Stickers distributed across campus by the Haas Center for Public Service, boldly featuring the phrase “Stanford Votes,” have prompted widespread confusion about how the ad campaign got approved despite being provably false.
“Stanford Votes?,” remarked a visibly confused Akul Bhargava, president of Stanford in Government, upon first seeing the stickers. “Ummm… no, we don’t. What the fuck?”
With under 20 percent of eligible students voting in the 2014 midterms and less than half doing so in the 2016 presidential elections, it is unclear how the Haas Center settled upon the easily-disproved “Stanford Votes” slogan. Leaders from the organization declined to comment on what chain of approval the sticker design went through or what statistical process was used to arrive at the strikingly inaccurate conclusion that Stanford votes.
“We ran the numbers, and the data speaks for itself: the stickers are a logical impossibility,” said Dr. Ricky Phiskers, professor of applied statistics. “Stanford doesn’t vote; not for legislators, not for executives, not for ASSU senators, not for American Idol contestants. It is literally impossible to wrangle the numbers in any way that would even imply that Stanford votes.”
Some have even gone so far as to speculate that the slogan is a typo and that Haas in fact meant to print stickers reading “Stanford Dotes,” “Stanford Gloats” or “Stanford Would Rather Get Eaten Alive by Dozens of Rabid Voles Than Vote.”
Now, amid widespread skepticism concerning their ability to draw accurate conclusions from observable reality, Haas Center leadership is reportedly gearing up for a second “apology tour” sticker blitz that will see them distributing stickers of things Stanford students actually value, like a picture of single boba pearls or the phrases “I ❤ Calculations” and “Let’s Complain About Politics.”
The remainder of the “Stanford Votes” stickers will be distributed at Stanford College Republican meetings — the only student organization the Haas Center could find that has 100 percent voter turnout.
