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 May 3 in….
1898: The Daily noted that polling for student government elections would be held tomorrow. Multiple races — including those for president, vice president, secretary, newspaper editor and several sports team managers — were uncontested.
1915: The Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity was granted a charter to open a branch on Stanford’s campus, joining the 19 other fraternities already present. Phi Kappa Sigma had 26 other active chapters already, including one at the University of California.
1920: A large photograph of Herbert Hoover ran on the front page of The Daily, captioned “Make Him President!”
1927: The Daily announced that a University of California faculty member, Dr. S.J. Holmes, would be visiting campus that day to deliver a lecture entitled “Eugenics and Civilization.”
1932: “Al Capone today received the news that the United States Supreme Court had refused to intervene in his income tax conviction,” The Daily reported.
1943: A series of front-page wartime stories included headlines such as “Americans, French Take 6,000 German Prisoners,” “U.S. Bombers Attack German Sub Base” and “Russian Troops Break Six-Day Nazi Attack.”
1945: A pair of front-page Daily articles referenced the suicides of Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, and Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda.
1955: The Daily reported on the University’s announcement that Encina Hall would be used for temporary undergraduate housing until the completion of a new section of Stern Hall. The same article included details on the then-new Crothers Memorial Hall, intended to house fifth-year engineers and graduate students in engineering and “the sciences.”
1965: The Stanford in France program’s building was defaced by critics of America’s policy in Vietnam with phrases like “Vive Le Viet-Cong Socialiste” and “U.S. Assassins,” as well as swastikas.
1972: The Daily reported on a statement from Law School faculty that reaffirmed the previous year’s admissions standards for minority students. The faculty agreed that admissions standards “should be applied with ‘flexibility’ in individual cases,” but they refused to decide on quotas for minority admissions, despite demands by the Stanford black, Chicano and American Indian law associations for a quota of at least 50 minority students admitted to the law school starting in fall.
1985: The Daily covered the campus debate on whether or not to divest from South African companies due to the nation’s practice of apartheid. According to the article, the University’s Board of Trustees would have the final word. In the same issue, The Daily noted 252 protesters of South African apartheid were arrested on the campuses of Harvard and UC Berkeley.
2007: A lecture by Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina ’76 was recapped by The Daily. In the lecture, Fiorina focused on gender inequalities, noting “Out of the top company executives, 16 percent are women and 14 percent are minorities, and those statistics haven’t changed for the past two years. It’s no longer about unprepared women. People fear people who are different from them.”
Contact Brian Contreras at brianc42 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Holden Foreman at hs4man21 ‘at’ stanford.edu.