Bay Area Universities, Colleges, and Schools

[RML]

[RML]

Originally Posted by alexis91

I will post some more pics tomorrow, taken by me on last summer.

We're waiting for your pics. Thanks in advance.

[Aaron W]

Lots of nice photos!

[RML]

[RML]

I used to go here. They're building a new one right now which is 4 times bigger than the old one.

[davsot]

great photos. The first aerial photos look like they're photos of a model of Stanford....

[Mr Equis]

Stanford is it a religious university?????????

[WinoSoul]

Huge!

[timoga_lover]

I hope someone will contribute on this thread...

[dl3000]

Originally Posted by Mr Equis

Stanford is it a religious university?????????

The church in the middle is non-denominational, but you could probably say it has Christian roots with no affiliations.

[Animo]

Originally Posted by timoga_lover

I hope someone will contribute on this thread...

We do have a San Francisco Bay Area forum now. You can find lots of photos there or even ask some members from the South Bay.

[Animo]

ROTC enrollment officer Michael Pope, left, speaks with Kaitlyn Benitez-Strine, 17, at Stanford University. (Dave Getzschman / For the Los Angeles Times / April 29, 2011)

By Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times
June 1, 2011

Reporting from Palo Alto -- On an early May morning 43 years ago, fire swept through Stanford University's Navy ROTC building, destroying a structure that had been damaged in another suspicious blaze just two months earlier.

No arrests were ever made in the two arson fires, but they came at a time of angry, sometimes violent demonstrations against the Vietnam War on college campuses nationwide. Those protests often targeted the closest symbol of the U.S. military, the Reserve Officers Training Corps — with more than 200 campus ROTC units reporting vandalism during that war.

Flash forward to a much different time.

On a recent afternoon, Stanford senior Ann Thompson wore her Army ROTC uniform with pride as she helped staff a recruiting table for the military training program at a campus activities fair. She chatted with visitors about the ROTC's scholarships as a few dozen students marched nearby to protest the program's likely expansion at Stanford.

"There definitely are people not supportive of ROTC, but we still have respectful conversations," said Thompson, 22, of Paso Robles. "I can't fathom anyone burning a building down."

Helped by the recession, more active recruiting and a sea change in student perceptions of the military, enrollment in ROTC programs on college campuses is booming.

Even with ongoing U.S. involvement in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya, participation in the program has surged 27% over the last four years — to 56,757 men and women, according to the Defense Department. The military boosted the number of ROTC scholarships to help expand the wartime officer corps, and the recession made the offers attractive to students.

Today's college students, who never faced a military draft and whose childhood memories include the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are more receptive than their parents' generation to seeing fellow students in uniform. Returning veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and are now enrolled in college also create a more sympathetic, and familiar, image of the military.

In another sign of the changing times, the congressional rescinding last year of the "don't ask, don't tell" ban on gays serving openly in the military has recently led Stanford, Harvard and several other elite universities to take steps to welcome the ROTC back to their campuses for the first time in 40 years.

On-campus military training still raises hackles for some. Yet even critics acknowledge that most current college students are willing to accept the ROTC.

Gay activist Marco Chan helped organize anti-ROTC rallies at Harvard this spring, focusing on the military's continuing ban against transgender individuals. A senior from Vancouver, Chan, 23, called the school's decision to restore the ROTC discriminatory: "To make a highly symbolic gesture, Harvard has thrown its own student body under the bus," he said.

But Chan said many Harvard students seemed sympathetic to the military. "They grew up in a post-911 world," he said. "The war on terror has been a part of their daily lives."

Jimmy Ruck, a 21-year-old Stanford senior and Army ROTC cadet from Millbrae, Calif., will join a military intelligence unit as a second lieutenant after he graduates next month.

"We are putting a face on the military, showing that we are not some faceless, heartless machine, that we are individual human beings and that we are doing this for a variety of reasons," said Ruck, who along with Thompson is one of 14 Stanford students who are enrolled in the ROTC but must train at other Bay Area campuses. "Some are doing it for leadership, for public service, or if you want to pay for your college."

Ruck applauded the April 28 Stanford faculty vote to invite the program back to the campus and said he hopes the university's small ROTC contingent will grow, especially if its cadets no longer have to travel elsewhere to train.

Experts say the recent change of heart by influential American universities will boost the prestige of the program, which was founded during the Civil War on the belief that the nation needs a well-educated officer corps imbued with civilian values.

"It shows historically that the military and civilian society are trying to bridge the gap," said Donald Downs, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and coauthor of a new book about the ROTC.

But those schools still will play a small role in the national ROTC, which never left most U.S. campuses. Nearly 500 units are in existence, and many other schools without their own programs send students to train at other area colleges, including Stanford's Army ROTC members training at Santa Clara University, Navy at UC Berkeley and Air Force at San Jose State. (ROTC scholarships can be worth as much as $43,000 a year at expensive schools; all recipients must then serve four years in the armed forces, with four more in the reserves.)

Despite UC Berkeley's reputation as a center of '60s radicalism, the ROTC remained on campus and about 150 students are now enrolled.

Don Johnson, a rhetoric major from Oakland who is soon to become an Army second lieutenant, said off-campus antiwar activists have hassled him when he's worn his ROTC uniform. But no student ever bothered him.

"Usually, people will ask what I'm doing after school and a lot of seniors understand the need for a job, and the fact that I have one makes them envious," said Johnson, 22.

In the Vietnam era, hostility toward the ROTC soared as the war's casualties increased and reached a height when U.S. troops were sent into Cambodia in 1970. Student protesters occupied ROTC centers at many colleges, and fires and explosions damaged the program's buildings at the University of Michigan, Kent State University and the University of Colorado.

The ROTC was pushed off some campuses after faculty and administrators stopped giving academic credit for its courses and imposed other restrictions. Programs elsewhere died for lack of interest after the draft ended in 1973 and fewer men sought to become officers as a way to survive the war.

From 1968 to 1974, the ROTC closed 88 units, many at private schools in the Northeast, and opened 80 replacements, mainly at friendlier public colleges in the South and Midwest, according to Michael Neiberg, a military historian at the University of Southern Mississippi who wrote a book about the program.

Nowadays, the Pentagon is happy to be wooed by Stanford and other top private schools. The Navy signed an agreement with Harvard in March and, last week, with Yale and Columbia to re-establish units. But officials said they must study costs and the need for officers before promising other units. "New universities interested in ROTC programs will each be evaluated for the most efficient use of these resources," said Eileen M. Lainez, a Defense Department spokeswoman.

At schools with the ROTC, students and administrators say the program has become just another strand in the fabric of campus life.

"It's just another thing that's here, that's available," said Michelle McGrain, a student government leader at the University of Maryland. The student response "is kind of neutral," she said. "It's not a huge issue."

larry.gordon@latimes.com

[Animo]

As UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium patches up their aging concrete facilities, the Cal football team is set to kick off their 2011 season in San Francisco starting in September. The team's first game against Fresno State will actually take place at the home of the Niners down in Candlestick Park, but after a short roadtrip to Colorado, AT&T Park becomes bear territory for the rest of the team's home games in 2011.

While us townies continue to fret over the possibility of more unruly sports fans clogging transit and unloading their bladders into the gutters of SoMa, the move to San Francisco has some of the in-state players (Read: Giants fans) on Cal's roster fired up. As Left Tackle Mitchell Schwartz, who played in Mission Bay when Cal took on Miami for the 2008 Emerald Bowl told the Chronicle yesterday: "As a Giants fan, I love the idea of playing there. For me, it gives a little extra excitement to it."

On the other hand, the rest of the Giants fans might not be so excited about the shared stadium. If the Giants keep the season alive in to the playoffs (god willing), there could be some scheduling conflicts. Notably, the big ticket rivalry between Cal and USC scheduled for Thursday, October 13th will overlap with one game of the National League Championship Series. Traveling SoCal fans who already make hotel arrangements might get the raw end of that deal though - Cal athletic director Sandy Barbour told ESPN the college team is looking at another game at Candlestick or possibly even Oakland Coliseum as a backup.

The Big Game between Cal and Stanford is (mercifully) down in Stanford this year.

http://sfist.com/2011/08/03/reminder...es_over_at.php

[Animo]

The University of San Francisco announced today that they've purchased 101 Howard Street, the former Folger Coffee Company headquarters and warehouse for $36,500,000. Built in 1905 on landfill, the building (barely) survived the 1906 earthquake and currently houses the Wharton School of Business' San Francisco campus, which is decamping shortly to a larger cup at Hills Plaza a few blocks away. There's a history of the site, with vintage maps and images, courtesy of one of the building's admiring tenants. USF was founded by Jesuits as Saint Ignatius Academy in 1855 on Market Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets, became Saint Ignatius College as it moved west and finally became the University of San Francisco in 1927 at the current location on Fulton Street in the Lone Mountain neighborhood. Presumably the new site will make USF's programs more attractive to students already working in the neighborhood, plus there's easy access to BART and the Transbay Terminal.