In the summer of 1933, world-famous physicist Wolfgang Pauli summoned postdoctoral student Felix Bloch to his Zurich office. What are your plans, Felix? he asked, presumably with the grandfatherly air of a concerned mentor.
Well, said Bloch, I received a letter from this place named Stanford University. It’s in California.
Pauli hardly batted an eyelash.
Every year, Bloch continued, they engage in tribal warfare over an axe.
You must go there! Pauli cried. They have character!
Yes, Stanford University does have character. So does its elder tribal counterpart, UC Berkeley. Together, they represent the best the West Coast has to offer: the oft-mentioned academic excellence, the storied athletic rivalry, and the weather that makes it nearly impossible to study.
Our rivalry provides a unique intersection of two elite private and public universities, and this relationship does not come solely in the fields of academics or athletics. For well over a decade now, the universities’ student newspapers, the Daily Californian and The Stanford Daily, have played an increasingly heated game of flag football: the Ink Bowl.
This year, at 9 a.m. on Big Game Saturday, on a wet field in South Berkeley, we began to watch a very bad game of football.
Hands missed flags but grabbed groins. Players talked trash far less eloquent than the zingers we produce in our pages. Our quarterbacks threw interceptions that would make even an Eagles fan cringe. In all, both sides turned in forgettable performance — which is just fine. We came to school to cover football, not to play it.
On the sidelines, we were having fun. We stood, drank the beer provided by the home team and half-watched our usually easygoing staffs compete for who can take this game most seriously. The conversation flowed as easily as the refreshments for two guys who just met an hour earlier.
But as our beer foam bubbled, emotions rose over on and off the field. Given the relatively low stakes, the ensuing uproar — elements of which can be found on The Daily Cal’s website, The Stanford Daily’s website and even nationally read media echo chamber Romenesko — appears ridiculous. Now the future of this tradition is cloudy.
But there’s an alternative narrative to this story, a brighter one, which played out both that morning last weekend and now in the words you read. As reporters, it is easy for us to fall into the trap of talking at people instead of with them — the trap we all fell into in the aftermath of the Ink Bowl. Our collective response was one of a journalist: Pointed words directed at an external group with no expectation or desire for dialogue.
This is an idea worth dispelling. Dialogue between two rival institutions is by no means impossible, and the resulting sum is oftentimes greater than its parts.
After Bloch came to Stanford, he crossed the bay to work with scientists at UC Berkeley’s cyclotron — work which led to the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physics. Now, we’re not saying we’re expecting any of those folks at Willard Park to pull out any Nobels any time soon, but a few Pulitzers would be nice.
To reach that goal, we should focus on continuing our history of collaboration rather than those moments of animosity. There is a very real chance that people on that field will lead our respective organizations, and perhaps even journalism, into their futures; it will be easier if we build toward that from the friendly and mutually beneficial relationship the Ink Bowl is meant to foster.
This column was written in collaboration with Brendan O’Byrne, the Executive Editor of the Stanford Daily. Contact him at [email protected]
Contact Jordan Bach-Lombardo at [email protected]
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