In the late 1960's, Stanford student activists began fighting for control of their education by forming the Student Center for Innovation in Research and Education, which offered workshops on current political and social problems. In 1970 these workshops evolved into classes called SWOPSI - Stanford Workshops on Political and Social Issues -that explored subjects left out of the standard curriculum. Students and community members could create a lesson plan, reading list, and an action project to share their SWOPSI experiences with the rest of Stanford. With faculty sponsorship and approval from the SWOPSI Board (composed of students, faculty, and one community representative) a proposed class could be recommended for approval to the Dean of Undergraduate Education, who had the final say.
SWOPSI courses consistently provided the creative forum where marginalized topics made their first appearance. Subject matter ranged from AIDS to organic farming, multiculturalism to Self Defense for Women, environmentalism to ethnic studies. The action-orientation brought speakers, singers, community-service experiences to campus, and resulted in publications ranging from underground newspapers to a two-volume critical evaluation of Department of Defense research done by Stanford professors. The program's legacy is still with us in very concrete ways. Synergy, a cooperative house on campus, grew out of a SWOPSI on communal living. The Stanford Recycling Center is also a SWOPSI product. Many current classes started out as SWOPSI classes; especially those on gender, ethnic studies, and the environment : CE 170, Introduction to Feminist Studies, The Meaning of Being Handicapped, and Indigenous People and Environmental Problems all began under SWOPSI.
| The 1992 disposal of SWOPSI brought yet another narrowing of the definition of a Stanford education. |
SWOPSI's relationship with the university was always rather push and pull, and the program was often pressured to regularize. In 1974 and again in 1984, the program survived reevaluation and budget cuts. In 1992 the Dean of H & S ended SWOPSI in the conservative backlash following the Kennedy crisis by criticizing the $150,000/yr. program as too expensive and lacking in academic rigor. Although students drafted a proposal to run it on about $30,000/yr., the administration was not open to alternatives to retain the program. For this small savings, the administration not only silenced student voice in curriculum design and isolated itself even more from the surrounding community, but it also devalued an entire form of learning. SWOPSI courses tended to involve more current and applicable learning than institutionalized classes. Experiences outside traditionally defined academia were validated through SWOPSI. Students had the opportunity to learn from, say, grassroots organizers from East Palo Alto, who offered different insights from, for example, a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. SWOPSI was the link between the theoretical and the practical, and with its quarter-by-quarter scheduling, brought current social and political problems under academic scrutiny. While similar programs still run in other respected institutions, like Brown and UC Berkeley, the 1992 disposal of SWOPSI brought yet another narrowing of the definition of Stanford education.