The Bridge Peer Counseling Center signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Wednesday with the Vice Provost of Student Affairs (VPSA) Michele Rasmussen and Senior Associate Vice Provost Shirley J. Everett from Residential and Dining Enterprises (R&DE) that guarantees a permanent location and stable funding for as long as the Bridge is in operation.
For the past five years, Bridge live-ins have advocated each year to renew the next year’s funding and space necessary to operate the free, anonymous counseling service 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Live-ins volunteer to work the phone and walk-in service day and night by “living in” the Bridge’s Munger community space.
This year’s live-ins, who began a public campaign last month to keep the Bridge alive, say that they “couldn’t be happier” with the provisions of the MOU.
The live-ins met with Provost Jenny Martinez and Rasmussen on Feb. 4 to discuss subsidizing the cost of their community space.
The Bridge is currently operated out of Munger Building 1, Apartment 137, where it will remain indefinitely in accordance with the MOU. Previously, the cost of the four-bedroom apartment was $20,000 per bedroom for the year. This will now be subsidized by the University to $11,800 per year, which is the rate of an undergraduate co-op, the lowest on-campus housing rate. This subsidized cost falls under the stipend of around $12,400 each Bridge live-in receives each year.
Formerly, live-ins this year and last year had to pay the roughly $8,000 difference in housing cost out-of-pocket. Funding became an issue five years ago when the University moved the Bridge out of Rogers House during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rasmussen wrote in an email to The Daily that supporting the mental and emotional health of students “is a vital ongoing priority for Stanford,” and that she believes the new agreement “will be a sustainable arrangement that will meet The Bridge’s programmatic and live-in needs and address the year-to-year uncertainty that has been a concern in recent years.”
“We greatly appreciate what The Bridge means for our student community and are pleased that we have been able to mutually agree on a plan that will ensure its longevity at Stanford as a long-standing campus program,” Rasmussen wrote.
Live-in Eric Martz ’25 M.S. ’26 said it was “amazing” to see the amount of student and alumni support their campaign garnered in the past month. Their petition to “Save the Bridge” received over 2,200 signatures. Bridge staff tabled in White Plaza everyday — sometimes in duck costumes — to garner awareness and support. Hundreds of letters of support, including from the U.S. Senator and former Bridge live-in Cory Booker ’91, were printed and delivered to the Provost’s office. Over 45 Voluntary Student Organizations (VSOs) and the Stanford Graduate Workers Union (SGWU) signed their support.
“The community really rallied,” Martz said. “This is the end of a five-year process.”
According to the live-ins, the MOU is a step below a legal contract, but is stronger than the “handshake” agreement the Bridge had when it was in the Rogers House. Live-in Dante Danelian ’25 called the MOU a “handshake with a paper trail.”
The live-ins said they are celebrating the program’s upcoming stability. “It felt like we were opening our acceptance letters to Stanford,” live-in Julia Donlon ’24 M.S. ’25 said.
Donlon also expressed gratitude to the Undergraduate Senate (UGS) and Graduate Student Council (GSC) who passed bills to use discretionary funds to support this year’s live-ins who paid $8,000 each out-of-pocket for the Munger apartment space.
With the Center’s future stabilized, live-ins say it is “an exciting time at the Bridge,” as they recruit next year’s four live-ins and look for new staffers to join via their student-led peer counseling course, EDUC 193A: “Listen Up! Core Peer Counseling Skills.” Martz said he is excited to return as a live-in for the third time next year.
“In our campaign, we said that this was an opportunity for the University to make a positive commitment on mental health,” Danelian said. “The Provost and the [VPSA] have done that — this agreement brings long-term, newfound stability to the Bridge, and I’m hoping that it’ll last for years to come.”
This article was updated with comment from Rasmussen.