Our Town: Faculty wants more say Our Town: Faculty wants more say (July 14, 2004)

by Don Kazak

othing has caused more abrasiveness between Stanford University and its neighboring communities than issues of planning, land use and growth.

Now a faculty committee has notified the administration and Board of Trustees that the faculty wants a stronger voice in both planning and community relations.

The administration initially responded that the faculty already has a strong-enough voice, thank you.

For two years, a group of faculty members -- the Faculty Senate Planning and Policy Board -- has been wrestling with the university's approaching limits to growth and its sometimes sour relations with the surrounding community.

The group issued its report to the Faculty Senate and Stanford Board of Trustees in June with two key recommendations now under consideration by Provost John Etchemendy: To have greater faculty role in campus planning and to form a faculty committee on community affairs.

Stanford has attempted to improve the town-gown dynamic in recent years, chiefly through the highly popular Stanford Community Day each April. But a leisurely day in the sun with a few thousand neighbors only lasts for so long.

Geophysics Professor Mark Zoback, chair of the faculty group that issued the report, spoke on town-town difficulties at the June 10 Faculty Senate discussion.

"They like everything about us except us," Zoback said, quoting a colleague. He said the community deeply appreciates the academic work of the university, "but when asked about us as a property owner and a neighbor there are as many negative opinions as positive ones."

Much of the recent negative community perception of Stanford came from the acrimonious hearings in back in 2000 to approve its current county general use permit.

Isaac Stein, a Palo Altan who just completed the maximum 10 years on the university's Board of Trustees, the last four as chairman, said in hindsight one thing he would have done differently was to focus on relations with the university's neighbors.

"I think if we could have worked harder on our communications, we could have built better relations between town and gown," he said.

Yet one gets the feeling that Stanford's leadership believes all the university has to do is convince everyone how wonderful it is and town-gown headaches will be cleared up, like taking a massive Excedrin.

Communication means listening, too, and I'm not certain after all these years how really adept or interested the university is in hearing viewpoints and criticism that comes from the other end of Palm Drive.

The faculty desire to form its own community-relations committee could be interpreted as a vote of no confidence on the job the university has been doing. The famously hard-line positions the university takes whenever it gets into tussles with the community must embarrass some faculty members, especially those who live off campus.

Etchemendy said last week that he would put some thought in getting more faculty involved in community relations. "I'm always hesitant to set up a committee that would be a waste of time," he said. "But I would be delighted to have some help -- the more help the better."

But Etchemendy was initially dismissive of getting more faculty involved in university planning when he spoke at the June 10 Faculty Senate meeting. He noted that he, President Hennessy and the deans are involved in planning and are all faculty members, too. That didn't exactly go over well with some faculty members there. As one noted, half-joking, "the deans are the enemy."

Etchemendy is now embracing the idea of including more faculty in planning for the university's future. That makes sense for what is seemingly a faculty-driven institution. Etchemendy said he would put some faculty members on the committee that oversees all campus planning. It has just one faculty member now - himself.

Planning for growth is a sticky issue in another way. The faculty group's report cited limits to growth the university is facing, a topic university officials have resisted discussing with county officials. But they will have to talk about it in time, which its own faculty apparently wants to do.

The battle over the campus general use permit in 2000 was a donnybrook at times. The battle over limits to growth will make the earlier scuffle seem tame.

Weekly Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.

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