The Graduate Student Council (GSC) voted to pass a joint resolution to affirm a reduction in prices at Late Night at Lagunita and Arrillaga Nights.
At the beginning of the academic year, Late Night dining prices rose. According to the resolution, the rise in prices caused concern among students about affordability and equitable access to late-night dining options.
However, since the concerns, Stanford Residential and Dining Experiences (R&DE) has lowered prices in response. The resolution recommends R&DE to continue working toward maintaining affordable prices in late-night dining for students.
Some of the GSC councilors did raise questions about their involvement with the joint resolution. Artem Arzyn ’25 M.S. ’25 said he was curious why the GSC was being involved in a matter he believed primarily affected undergraduate students.
“I don’t know of any graduate students that do go to Late Night at Lagunita or Arrillaga Nights,” Arzyn said.
Gordon Allen ’26 and Ivy Chen ’26, co-chairs of the Undergraduate Senate, explained that the UGS was committed to pursuing as many joint resolutions with the GSC as possible. However, Allen recognized that graduate students do not frequently use late night dining options.
Allen said that the bill would mostly impact undergraduates, since they do not have access to kitchens or other food options.
However, he said that “graduate students are not necessarily excluded from this. It’s just a matter of the fact that undergrads just have less of an option to be able to cook their own food, and they have to take advantage of this.”
Along with the late-night dining resolution, Pamela Martinez MFA ’25 and Arzyn had a conversation, while the rest of the GSC listened, about how the concept of institutional neutrality fits into Stanford’s administrative actions. In their conversation, Arzyn brought up the example of the “No Justice No Peace” banner, which has been removed from Green Library.
“I think it violates freedom of speech,” Martinez said in reference to the removal of the banner. “Students need to feel safe in order to even be able to voice their own opinion.”
Arzyn replied by providing clarification on what counts as institutional neutrality and how the university handles a case like this.
“I think the distinction here is because [the banner] was put up by the library,” Arzyn said. “There was the question of whether the library is speaking for Stanford by having this banner up.”
The councilors ended that conversation by acknowledging the current frustration surrounding freedom of speech and institutional neutrality.