Want to Attend Stanford? Find A Room And Settle In!

Posted by: Avinash on Saturday, May 26th, 2007

Our second tier cousins across the Bay just continue to shine with prescience right into this sunny weekend. Not one day after Azia Kim gets outed for not being a Stanford student because RAs decided to put a yearbook together and realized no one knew anything about her, another nonthreatening squatter gets her own comeuppance from indignant, insecure Ph.D. students.

For the last four years, Elizabeth Okazaki has attended graduate physics seminars, used the offices reserved for doctoral and post-doctoral physics students and â€” for all intents and purposes made the Varian Physics Lab her home.

The only problem is that Okazaki appears to have no affiliation with Stanford and, according to physics professors and students, no real reason to be there.

Even more surprising on the heels of Azia Kim’s exposure as a squatter in Okada yesterday, Varian administrators know that Okazaki has become a permanent presence in the lab and yet claim to be able to do nothing about it.

In interviews with The Daily, several theoretical particle physics graduate students said that Okazaki has been in the lab almost every day over the last four years. At various points in time, they claim, she has assumed a locker space, procured rooms in which to sleep and perhaps even acquired a key to enter the building after-hours and over the weekend.

The funny part is ‘being able to not do anything about it’. Has she configured an anti-gravity force field from all the knowledge she gained from her seminar attendance?

Green said that he immediately proceeded to inform the lab’s administrative offices about Okazaki’s behavior, but to his surprise, he said that Physics Department Services Manager Rosenna Yau refused to block Okazaki’s entrance into the building.

“We met significant resistance from the office,” Green said. “When we tried to describe Okazaki’s behavior to them, they gave us the same stories that she had told us. The office was willing to accept every excuse she gave them.”

Surjeet Rajendran, a physics doctoral student who also complained to the administration, echoed similar sentiments.

â€œThe department is very aware of who this person is,â€ Rajendran said. â€œThereâ€™s tenderness for this girl, in my opinion, because sheâ€™s a past colleague of theirs.â€

We think this highlights how shitty everyone in academic departments treat the staff. These people do all your dirty work and then you whine and moan at them some more for all the money they earn that you, esteemed doctoral student, believe you should be getting. No wonder they don’t mind sticking it back to them and don’t give a crap about the girl intruding there–she’s probably the nicest person they’ve ever had to deal with.

And of course, there’s my favorite part of this article:

“She’s a visiting scholar in either the music department or the German studies department, Yau said. She”s shown me her visiting scholar card.

Awesome. She’s in one of those two things, but I’ve never bothered to check up on it. Let’s just leave it at that alright?

We honestly think these two characters can get some massive Hollywood attention with all this PR. This has all the makings of a Terminal sequel. Catherine Zeta-Jones should be called up immediately. Massive props you two, for breaking the system down.

(Discussion follows on the message board thread.)

Imposter II? Four Years in Varian [Stanford Daily]
Fake Stanford student caught [Cyrusfarivar.com]
(Image from louisgray.com)