At its meeting on Thursday, the Graduate Student Council (GSC) discussed these topics with representatives from Residential and Dining Enterprises (R&DE) and the Mail and Package Services division of Stanford Land, Buildings and Real Estate (LBRE MPS), who answered questions posed by councilors and other graduate students.
Mofopefoluwa Akindiran Ajani M.S. ’25 Ph.D. ’29, a GSC financial officer, asked R&DE about morning construction noise on campus.
Assistant Vice Provost for Student Housing Operations and Stanford Conferences David Ward responded by explaining that R&DE is not in full control of the construction projects on campus.
“We are absolutely involved in construction, but we’re not the primary construction management operation on campus for these large scale projects and builds,” Ward said.
Ward empathized with graduate students about disruptions caused by recent construction projects.
“I completely understand, particularly over in Escondido Village right now, and there is a lot of work that is going on,” Ward said. “We are part of the conversations and schedules are made so that we can inform folks … one of the things that we require is that there is not noisy work before 8 a.m. so we definitely want to hear from [students].”
The councilors discussed how R&DE evaluates dining hall performances for both undergraduate and graduate students. Eric Montell, Assistant Vice Provost for Stanford Dining, Hospitality and Auxiliaries, outlined how R&DE tracks this information.
“We’ll be coming out with a survey soon that will include grad students,” Montell said. “We have a text line in the dining halls where students text us and ask us questions. Our staff that work in the dining halls regularly get feedback from undergrad and grad students; we take all input from many stakeholders to determine what should be occurring in the dining halls.”
The GSC then discussed ongoing issues with package delivery at EVGR with representatives from LBRE MPS. Students reported that building managers are giving incorrect directions for package pick-up locations. Moreover, graduate student Jake Chasan MBA ’26 explained that couriers are currently dropping off packages in random locations, causing confusion and lost mail.
“There’s food being buried by Amazon packages from these couriers, which is attracting rats, and there is raw meat that is sitting underneath packages on EVGR A, B, C and D,” Chasan said. “The problem is that people don’t know that it’s happening, and then their packages have food and rats in them.”
Erica Victorson, Senior Director of Mail and Package Operations for LBRE MPS, was receptive to Chasan’s feedback, expressing a desire to work together to get closer to solving this issue.
“I think that this is a conversation we need to have with the student population about what is the right way to do this that works for everyone,” Victorson said.
Victorson acknowledged the growing severity of the issue, and said the Stanford Department of Public Safety has been patrolling the areas where packages are dropped off.
Artem Arzyn ’26 M.S. ’26, GSC’s diversity and advocacy chair, said that while undergraduate students’ mailing fees may be covered by financial aid or other means, graduate students do not share that luxury.
“Graduate students are kind of in this middle position of just trying to survive,” Arzyn said. “I think the concern is a dysfunctional system — it hasn’t been corrected yet — and we’re being held responsible for a service that is not being provided, let alone correctly, to the students.”
Correction: This article was updated to clarify the positions of Erica Victorson, David Ward and Eric Montell, and to state that representatives of both R&DE and LBRE’s Mail and Package Services division were present at the meeting. The Daily regrets these errors.