Volume 4: White Devil Chapter 295 We Are Different
At five o'clock in the morning, Tommy, dressed in his jogging clothes, sat on the back seat of Sophia's bicycle and slowly wandered on the route that Stanford University President Donald Kennedy must pass.
"I have no objection to you chatting with our principal during your morning run, Tommy. But you are wearing your jogging gear, so why don't you run a single step and still want me to carry you on my bike?" Sophia complained unhappily while pedaling a bicycle.
Tommy was flipping through a page in his hand. On it was a list of support provided by him, Jason, or the company to some computer and Internet research projects at Stanford University. Hearing Sophia's complaint, Tommy said without even looking up:
"Our principal, Donald, will run ten kilometers on campus every morning, rain or shine, unless he's on a business trip. I only run five kilometers. If I force myself to run with him for too long, my knees will get hurt, so I have to make sure I use the five kilometers of the morning run as much as possible in conversation with him. Besides, I'm saving you. That woman Quinn slept in the same bed with you and Susie last night. She's definitely going to do something to you after you've drunk a lot of beer. You have to remember, Sophia, homosexual harassment is also harassment. If you're willing, I can ask Delia to help you extort a large sum of money from Quinn, and then we can use the money to get your breast augmentation done."
"Wait, how do you know Quinn would do anything to me?" Sophia turned her head suspiciously and looked at Tommy behind her.
Tommy looked at the words on the paper. "Because that's what I would do if I slept in the same bed with you."
"The world is not full of rotten people like you, Tommy. Quinn didn't harass me and Susie. We just talked about the changes in Stanford in recent years and then went to bed." Sophia rolled her eyes at him and said.
Tommy looked up at Sophia in confusion: "That's it?"
"That's it," Sophia said affirmatively.
Tommy moved closer to Sophia and sniffed her long hair. He found that there was indeed no perfume like Quinn's. He said regretfully, "We were just talking about the changes at Stanford. Why did you lock the door and close the curtains? Jason and I ran to the living room several times in the middle of the night under the pretext of drinking water. We passed by your door and listened for a long time. Strictly speaking, your behavior of closing the door and closing the curtains is a fraud."
While the two were talking, in the distance, Stanford University President Donald Kennedy, wearing a dark blue sportswear, slowly appeared on the road.
Tommy immediately jumped off his bike and started warming up on the spot. When the other person came closer, he stepped over and greeted him: "Good morning, Mr. Kennedy, I am..."
"Tommy, I haven't suffered from Alzheimer's yet, so it's not so easy for me to forget your name." The old man slowed down his jogging and said with a smile, "Good morning, Tommy, and Sophia O'Connor over there."
Donald Kennedy, the president of Stanford University , announced on his first day in office that as long as he was in good health and did not leave the school, he would go jogging on campus every morning, and he encouraged everyone to jog together to exercise.
And if there is any issue that is not convenient to discuss in a formal setting but you want to talk to him alone, just wait for him on the way to his morning run, and then they can communicate while jogging.
From existing educational problems in schools, to reforms in certain colleges, to even the stress faced by teachers at work, students' anxiety due to excessive academic pressure, and even how to make a girlfriend, in short, as long as you are willing to get up early and are willing to treat this skinny old man as a sincere listener, then you can talk to him about everything.
In the beginning, many people would wait for him on his morning run route to chat with him, vent their complaints, and talk about work. More than half of the undergraduate major reforms that Stanford University has carried out in the past decade, the promotion of equality for minority students, the ban on drug use on campus, and the alleviation of discrimination against female faculty at work, were reported to him by faculty or students during his morning run, and he then held a meeting to discuss the issues carefully before introducing the relevant changes.
This method, which allows everyone at Stanford to have a relaxed conversation with the president without any interference, has continued for ten years since he was hired as president of Stanford University by the Board of Trustees in 1980.
The longer he served as president, the fewer students and faculty members accompanied him for morning jogs. That was because this president was very responsible and many problems were effectively solved. Even the most picky students or teachers had to admit that Donald Kennedy was the president who talked the most with students in Stanford's history. Since he came to Stanford, Stanford has undergone tremendous changes.
The specific manifestation of being recognized by students is that even though Donald Kennedy has not yet retired, he has been ranked first by many students in various votes on the ranking of Stanford presidents, tied with Wallace Sterling, who developed Stanford University from a financially troubled regional university to a financially stable one, and even created Silicon Valley, helping Stanford University win the title of "West Coast Harvard."
After all, after a decade of development, Stanford University no longer needs the label of "West Coast Harvard", which is obviously a label that piggybacks on Harvard's popularity. Last year, Stanford University ranked fifth in the US university rankings, with alumni donation funds totaling 2 billion, leaving behind a number of Ivy League schools.
The total donation of up to 2 billion US dollars shocked all American universities. Many university-related magazines launched a special investigation. After the investigation, it was found that although the total amount of donations from Stanford University alumni to their alma mater has not yet matched that of Harvard and Yale, the number of individual donations and the total number of donations from graduates have begun to surpass them.
This is all thanks to Donald Kennedy. After all, when he first took over Stanford University, the scandal of the "Stanford Prison Experiment" was widely publicized by other universities, mocking that rich kids could enter Stanford as long as they spent money and legally abuse their poor classmates. Newspapers even mocked him, saying that this expert in human biology would be personally responsible for reformulating the "Stanford Prison Experiment" and bringing it into the more perfect and brutal 2.0 era.
Nowadays, any university that says it does not envy Stanford's changes is lying. The previous Stanford Medical School was too small and its equipment was outdated. Donald Kennedy directly persuaded the board of directors to raise funds to rebuild a new medical school. Universities across the United States poached medical professors at high prices, and all hardware facilities were replaced with world-class standards. Once the new medical school was completed, its faculty and hardware rankings directly jumped into the top ten in the United States.
How could those medical school students who graduated from here not donate? After all, when many alumni graduated, Stanford Medical School was unknown, and they could only be outperformed by graduates of other well-known medical schools in various competitions. Now, overnight, graduating from Stanford Medical School is no longer a deduction, but a plus. After graduation, their alma mater has created more opportunities for them. So of course they have to give back to Stanford after making money.
In addition, only 5% of students in other universities can get financial aid or subsidies from the school, but at Stanford after Donald Kennedy's reform, this proportion is as high as 33%, that is, for every 100 students, 33 have received financial subsidies from Stanford University. If you have excellent grades and don't want to affect your studies because of part-time work after class, it doesn't matter. As long as your transcript is amazing enough, the school can help you extend your tuition loan and provide many kinds of financial subsidies linked to grades to ensure that you can devote more energy to study.
How can these students who rely on various subsidies from Stanford University to complete their studies not be grateful to Stanford University after graduation? How can they express their gratitude? Donate to it.
It is thanks to these donations that Stanford has grown bigger and stronger, and the student-faculty ratio has changed so quickly that it is unbelievable.
For example, when Tommy entered Stanford University, Stanford University had 8,300 students, but only 337 tenured professors. Now, Stanford University has 9,700 students, but the number of tenured professors has exceeded 950, which means that there is one tenured professor to teach and answer questions for every ten students.
"Tommy, don't talk to me about your overly professional issues. Just chat with me about light topics like friends. I need to keep a clear head. Several guys from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Washington are coming to see me in the morning. I have to stay alert to deal with them." Donald took the initiative to state his request without waiting for Tommy to speak.
He might not have any impression of other students, but how could he not remember Tommy Hawke, who donated a medium-sized library to Stanford during his tenure?
Moreover, in the past few years since graduation, this guy has donated money every now and then. There was a time when the board of directors held a meeting because of its frequency. They couldn't help but joke that Tommy was like those criminals who went out to rob in the cowboy era of the West. After robbing, they only kept a portion of the money to replenish guns and ammunition, and took the rest home to let Stanford families raise other brothers and sisters, ensuring that these little guys grew up and went out to rob with him, so that he could quickly transform from a lone thief into a Stanford gang.
"Is the Ministry of Education here to argue with you again? What does the Ministry of Foreign Affairs want to talk to you about? Stanford has no intention of separating from the United States and declaring independence." When Tommy heard the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he thought the principal had said something wrong. Donald Kennedy could not have known officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If they really had to meet and talk, it should be officials from the Ministry of Education.
The quarrels between the president of his school and William Bennett, the Secretary of Education during President Reagan's term, were so frequent that they almost became a weekly drama. If there was no news of the quarrel between the two in the education or university-related newspapers and magazines of a particular week, readers of the newspapers would only suspect that the newspaper editors were lazy and forgot to publish it, and would never doubt that the two did not quarrel that week.
The feud started in 1985 and lasted for more than three years, culminating in the replacement of the Minister of Education.
There was only one reason for the quarrel: Stanford University wanted to be more open to absorbing students of all ethnic groups from all over the world, while William Belt was a member of the Republican neoconservatives and had always disagreed with the plan proposed by Stanford University.
Of course, Stanford University won in the end, which is why there are now a large number of Asian computer industry practitioners on the Stanford campus and in Silicon Valley.
"No, I'm not wrong. It's the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is currently finalizing with the Soviet side the itinerary for Gorbachev's visit to the United States next month. The other party proposed to visit Stanford University during the visit. They want to hear my opinion on this and want to learn from me what research achievements Stanford University can show him, what research successes need to be hidden, and what kind of welcome banquet to arrange for him." Donald Kennedy said as he wiped the sweat off his face with the towel hanging around his neck.
Gorbachev is going to visit the United States and will also visit Stanford University?
Tommy had no memory of this incident in his previous life, but that didn't stop him from immediately putting away the professional questions he was about to discuss with the other party and continued to ask the principal in a casual tone: "Why did the other party propose to visit Stanford? Yale and Harvard should seize this opportunity no matter what."
"I don't know. The only thing I can be sure of is that he probably won't discuss the Stanford Prison Experiment with me, because I have told the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the phone that if the other party dares to bring up this topic in front of me, whether with good intentions or bad intentions, I will tell him the joke about the Soviet queues, so the Ministry of Foreign Affairs promised to ensure that this will not happen." Donald said as he ran: "Have you heard of this joke? A Soviet worker was queuing to buy bread. After queuing for most of the day, it was not his turn, so he angrily said to the person behind him: I've had enough, you save my seat, I'm going to kill Gorbachev! Then more than two hours later, he came back, and the person who helped him save the seat asked excitedly: Did you kill Gorbachev? He said: No, there are more people queuing to kill him than those queuing to buy bread."
After the joke was finished, Donald didn't hear Tommy's response. He turned around and saw that Tommy had turned around and ran back the same way: "Tommy, you're running in the wrong direction."
"Run slowly, Mr. Principal, and keep a clear head. I'll come back to accompany you when I have time. Now, I suddenly remembered something more important." Tommy waved at the principal without looking back and continued to run towards Sophia's position.
Sophia was riding her bicycle leisurely to enjoy the morning scenery of her alma mater. Suddenly, Tommy ran back in a hurry and took out a cell phone from the backpack on her back. The action scared Sophia, and she quickly supported the bicycle with her legs to avoid falling: "What happened! Tommy! Be careful!"
"Nothing. I'm going to call Susan and ask her to ask Professor Rice to come out for a meeting. The black woman is an expert on the Soviet Union and an adviser to the president. The president doesn't know it now, but she must know why Gorbachev came to visit Stanford." Tommy dialed Susan's number in his hand, and his seemed to be answering Sophia's question, but also like talking to himself.
Hearing the words Soviet Union and Gorbachev, Sophia looked at Tommy in confusion and asked, "Weren't you going to talk to the principal about computer network projects such as routing deadlock avoidance, global adaptive routing, and wormhole routing switching? Why did the topic suddenly become the Soviet Union?"
"See if there is a chance to sell all of Stanford's products to the Soviet Union before other companies do. If necessary, we can even give a batch to the Soviet Union like the damn Red Devil Murdoch did." Tommy said, urging Susan to answer the phone quickly.
"Aren't you afraid that because of this behavior, you will eventually be accused of being a Soviet spy like Murdoch?" Sophia asked with a smile, looking at Tommy who had an anxious face.
In the cool morning breeze, Tommy said seriously, "It's different. Murdoch from Australia is definitely a spy if he does this. I do this simply because I hope that the Soviets can better understand American values and increase America's influence in the world by using American computer systems."
