The feature “On this day in Stanford history” details events that occurred on the same date in past years at Stanford.

According to The Stanford Daily’s archives, on Feb. 22 in….

1911 – The Palo Alto Women’s Christian Temperance Union sponsored an essay contest with a $50 prize for the best paper on the topic of “The Relation of Individual Total Abstinence to National Prosperity.”

1944 – Concerns about “cafeteria-”style education and poor academic advising were raised at the ASSU Forum on “Education at Stanford: An Evaluation.”

1971 – The Daily printed Peter Knutson’s account of his experience testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee. During his testimony, Knutson spoke out against the extension of the selective service law and allegedly said, “This talk [of war] would cease rather quickly if men like the President and Senators were drafted, given an M-16 and told to lead the first wave.”

1972 – The Daily reported that the Navy had prohibited its officers from taking government-financed graduate programs at Stanford and other schools that had phased out the ROTC program.

1977 – Bertram Wolf, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institute, died of severe burns after his robe was ignited by an electrical wall heater.

1980 – Plans for an underground addition to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) were unveiled. The multimillion dollar center was designed to house an energy beam three times more powerful than any other in the world.

1991 – The Associated Students of Stanford University Senate passed a bill supporting the extension of married benefits to gay and lesbian faculty and staff couples. The bill recommended that the University give employees’ same-sex partners access to the benefits already available to legally married spouses, including medical insurance, retirement annuity funds and access to University facilities.

1993 – The Daily reported on Rapper Ice-T’s speech at Kresge Auditorium, in which he told students, “Do not believe that America is so intellectual that we are beyond revolution…it can happen anywhere.”

2008 – Tree candidate Jack Cackler ’09 was disqualified from Tree Week after Band leadership determined that one of his stunts – charging through a group of friends who struck him in the chest with fluorescent light bulbs – exposed  him as “not particularly smart.”

Contact Michal Leibowitz at michalgl ‘at’ stanford.edu.