Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Ravi Smith
Unit cap, new first-year requirements a boon for academic exploration. Some ask: At what cost? | The Stanford Daily
In May, the Stanford Faculty Senate approved new requirements for first-year curriculum and imposed a 100-unit cap for all undergraduate majors. The move was one of the most sweeping overhauls of academic policy in recent years. The proposal for a new “First-Year Experience” will require three courses for first-year students covering civic, liberal and global education. The “Future of the Major Proposal” will cap majors at 100 units, reducing some engineering majors by up to 18 units.
GSC condemns anti-Chinese xenophobia, supports disarming of police | The Stanford Daily
The Graduate Student Council (GSC) passed two resolutions at its final meeting on Wednesday — one that urges the University to condemn xenophobia against Chinese students and oppose a federal policy restricting the emigration of Chinese graduate students, and one that calls on the University to implement the demands of Black students regarding police presence on campus.
Alimire, Vo elected next ASSU executives | The Stanford Daily
Graduate Student Council Munira Alimire ’22 and Vianna Vo ’21 were elected to be the next Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) executives in results announced on Friday. Alimire will serve as president, and Vo as vice president. They ran unopposed after senators Martin Altenburg ’21 and Jennalei Louie ’21 withdrew from the race on the first day of campaigning. No other ASSU executive race since 1999 has featured only one slate on the ballot.
ASSU candidates innovate with virtual campaigns | The Stanford Daily
Over the past week, candidates for the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) have been hard at work making their case for election. But this year, for the first time ever, outreach has been completely virtual. Whether campaigns will engage students enough to match the turnout levels of previous elections remains to be seen. To capture students’ attention during a virtual election season, the ASSU Elections Commission has emphasized the need for candidates to be creative.
Altenburg, Louie withdraw, clearing path for Alimire, Vo to ASSU Exec | The Stanford Daily
The slate consisting of Martin Altenburg ’21 and Jennalei Louie ’21 has withdrawn from the race for Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Executive, leaving it all but certain that Munira Alimire ’22 and Vianna Vo ’21, the only other slate, will clinch the top spot in Stanford’s student government. Altenburg and Louie, both members of the Undergraduate Senate, officially withdrew from the race on Monday, ASSU Elections Commissioner Christian Giadolor ’21 told The Daily.
GSC discusses isolation’s toll on grad students’ mental health
“Graduate students are already isolated, but now it’s on steroids,” said Gabby Badica, a sixth-year languages and literature Ph.D. student. She was reiterating the concerns of physics Ph.D. student Shangnan Aaland Zhou, who raised the issue of worsening graduate student mental health in the midst of social distancing, during Wednesday’s Graduate Student Council (GSC) meeting. “The longer it goes on the harder it gets. I agree with you that it’s a big problem,” Badica said.
Low-income, first-gen students face challenges with remote quarter
This article is the fifth installment in a series examining how students are spending spring quarter. Amid a remote spring quarter, some students face extra pressures while attempting to learn. FLI students, those who are in the first generation of their family to go to college and/or come from low-income families, report a number of challenges, including taking on familial obligations, coping with financial stress and navigating their identity.
S/NC policy, virtual setting influence student course choices
This article is the second installment in a series examining how faculty and students are adapting to online classes. See the first article here. For the first time ever, Stanford undergraduates are being forced to choose classes for a completely virtual quarter. When selecting classes for the spring, six students interviewed by The Daily considered a variety of new factors, including how courses would adapt to a virtual setting and the Satisfactory/No Credit (S/NC) grading policy.
Virtual ASSU elections scheduled for mid-May
This year’s Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) elections will now be conducted virtually in May, ASSU Elections Commissioner Christian Giadolor ’21 told The Daily. The elections were previously scheduled for early April but were postponed indefinitely during the campus evacuation due to COVID-19. Now, candidates will campaign virtually from May 11-17, Giadolor wrote. Students will vote from May 18-19, and election results will be released to the student body on May 22.
Studio, lab, seminar classes face challenges in online format
This article is the first installment in a series examining how faculty and students are adapting to online classes. As Stanford prepares for a fully online spring quarter, instructors of highly interactive courses are running up against the limits of video conferencing software. Many seminar humanities classes will preserve their format, albeit through Zoom.
ASSU postpones elections to late spring or early fall
The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Elections Commission has indefinitely postponed the ASSU campaigning and election period, originally scheduled for March 30 through April 9, amid the worsening coronavirus pandemic and exodus of undergraduates from Stanford’s campus.
Clear Sky gave me the Native community I lacked - now the program needs to be saved
Editor’s note: This guest essay is part of Education Lab’s Student Voices program. Read more columns by local students here. Because I didn’t grow up on my reservation, Neah Bay, I’ve always lived somewhat apart from my Native identity. In the dominant culture outside the reservation, Native people are either invisible or stand as token monuments when they are visible, like the wooden Indian outside of a cigar store — always present, but never part of the fabric of a living, breathing community.
Native land acknowledgements and why they matter
Courtesy of The Stanford Powwow by Ravi Smith — June 5, 2019June 4, 2019 This week, a mass email from “Native Lands” appeared in the inbox of Stanford freshmen. The email is a long form letter and reminds students that they currently live on Native land and did so in their United States hometown as well. The letter intones that “by virtue of living on an indigenous people’s homelands, you are factually a part of the settler-colonial dynamic in North America.
Methods of mindfulness: How students meditate at Stanford
Courtesy of Pexels.com by Ravi Smith — May 21, 2019May 20, 2019 Meditation, by its quiet, solitary nature, does not tend to be a visible facet of a school community. It still exists at Stanford, however, at least from what I can tell. I wanted to hear a sample of the wide variety of student experiences with mindfulness meditation at Stanford, as well as share the advice these students had on starting to meditate.
What I wish I knew about concussions
Courtesy of Pexels.com by Ravi Smith — May 3, 2019May 2, 2019 When I got a concussion while playing Ultimate Frisbee during fall quarter, I realized how much the proper functioning of my brain shaped my everyday experience. After my concussion, thinking took longer, and doing schoolwork, especially readings, became extremely unpleasant. My brain just wanted to stop and be still.
Are we being honest to ProFros?
ANDREA LIM/The Stanford Daily by Ravi Smith — April 25, 2019April 24, 2019 At this time last April, I was in the midst of a whirlwind of college visits, class sit-ins and long deliberations over which school to ultimately attend. There were several factors to compare schools with which seemed impossible to reconcile, and I hoped that talking to students would give me a more intuitive sense of their school.
Philosophical musings on a psych grade
On the first Monday of winter break, I felt excited as I logged onto Axess to check my course grades. That excitement soon turned into remorse as I realized I had bombed the final exam of PSYCH 1, and my grade was much lower than I had expected. I started to question my personal philosophy that learning should take all precedence over grades. In PSYCH 1, I felt like I had engaged deeply with the key ideas concepts that were important to me.
Warranting Native Americanness
Last week, in a rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s derision over her self-proclaimed Native American ancestry, senator and Democratic Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren published the results of a DNA test strongly suggesting Warren had a Native American ancestor between six and 10 generations ago, the equivalent of having 1/64 to 1/1024 ancestry.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Ravi
Contact Ravi, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack