Stanford Report, February 18, 2004

RICK YUEN, ASSISTANT DEAN AND director of the Asian American Activities Center, and his wife of 20 years, MABEL TENG, spent the three-day weekend, including Valentine's Day, reciting marriage vows at San Francisco's City Hall. Teng, who is San Francisco's assessor-recorder, and Yuen, sworn in as deputy marriage commissioner last Friday, separately presided over dozens of the civil ceremonies that joined more than 2,500 same-sex couples together as "spouses for life." Teng officiated at the first same-sex marriage performed last Thursday after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom directed city and county officials to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. (Yuen said he lost count of how many marriages he'd performed after the first 100.) Couples who had hurried to the San Francisco City Hall from across the country to marry before a court order could halt the ceremonies sometimes exchanged flowers and leis in lieu of rings during the vows, Yuen said. "There were tears in everybody's eyes. It was so enriching and thrilling and moving for me." Yuen is deputized as a marriage commissioner until Feb. 22, but he said he found the job so fulfilling, he's thinking of having his commission extended.

SENIOR AARON LEVINE, A FORMER sports editor for the Stanford Daily who aspires to a career in broadcast sports journalism, was already thinking that this spring would be a good time to start sending out audition tapes to television stations in small regional markets. Levine's job-hunting plans got a huge boost when he was chosen from more than 10,000 applicants as one of a dozen finalists for the ESPN sports reality program Dream Job. During the six-week series, contestants ("all amateur nobodies, including myself," as Levine described them) will sit in as sports anchors, interview players and conduct game play-by-play reports. Weekly votes will eliminate competitors until only one remains -- the winner will receive a guaranteed one-year on-air contract as an anchor on ESPN's SportsCenter. "It really would be a dream job. I love sports and I love talking about sports," said Levine, a history major who has worked in sports journalism since high school. Levine stopped out this quarter to participate in the series, which will premiere on Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. PST. Currently, he is holed up at home in Calabasas, Calif., watching ESPN in preparation for the show. "It's the best studying I've ever done," he said.

ANDY COE, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY relations, and LARRY HORTON, associate vice president and director of government and community relations, pulled on bright goldenrod-colored "Terman Tiger" T-shirts last Friday, as they celebrated the rededication of Terman Middle School in Palo Alto with students, parents, faculty and administrators at ceremonies at the school. The former Terman Junior High School had been closed but was reopened after Stanford gave the Palo Alto Unified School District a $10 million gift in exchange for development rights. "It's terrific," Coe said of the school. "And it fits in with our mission of education, obviously."

Write to Barbara Palmer at barbara.palmer@stanford.edu or mail code 2245 or call her at 724--6184.

Barbara Palmer