Computer science professor Keith Winstein sits on a couch in the Branner lounge, eating sushi on a paper plate with chopsticks. Students help themselves to sushi and sit on the couches around him. A student proceeds to tell Winstein about her experience in one of his classes.

“Did you not like the class?” he asks. She explains she once argued with him about a book, both of them laughing at the memory.

This informal dialogue was how Winstein’s Civic Salon on Feb. 6 commenced. The Civic, Liberal and Global Education program, or COLLEGE, a first-year requirement, introduced optional Civic Salons this quarter to provide an opportunity for students to continue conversations from COLLEGE 102: “Citizenship in the 21st Century” in a residential setting. COLLEGE 102 instructors host the salons in first-year dorms, but they are open for all to join. 

“[Vice Provost for Student Affairs Michele Rasmussen and I] were talking about ‘what could we do to really try to bridge the learning-living divide?” said Dan Edelstein, professor of French and Director of COLLEGE. “I don’t think anybody wants to turn the dorms into a classroom, but there’s a sense that perhaps we could be doing more to inject a spirit of conversation and inquiry into the dorms.”

Rasmussen said she was excited to take advantage of the residential aspect of Stanford to create a more “holistic” student experience. 

“We don’t compartmentalize your academic experience, with your extracurricular experience, with your residential experience. It all should feel part of a whole,” she said. 

Edelstein said one of the goals of the COLLEGE program, which debuted in 2020, was to connect the student body and stimulate discussions on campus that “bleed into student life more generally, so they wouldn’t just be contained in the class setting.” 

Civic Salons are intended to promote this exchange and for students to meet faculty. Rasmussen hoped the Civic Salons would make faculty more approachable to first-year students, so as to deepen student-faculty relationships. 

“We do want [Civic Salons] to be the locale for great conversations, for engagement, for students to feel free to share their thoughts on topics, even if the topics might be tough topics,” she said. “To learn how to listen to different perspectives and have the time to do that in an environment that’s inherently not threatening or scary.”

For the first Civic Salon on Jan. 16 in the Schiff Resident Fellow (RF) house, former Law School Dean and professor emeritus Paul Brest led a discussion about free speech. According to Edelstein, 30 people attended, with a group of students staying an hour over time. Rasmussen said that various RFs have reported substantial student turnout at the three Civic Salons so far. 

Kyle Miller ’28, who lives in Schiff, attended the event as he liked the idea of talking with Brest in a comfortable setting. The group discussed court cases, went through sheets with questions and broke into groups to create their own university policy on protests. Miller said the informal setting and medium-sized group allowed people to comfortably share their ideas. 

“I think it was a good opportunity to meet other people in my dorm and talk about things that aren’t often talked about with your other classmates,” Miller said. “I feel like a lot of times you’re really busy… but you don’t have time to sit down and talk about other things… that are fun and exciting.”

For Winstein, it was an honor to talk with students in their dorm. He said that most of his learning in college was not in the classroom, as he saw the goal of COLLEGE as helping students have constructive disagreements and discussions with peers throughout the first-year class.

“We would value it as a success if we get you talking at the dinner table,” he said. “And if we’re not there yet, there’s room to improve. But here [at the Civic Salon] we actually were talking at dinner, because everyone had sushi. So, this is maybe a shortcut.”

During the salon, Winstein discussed the role of technology in society and his life with students asking questions. Throughout the room, other students studied and played Jenga. One student knit while listening to Winstein speak. 

At one point, Winstein took out a small circuit he built while he was an undergrad to hack the key card system at MIT. “Do you have an extra one of those?” one student asked.

Winstein ended his talk with an open-ended question: “What do you all think?” 

Deena Safiulla ’28, a Branner resident, was not planning to attend Winstein’s Civic Salon but ended up joining because it was so accessible. 

“It was really cool to hear a COLLEGE professor talk very openly and freely, because I think in COLLEGE, everything is very structured and we’re following a set regimen all the time,” Safiulla said. “It was nice to have a very free and open discussion in the same nature of COLLEGE, but without the structure.”

Geophysics and electrical engineering professor Dustin Schroeder, faculty director for COLLEGE 102, said that the Civic Salons are meant to be a place for students to continue the conversations in the classroom that could go on “if you had infinite time.” 

“If Citizenship class is a practice or a sport, and the real world is a game, maybe the Civic Salons [are] a scrimmage,” Schroeder said. “It’s a little closer to the conversations you’d have and the challenges you’re facing [in the real world], but still in a community of people who live together and are choosing to have this conversation.”

After Winstein’s talk, Safiulla was inspired to attend more Civic Salons in the future. 

“I feel like this event was a very good overview of what COLLEGE embodies, and that’s just talking and pondering and sometimes not really being sure what the answer is,” she said.