I may never be in the position to return to, let alone succeed at, Stanford again. But I know for sure that the Bridge Peer Counseling Center made a difference in that process. It was terrifying and draining to navigate the Stanford bureaucracy as I resolved lingering concerns over academic suspension. The difficulty of it all made it all too easy for me to fall deeper into the “I can’t do anything right” hole. It’s the Bridge that helped me see a little more of why I am worth something in this life, rather than in one that would’ve otherwise been cut short.
I was able to meet the wonderful Bridge staffers (shoutout Mckenna and Meghan!) when I, to become a more conscious listener in life, took one of the classes required of all staffers in 2023. They represent a special brand of compassion and selflessness. It would be a betrayal of that and the life I am still living if I stood by as the University eviscerates the Bridge’s financial and structural support — at the expense of the students whose educational missions it claims to champion.
Long-term support for the Bridge is something that, in a Jan. 14 Graduate Student Council meeting, the Vice Provost for Student Affairs (VPSA) said the University may not continue. The University has effectively left the door wide open to the possibility of doing away with the Bridge’s campus residence, in addition to funding for the live-in staffers that support the Bridge through it all, during the 2025-26 academic year. We have to acknowledge that this is yet another disappointing chapter in Stanford’s blatantly anti-student excuse for leadership.
This is the “leadership” that simply stands by as faculty phase out the very lecturers that make the Creative Writing Program so beloved by students.
This is the “leadership” that is even dismantling the very community-oriented summer programs that make real differences in how first-generation, low-income (FLI) students succeed on campus.
This is the “leadership” that charts a new course on free speech based upon the work of a committee wherein student voices are outnumbered by faculty six-to-one.
This is the “leadership” that even operates upon a campus safety framework so disastrous that it legitimizes the work of the infamously anti-student Office of Community Standards (OCS) and subjected one of The Daily’s boldest student journalists to seven months of disciplinary limbo.
What makes this situation especially disheartening and blood-boiling is that our recent leadership transitions used to provide us some cause for celebration. President Jonathan Levin ’94 was praised less than a year ago as a leader of “unimpeachable integrity” and himself feigned commitments for administrative departments to be “enabling forces” for the student body.
One would expect that Stanford leadership, especially one of our own alumni, would know better than to be hostile towards student interests at every turn. But the reality beyond speeches, interviews and puff piece statements in the Stanford Report is a sad state for student affairs. “Leadership” that tears academic passions and community building to shreds, evades basic accountability and risks cutting students’ lives short is the definition of “do as I say, not as I do” governance. Were students to treat each other like the University treats them, there would be no words to describe such mass callousness.
We cannot afford to stand by as the University brazenly entertains its idea to let the Bridge die. We must tell our professors en masse that our very mental health is being put on the chopping block by the people at the top they answer to. We must push the Faculty Senate into preventing the president and provost — the latter being the chief budgetary officer for this disgustingly penny-pinching university — from going to a single meeting without answering for the anti-student realities of their work. We must send our elected student leaders the message that, until things change for the better, the University must be obstructed at every possible turn.
It may be easy to acquiesce to the anti-student status quo, but we owe it to the Bridge and to each other to become the village that this moment calls for. The very love for each other that fighting for the Bridge represents would set us on our way to successful advocacy on the other serious matters impacting us. Peer counseling is what makes the Bridge special, and peer solidarity is what will keep it alive and thriving.