. The program was immediately controversial, particularly since it was introduced just as debate about Foothills preservation swirled around the GUP process.  The existing service road that meandered through the hills and along the ridge line was repaved to form a four-mile "recreation route" for hikers and joggers. Dogs were banned. Unarmed security guards were placed at both entrances to the Dish area to help enforce the new regulations.  Opponents interpreted the aggressive enforcement procedures as evidence that the University wanted to reduce Foothills traffic and make it easier to one day close them off altogether. "They're trying to reduce the number of people who use the Dish. That means fewer people will fall in love with the area," says Peter Drekmeier, director of the Stanford Open Space Alliance.  A ridiculous charge, according to Carter. "Our intent is to get people used to the rules and complying with them," he says. "Unfortunately, the moment there's nobody there [to enforce the rules], people go off the trail. "Another bit of mythology is that Stanford never tried to close those trails [in previous years]," Carter says. "When we first put up gates in the late '80s we designated trails for people to use and put up signs indicating areas that were closed for restoration. People ignored them. The signs would get removed and people would walk around in re-seeded areas."  The use of the Foothills as a public recreation area has a short history. They were completely off-limits until 1971, when they were made available only to persons with a Stanford id. Even then, people who wanted to hike in the Foothills had to either climb the fence or negotiate a cattle gate to get in, Carter says.  Gradually, as local road traffic and congestion increased, the Foothills' lure grew stronger. By the late '80s, the Dish had become a popular destination for residents throughout the mid-Peninsula who used it for hiking, jogging and walking their dogs.  In 1987, the University created easily accessible entrances and erected signs spelling out a few rules-dogs on leashes, marked routes only-but made little effort to enforce them. Acting on the advice of conservation biologist Alan Launer, '81, ms '82, the University last spring decided that it had to clamp down if it was going to take seriously its environmental stewardship of the area.  It was the right thing to do, according to Philippe Cohen, director of Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. "You can't have unfettered recreational access and pretend that we are preserving something native," he says.  Camping Out with Housing-Market Refugees  Milton Chen's home last year was a Mercury Sable station wagon. After he failed to win a room in the University's housing lottery, the doctoral student in engineering assessed his options-which did not include, because of the going price, an off-campus apartment-and decided he spent so much time in the lab that he really just needed a place to sleep. So he bought the University's cheapest parking permit, borrowed a twin mattress from a friend, signed a contract to take his meals at one of Stanford's eating clubs and got used to showering in the Gates Building, where he worked.  Chen, 27, wasn't the only one living out of a car. He figures a dozen or so people slept parked beside him in a lot near Stanford Hospital. A few were families of patients with permission to camp out, but Chen says he spoke with others who, like him, were housing-market refugees. "Sometimes it's a little bit depressing to go to a car to sleep, but it wasn't too bad," says Chen, who is back in a campus apartment this year.  Just before classes started last fall, a San Jose Mercury News story spelled out the seriousness of the Stanford-area housing shortage. The vacancy rate for rentals in Santa Clara County was 0.6 percent. Rents in the first six months of the year rose 23 percent, and the average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto-Menlo Park was $1,973 per month. Those grim numbers mean some students are forced to take extreme measures to find a place to live. The hardest hit are graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and medical residents. Unlike undergraduates, they aren't guaranteed on-campus housing, and they can't compete with tech company employees for apartments in the area.  A common way around the crunch is an illegal sublet of University quarters. Todd Benson, the housing assignment services manager, says his office typically catches between three and five illegal subletters each quarter, which he believes is a small percentage of those actually engaged in the practice. Housing Office staffers monitor an Internet newsgroup called SU Market to catch people advertising accommodations illegally. Violators lose their eligibility for on-campus housing and can be fined up to $175 a day.  Even as they crack down on students breaking the rules, administrators are sympathetic about their housing dilemma, Benson says. "We strive to be as equitable as possible," he says. "We need to offer spaces to people in the order they are on the list." One effort to help: this year 275 additional subsidized off-campus apartments are available to graduates who don't get housing on the Farm.  But the results of the rental crisis are clear. Benson says he heard recently about an international couple who arrived for a postdoc position and found no apartments they could afford. Their nearest friends were in Los Angeles, so they drove down there to regroup. Benson wasn't sure if they would ever return.  --Christine Foste Page last updated November 4, 2001.