A Lesson For Stanford From Dispute
University must be part of community

By Mark Simon

Stanford won in the dispute over the long-term future of its western lands, and despite alarmist rhetoric about the issue from a variety of quarters, including this one, the republic is expected to endure.

But there's a cautionary tale in what university officials went through and how they behaved: They have to start thinking of themselves as an institution that is part of the community, not apart from it.

It is a lesson they could learn, and the proof is that, with some exceptions, they don't seem to think they need to.

To review, the Santa Clara County supervisors gave formal approval this week to Stanford's plans to develop nearly 5 million square feet of new campus construction in the next 10 years.

The plans include 3,000 urgently needed apartments and town houses for students, faculty and staff. And the plan calls for a 25-year moratorium on development of the 2,000 acres of open space in the foothills to the west of the core campus.

What nearly tipped the apple cart was a proposal last month by then- Supervisor Joe Simitian, now a member of the state Assembly, to extend the moratorium to 99 years on about half the foothill's lands.

That's when Stanford officials went ballistic, saying Simitian's proposal threatened the entire negotiated package.

And that's when I weighed in, objecting to the tone of Stanford's rhetoric as arrogant and reflective of a prevailing attitude that the university resented being subjected to public scrutiny and authority.

Ultimately, Simitian lost the war, and this week's action by the supervisors was equivalent to the formal signing of terms.

But he won a number of skirmishes, largely in the form of requirements that the university provide written assurances that it is limiting campus growth and protecting certain open spaces.

What is implicit in the final package is an underlying distrust of Stanford, something that appears to surprise the handful of university officials who might be aware of it.

It's not a distrust that blew up, full-sized, in a columnist's imagination, but is the direct product of years of disputes with neighboring communities and an increasingly internal attitude that can only be described as ivory tower.

Once, Stanford was renowned for the freedom with which it dispatched information -- good and bad -- about itself.

Perhaps because of the wounds the university suffered during accusations in the early 1990s that it was grossly overcharging the federal government for research costs, its news operations have tilted increasingly toward public relations instead of open dissemination.

By turning inward, the university has become an object of suspicion and accusations that there is more going on than Stanford will admit -- bigger plans for the university-owned shopping center, for development of high-tech incubators, for roads, for campus facilities.

Insiders say the appearance of uncertainty and the seeming lack of forthrightness really reflects a lack of planning -- that the university is a place with much less hierarchy than might be supposed.

Maybe it's true Stanford has done a poor job of revealing its side of the story, but that's no one's fault but the university's.

It's also fair to say Stanford probably doesn't get adequate credit for the ways it does try to be a good neighbor -- providing open access to the campus and its facilities, providing land and $10 million for a school, building housing at a rate unmatched anywhere else in the area, providing land for a community center.

But what the university seems to overlook is what the rest of us see quite clearly -- Stanford is a business, a substantial research enterprise that receives, among other things, significant taxpayer support.

It is one of the key engines of Silicon Valley and it acts much like many other businesses, putting its own interests first – interests that are financial, prestige-driven and, on some occasions, at odds with the surrounding community.

That's what I meant when I described Stanford as self-serving, a comment that stirred Stanford Provost John Etchemendy to write a letter to the editor.

"What does it mean to be self-serving? We are a service organization. We serve students and hope to continue in this mission for generations to come. Moreover, we pursue knowledge to serve the public good," he wrote.

Rotary Club is a service organization dedicated to the public good. Stanford is a major enterprise with financial interests that run from high- tech investments to medicine to shopping malls.

They want us to take as an article of faith their good intentions, the reliability of their stewardship and the value of their work.

Why should we? Because they say so?

That's why there are public institutions -- to oversee operations that, despite their own convictions, might find their interests at odds with those of the community.

It reminds me of Stanford's response during the overbilling scandal, which can best be summed up this way: We can't be doing anything wrong because we're Stanford, and you'd see that if you only understood.

That explanation wasn't enough for congressional subcommittee members who took Stanford to the woodshed, and it's not enough for the university's neighbors.

Mark Simon can be reached at (650) 299-8071, by fax at (650) 299-9208, or by e-mail at msimon@sfchronicle.com. Write him c/o The Chronicle, Press Room, 400 County Center, Redwood City, CA 94063.

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