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  • 8/8/2019 The Stanford Daily, Oct. 6, 2010

    1/6

    Index Features/2 Opinions/4 Sports/6 Classifieds/6 Recycle Me

    STUDENT GOVT

    Senate passesfunding forFull Moon

    By MARGARET RAWSONSTAFF WRITER

    The ASSU Undergraduate Senate adjourned Tuesdayevening after approving funding for Full Moon on theQuad, discussing Nominations Commission openings andseveral bills on previous notice and passing the weeksfunding bills.

    Full MoonSophomore Class Presidents Misha Nasro and Maxine

    Litre requested funding for Full Moon on the Quad fromthe ASSU traditions fund, money set aside last year by the11th Undergraduate Senate for campus-wide traditions.

    On Tuesday, the Senate re-approved $5,000 for FullMoon on the Quad, which will be supplemented by fund-ing from Stanford Concert Network and the Office of theVice Provost for Student Affairs.

    The event,which was officially cancelled last year due to

    swine flu (H1N1) concerns,has been planned for Oct.25 bya sophomore class yet to experience the festivities in full.

    This years Full Moon celebrations fall on a Mondaynight and will begin at Old Union due to noise concerns inthe Quad, after which the Band will escort partygoers tothe Quad for the countdown to midnight.

    Nominations CommissionStephanie Garrett 12, chair of the Nominations Com-

    mission, briefed the Senate on problems the commissionhas been facing in filling positions on its various commit-tees.

    It also came to Garretts attention this week that the or-ganizations website is not functioning.Garrett urged thosewho have applied or still wish to apply for a position to e-mail the Nominations Commission directly.

    AppropriationsAppropriations Committee Chair Rafael Vasquez 12

    reported Tuesday on the committees lengthy Fridayevening meeting, during which senators completed a re-view of all general-fees policies.A similar review process,the results of which will affect the 2011-2012 academicyear, will take place for special fees in the coming weeks.

    Vasquez described the general fees review process and

    said that funding for student groups this year will be verydata-drivenas part of an effort to make the process moreclear to financial officers.

    Every single line item will be explained this year,Vasquez said.

    Fridays Appropriations Committee meeting also in-cluded interviews with financial officers seeking budget ap-proval for their volunteer student organizations.

    Juany Torres 13 said of the committee meeting,We gotvery positive feedback from the groups that came to seeus.

    Senate Treasurer Stewart Macgregor-Dennis 13 re-ported Tuesday on the Senates take-back rate, the

    ACADEMICS

    Huang Centerdebuts in newscience quad

    By SAMANTHA MCGIRRDESK EDITOR

    The Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center wasdedicated in front of a crowd of 150 on Tuesday, in-augurating the latest addition to the Science and En-gineering Quad.Amid recessed lighting and modu-lar furniture,the crowd watched as the Universitysbrightest minds in engineering discussed the centerand its potential role in Silicon Valley innovation.

    The formal dedication of the $30 million buildingwas held in the Huang Center Amphitheatre andfeatured School of Engineering Dean Jim Plummer,President John Hennessy, lead donor Jen-HsunHuang M.S.92 and Board of Trustees Chair LeslieHume.

    Prior to the dedication,the crowd watched froma screen in the newly christened Nvidia Center ofthe building as Plummer moderated a symposiumamong Hennessy, Huang and Yahoo co-founderJerry Yang 90 M.S.91. Entitled Technology Inno-vation in the 21st Century,the symposium centeredon the importance of engineering as a discipline andthe need to train engineers who possess businessskills and are cognizant of social issues. Plummeremphasized the need for engineers to develop amultidisciplinary approach as they tackle currentenergy and technology challenges.

    We have narrowly defined academic disciplines,but we need to find ways to educate students morebroadly or to create teams that are interdiscipli-nary, he said.

    Nancy Peterson,director of communications forthe School of Engineering,echoed Plummers senti-ments,saying the center will equip students with thetools to become not only excellent engineers, butalso savvy entrepreneurs and community activists.

    STUDENT LIFE

    Yes Plus program comes to Stanford

    RESEARCH

    Zebrafish study lends clues to why humans need sleepBy ZOE LEAVITT

    SENIOR STAFF WRITER

    Zebrafish and your PowerPoint presen-tation.Whats the connection?

    According to a recent study led by re-searchers in the Stanford School of Medi-cine, zebrafish suggest that, rather thanpaging through your slides just a few moretimes as the clock ticks onward,or endless-ly rehearsing your speech into the night, itmight be wisest to get a few good hours of

    shut-eye before your test or presentation.Throughout the day,as animals and hu-

    mans learn, communicate and performtheir daily habits, the brain forms newsynapses to handle the inputs of informa-tion.Now,Stanford scientists have used ze-brafish,transparent freshwater fish relatedto minnows and commonly used as modelsin scientific studies, to actually trace thechanges in the number of synapses be-tween waking and sleep. According to apaper published in Wednesdays issue of

    Neuron, synapses in the brain decrease asyou sleep, consolidating important infor-mation and shedding irrelevant irritants.

    When youre awake in the day, youcreate more and more synapses to dothings, but at a certain point,this would beunsustainable, said Emmanual Mignot,senior author of the paper and director ofthe Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences andMedicine.Sleep is needed to clear all thesynapses that are not helpful to prunethe synapses that have not been used

    much.In other words, the phone number that

    guy with bad breath at the bar gave you lastnight? Blissfully gone by morning.Knowl-edge of how to brush your teeth? Stillthere.

    While similar theories had previouslybeen established about invertebrates, sci-entists had never before concretelydemonstrated this sleep-related synaptic

    By WILLA BROCK

    Everyones heard the saying:Stanford students are like ducks,calm on the surface,but paddlingfuriously under the water. TheWellness Project, a new studentgroup, wants to give those duckssome water wings.

    The organization is holdingthree Yes Plus workshops thisquarter, aimed at teaching stu-dents to utilize the power of nat-ural yoga, breathing and medita-tion to decrease stress and in-crease focus, said Vineet Singal12, Wellness Committee HealthCoordinator.

    The five-day workshops areoffered through the Art of LivingFoundation in conjunction withVaden Health Promotion Ser-vices, and though they normallycost $375, they are free for stu-dents who successfully submit ascholarship application. The first

    workshop is set for Oct. 6-10.Chemistry graduate student

    Debanti Sengupta, last yearsWellness Project president, firstattended a Yes Plus workshop asan undergraduate student atAmherst College.

    I took the workshop at a timein my life when I was goingthrough a lot of differentchanges, she said. I was veryskeptical about how a five-dayworkshop might actually changeanything, but the techniques thatI learned there, the communitiesthat I formed, have actuallystayed with me since and havebeen an invaluable asset.

    The workshops teach studentstools to deal with their stress andnegative emotions and endeavorto promote a culture of well-being on campus.

    The term wellness is oftenunderstood to mean a physicalstate, said Singal, but I think

    there is a second, more ignoredcomponent: your emotional, psy-

    chological and spiritual well-being.And I use the word spiritu-al in the very broad sense,to in-clude things like religion,but alsothings like your own understand-ing of who you are and what youwant to be.

    Breathing techniques andmeditation are a big part of theworkshops, Sengupta said, butthe entire experience is holistic.We also have a service compo-nent of the program that encour-ages students to take the energythat they gain with the tech-niques that we teach and give itback to the community in theform of a service project, shesaid. Other parts of the workshopdeal with leadership skills such aspublic speaking.

    Contact Willa Brock at [email protected].

    More employers turn

    out for fall career fair

    Appropriations Committee: groupfunding to be more data-driven

    Hennessy, Huang and guestsdiscuss future of engineering

    FEATURES/2

    VUOI UN CAFFEI?A Stanford students days in Florence

    Home of Philippe Mourrain

    Tomorrow

    Mostly Sunny

    71 58

    Today

    Partly Cloudy

    68 60

    WEDNESDAY October 6, 2010 Issue 14

    www.stanforddaily.comThe Stanford DailyA n I n d e p e n d e n t P u b l i c a t i o n

    SPORTS/6

    LOCATION CONVERSATIONWhere should the future Pac-12 football championship

    game be held?

    By MARIANNE LeVINECONTRIBUTING WRITER

    If the employer turnout at Tues-days career fair in White Plaza is anyindication of the health of the jobmarket, soon-to-be Stanford gradu-ates could take a little heart.The an-nual fair,hosted by the Career Devel-opment Center (CDC),featured 268employers,a slight improvement overthe 215 employers who attended lastyear.

    The recession had a significant im-pact on the number of employerswho attend the fairs,said CDC Direc-tor Lance Choy. Prior to the reces-sion, Stanford had 300 employers at-tending in addition to a waitlist, hesaid.

    The career fair on Tuesday offerednumerous full-time employment andinternship opportunities for both un-dergraduate and graduate students.Companies there included AppleInc., Morgan Stanley, the FBI and

    Abercrombie & Fitch.Many had sev-eral positions to advertise.

    We think the economy is improv-ing and expect to hire new collegegraduates next summer. . . we haveas many as 10 open positions, saidKathy Englar,a representative for In-tApp, a software company in PaloAlto. The Stanford career fair hasplayed an important role in employ-ment for IntApp, Englar said

    Hundreds search for jobs opportunities, summer internships

    The Stanford Daily

    VIVIAN WONG/Staff Photographer

    Representatives from Lockheed Martin talk to first-year graduate student James Sung and Kevin Ting 11on Tuesdayabout the companys job opportunities. Lockheed Martin was one of 268 employers, up from 215 last year, at the fair.

    CoHo Does Stand-up

    CELESTE NOCHE/The Stanford Daily

    Law student David Star Rabb 08 performs stand-up comedy to an intimate crowd at the CoHo on Tuesday night. Theevent was sponsored by the Stanford Spiked Punchline comedy group and featured student and professional comics.

    Please see FAIR,page 3 Please see HUANG,page 3

    Please see SLEEP,page 2Please see SENATE,page 3

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    The Daily e-mailed faculty a short questionnairethat strayed beyond their work at Stanford. Hereis a glimpse into the personalities behind your pro-fessors.

    !aul &ise

    Hometown0 Plainview, N.Y.

    Undergrad0 Cornell University, Latin AmericanStudies major

    Grad school0 doctorate of medicine at CornellMedical College, masters of public health at HarvardSchool of Public Health

    8an of0 Cornell lacrosse team

    :; on your playlist0 Mustt, Mustt by Nusrat

    Fateh Ali Khan8avorite book0 Disgrace by JM Coetzee

    8avorite movie0 A tie: The Last Wave and TheRight Stuff

    If you could only eat one food group for therest of your life, would it be grains, meat,vegetables or fruit? Fruit

    If you hadnt gone into academia, youd be0 a used bookseller

    Department0 Pediatrics and Health Policy

    Classes taught0 Global Public Health; Rethinking International Health

    !rimary research interestproject0 Focus on inequalities in child health, particularly on how newbasic science insights and medical innovation influence disparities in child health. Active research on trendsin health care access and utilization among children with chronic disease in California; the policy implicationsof gene-environment interaction; a major initiative to develop new strategies to address womens and chil-drens health needs in politically unstable areas of the world.

    Chelsea Ma, Managing Editor

    FEATURES

    By AMY JULIA HARRISSENIOR STAFF WRITER

    Vuoi un caffei? beamsAntonella, my 60-something-year-oldhost mother, peekingup from the pot of

    espresso she is heating over the stoves openflame.Coffee is a serious,serious business forAntonella, a retired schoolteacher who hasmade cooking her stock and trade.Achievingthe perfect espresso is a daily necessity.

    Por favore, I respond groggily, plop-ping down at the mahogany kitchen table,which is covered with assorted tins of bis-cotti and different fruit marmalades for

    breakfast.Outside, the ring of steeple bellswakes my sleepy neighborhood on Via deiMacci, a historic street a few blocks fromthe sprawling Piazza di Santa Croce in Flo-rence, Italy. Stanford has had an abroadprogram in Florence for 50 years it wasthe Universitys first foreign outpost.

    After breakfast,I grab my book bag andmy door key, a three-inch contraption thatlooks to be straight out of the 1500s, andclamber down the four spiral flights of stairsfor my morning Italian class.As I leave, myhost mother reminds me to eat a good lunch as if,in Italy, eating well is ever a prob-lem. It speaks volumes about a culturewhere quel che non ti uccide, ti rafforza,what wont kill you will feed you,is a pop-ular proverb.

    It takes 15 minutes to walk from SantaCroce across the Ponte alle Grazie, downthe bank of the Arno River and up the fiveflights of stairs to my class at The StanfordCenter,a towering building one block fromFlorences oldest bridge,thePonte Vecchio.On my way to the Center,pony-tailed men

    lean casually against the storefront eaves

    catcallingCiao bella at the sea of stiletto-clad women sauntering by.A fleet of mope-ds careens down the impossibly narrowstreets, scattering throngs of tourists thatamble down the middle of the cobble-stoned roads. As I arrive at the StanfordCenter, I call out Buongiorno! to the sil-ver-haired doorman at the entrance,who bynow has become accustomed to the accent-ed Italian that students shoot his way everymorning.

    After class,the afternoon is mine to dowhat I like, which usually means a trip to a

    gelateria for a frozen snack followed by me-andering through the streets.Before I knowit, its nighttime, and Florence transformsinto a different city.

    ThePiazza di Santa Croce,which by day

    houses hundreds of milling pigeons, be-comes an epicenter for nighttime revelers.Clumps of Italian men and American stu-dents lounge on the basilica steps and popopen bottles of Chianti Classico beneaththe towering statue of Dante Alighieri.Throngs of students prance downVia Verdi,stopping in the streets to greet their friendswith the customary two-cheek kiss beforeducking into one of the clubs blasting tech-no hits like We No Speak Americano.

    A month ago, when 23 other Stanfordstudents and I arrived in Florence for ourquarter abroad, we were told to make thecity our own. I didnt know exactly whatthat meant at the time, especially in Flo-rence, a city so culturally different fromanywhere I had lived before.But now that Ihabitually grab a panino from SalumeriaVerdi,cross the Ponte Vecchio at sunset andreturn home every day to AntonellasBuona sera! from the kitchen,I think Imbeginning to feel at home.

    Contact Amy Julia Harris at harrisaj@stan-

    ford.edu.

    FEATURES

    2NWednesday, October 6, 2010 The Stanford Daily

    A day abroad at Stanford in Italy

    AMY JULIA HARRIS/The Stanford Daily

    The Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. Students at Stanford in Italy regularly wake to the Catholic church's bells.

    !rofessor Snapshot

    Courtesy

    ofPa

    ulW

    ise

    change in vertebrates, a group intowhich humans fall.

    For the first time we demonstrat-ed the role of synaptic downscalingon a living vertebrate, said PhilippeMourrain, co-director of the study.We can actually see the change insynaptic density within the animal.

    The study further showed thatthese synaptic changes depend on an-imals circadian clocks and do not ad-

    just purely based on sleep.In order to view the neurons

    through the transparent zebrafish,the Stanford team pioneered new im-aging methods that would trace brainactivity while avoiding affecting it.

    It was pretty special because no-body has ever been able to look in onan animal throughout its entire circa-dian cycle, said Gordon Wang, whoco-authored the paper and designed

    most of the imaging work. You canactually embed the zebrafish inagarose without anesthesia,so theresno issues with anesthesia affecting

    sleep,and hold it in space and take im-ages throughout the day and night.

    Zebrafish,though not as pervasiveas the mouse or fruit fly in lab studies,made this study possible,Mignot said.

    Its body plan andbrain are much moresimilar to humans, itscheap . . . it has huge po-tential,he said.

    While zebrafish are moresimilar to humans than fruit fliesare,their brains are still differentenough that researchers are waryof drawing too many implicationsfor human sleep patterns. Further-more, because of the technologicalchallenges of tracing human brain ac-tivity while maintaining normalsleeping patterns, its definitely sci-fi to imagine similar studies on hu-mans,Mignot said.

    The real thing to keep in mind isthat sleep is such a complicated phe-nomenon that encompasses all partsof the brain,Wang said.

    At the same time, the researches

    learned a little bit about their ownsleeping needs.

    You need to have someone thatwill stay up for 24 or 36 hours . . . to

    take images every three hours,Mourrain said.Even if you sleep-de-prive the fish, you do it to yourself aswell, so its only fair.

    Contact Zoe Leavitt at [email protected].

    SLEEPContinued from front page

    ANASTASIA YEE/The Stanford Daily

    FLORENCE

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    Were emphasizing bothbreadth in a discipline and broadskills, she said. As Dean Plummersays, we want to create T-shapedpeople, where the vertical bar isdepth in a particular discipline, andthe horizontal bar is breadth things like communication, leader-ship,cultural awareness.

    Quoting Ronald Reagan, Hen-nessy voiced the need to break

    down these wallsthat separate thehard sciences and engineering fromother aspects of society. The key, heargues, is to put power in studentshands.

    If we let students drive learning,they will build cross-disciplinary col-laboration, he said.

    The Huang Center was designedwith collaboration in mind. Thebuilding features an open floor plan,conference rooms with transparentglass walls and modular furniture,meant to be moved around duringgroup projects. Proponents hopethat the open, modular design, simi-lar to that of Wallenberg Hall in theMain Quad and the Peterson Build-ing at the Institute for Design,will fa-cilitate fruitful collaboration.

    Huang pointed out that theculture of innovation at Stanfordalso facilitates groundbreakingdiscovery.

    At Stanford, you have permis-

    sion to fail,he said. At some places,theres a deep sense of disappoint-ment. Here, we just want to know,What did you learn from your fail-ure?

    Peterson,too,believes that such abold and fearless spirit will be neces-sary as engineers prepare to tacklethe technological problems of thenew millennium.

    The Huang Center is an outwardand visible sign that we are focusingon engineering education for the21st century, she said.

    Contact Samantha McGirr at [email protected].

    HUANGContinued from front page

    NEWS BRIEFS

    We are focusing

    on engineering

    education for the

    21st century.

    NANCY PETERSON

    The Stanford Daily Wednesday, October 6, 2010N 3

    The Stanford Daily is looking for the next

    generation of leaders.

    Apply for a 2010-2011 business internship.

    Complete the application by Wednesday, Oct. 6 at 11:59 p.m. and send to [email protected].

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    Traumatic head injuries resulting from hard hits, like the one that sidelined junior wide receiver Chris Owusu (81)in Stanfords match-up against Oregon last Saturday, are of increasing concern within the football community.

    With the Pac-10 setto become thePac-12 as soon asnext year, a foot-ball championship

    game to determine West Coast su-premacy is quickly becoming a reality.

    Immediately,the biggest question tome is where the game would be held.

    There are two schools of thoughtone is that it could be held at the site ofthe higher-seeded team,akin to the wayprofessional sports conduct playoffs.The opposing view is that it could beheld at a predetermined neutralsite.

    I think that the game must be held atthe stadium of the higher-seeded team,and I dont think its even that close.

    According to ESPN.coms Joe

    Schad, Pac-10 Commissioner LarryScott and the powers that be in the Pac-10 are considering Las Vegas; Los An-geles;Seattle and Glendale,Ariz., for apotential neutral-sitetitle game.

    Los Angeles, Seattle and Glendaleall throw up immediate red flags be-cause of their supposed neutrality. Iunderstand that it would be cool tohave the championship game at Seat-tles Qwest Field, home to the NFLsSeahawks,and a very nice stadium in itsown right. But if the idea is to playsomeplace where no team has a distinctadvantage, how can the game be equi-table when the University of Washing-ton is just 10 minutes down the road? Infact, UW is slated to play its homegames at Qwest in 2012.

    I wont even begin about Seattles

    weather in December.L.A. has the same neutral prob-

    lems.Would any team find it fair to playUSC or UCLA at the Rose Bowl? Idont think so.Not to mention that theRose Bowl should be reserved for theactual Rose Bowl.It would be very awk-ward for Oregon to win the Pac-12 in theRose Bowl, only to be rewarded withanother trip to Pasadena weeks later.

    Games in Las Vegas would be easierlogistically, as there are endless hotelrooms and travel would be simple,but Ithink Las Vegas would easily outshine

    the game. The city wouldnt stop towatch the game it wouldnt evenslow down. The stadium also seats36,800 and has terrible parking. Im

    talking pure desert dust.But before I continue,lets just come

    clean about something.The real reasonbehind the debate about where to holdthe game and in fact the real reasonthere will be a game at all is money.

    The additional revenue generatedby an extra marquee game makes it lu-crative for the conference,and the com-missioner and league executives wanttheir title game to be sexy. Corvallis,Ore., is not sexy. Neither is Pullman,Wash.Were Oregon State or Washing-ton State to have the top seed some day,the title game might have to be playedthere.

    So yes,leaving the title game locationup to chance is somewhat risky. Andsome argue that there would not beenough time between the end of the Pac-12s regular season and the title game(usually about two weeks) for the prop-

    er infrastructure and hoopla to be set up.Fine.Those are all perfectly logical

    arguments against letting teams hostthe game.But before you go along withthe majority and side with the big-money executives, think about this Stanford Stadium at night,filled to thebrim with raucous Stanford studentsand alums all cheering for their team towin the championship on their turf.Anentire campus consumed with Pac-12football fever.It could happen.

    I think that students should have thechance to root on their team in the con-ference title gameat their stadium.Or atthe very least make it a fantastic roadtrip to someplace like Autzen Stadiumin Eugene or yes, Qwest Field if Wash-ington were the high seed.The stadiumswould sell out for sure, something notguaranteed and rather unlikely if thegame involved out-of-market fans.

    (The 2008 ACC titlegame was held awayfrom most of its mem-

    ber campuses inTampa, Fla ., anddrew 27,360 fans in a65,000-seat stadium.)

    And there is some-thing to be said for giv-ing the higher-rankedteam home-field advan-

    tage. If we sanction it inevery professional sport, why

    dont we do it in college?If the Pac-12 adopts a neutral-site

    championship model, I believe thatsome of the luster is lost from the gameitself. Perhaps the most appealing as-pect of the college football environ-ment is the atmosphere around thegame.Joy and electricity spread far andwide on college campuses everywhereSaturday mornings.

    Please, Larry Scott, dont take thataway. Please, Pac-12, give part of thegame back to the students and the cam-puses that make college football gamesfar and away the most well-attended

    sporting events in the country.

    Contact Miles Bennett-Smith at [email protected].

    With the Pac-12 offi-cially set to beginplay next season,itstime to open up thedebate of where the

    conferences new football champi-onship game should be located: at aneutral site, or on the campus of theteam with the best conferencerecord.While there are strong argu-ments on both sides,the best thing forthe conference to do would be tohold the game at a neutral, off-cam-pus location.

    To give a quick overview of the cur-rent status of discussions, Pac-10 offi-cials are debating between severalsites,as well as the on-campus option.Six cities are currently receiving seri-

    ous consideration: Glen-dale,Ariz.; San Diego;Los Angeles; SanFrancisco; LasVegas and Seat-tle. The fron-trunners areSan Franciscoand Seattle Los Angeles is aweak choice be-cause the winnerof the game wouldbe going right back tothe Rose Bowl in January,Glendale is already the site of aBCS bowl,San Diego started out asa dark horse candidate and Las Vegas(while nearly ideal) doesnt have anappropriate venue.

    So why should the new Pac-12choose to stage its championshipgame at one of these sites anyway?The arguments for staying on campusare pretty strong namely, it would

    give teams further incentive to playfor a better final record and make iteasier to fans to attend games.

    However, this scheme could back-fire in any number of ways. Lets befully honest the reason the Pac-12wants a championship game is be-cause the game would generate a fairamount of money for the conferencethrough ticket sales and (mainly)media contracts with big networks.Putting the game in a home stadiumwould work quite nicely if, say, USCwon the conference the Trojanswould certainly fill their 90,000-seatstadium, and they have an ideal loca-tion to attract a whole mess of mediaattention.

    Should the game end up in somegodforsaken location like Pullman,Wash.or Corvallis, Ore.,this equationwould be totally reversed.Yes,the sta-diums would most likely be sold out,since fans of the home school wouldundoubtedly buy up every seat.How-

    ever, the conference wouldnt attainanywhere near the media exposure itis looking for,and the game would beeasily overshadowed by the big-ticket

    SEC and Big Ten championshipgames (held in Atlanta and Indi-anapolis,respectively).

    Competitively,there are also issueswith deciding which division champi-on would get the game. Though thePac-10 currently plays a round-robinschedule, with each team playingevery other team once a season infootball,the addition of Colorado andUtah will necessitate splitting the con-ference up into divisions.The Pac-12 isexpected to continue its nine-gameconference schedule, with each teamplaying five games against the rest ofits division and four games againstteams from the other division. Natu-rally,the strength of conference sched-ule will vary,but if one division is sig-nificantly weaker than another, itcould make the choice of host campusunfair.

    More broadly, this debate is aboutthe Pac-12 measuring up to the otherconferences with which it aspires tocompete. Today, the Pac-10 does notreceive as much media attention andrespect as some of its rival conferences

    indeed, this was part of the reasonthat the conference chose to aggres-sively pursue expansion opportunitiesin the past few months.Putting its newchampionship game at a bona fideNFL venue is an important step to-ward gaining the same kind of prestigeas the Big Ten and the SEC.Putting itanywhere else would broadcast thismessage: Were not quite goodenough to fill a big stadium with fans,so were going to throw some bullshit

    justifications around and put the gamesomewhere it would definitely befilled.

    The Pac-10 has aspirations of be-coming an elite conference,especiallyin football.In order to do that,it needsa championship game in a major citythat will attract the attention of the na-tion in a way that a middle-of-nowhere college campus just cant.The conference wants to play with thebig boys, but if it goes through withputting its marquee event on campus,

    itll have to stay at the kids table.Contact Kabir Sawhney at [email protected].

    HEAD TO HEAD

    Where should Pac-12 championship be held?Miles Bennett-Smith Kabir Sawhney

    ANASTASIA YEE/The Stanford Daily

    ANASTASIA YEE/The Stanford Daily