'Dear Stanford': Letter 24

A Collection of Letters in Support of Stanford's 23 Jones Lecturers

On August 21st, 23 Creative Writing lecturers were ‘future fired’ in a meeting with Deans, Directors, and Professors that oversee the program. Writing against the firing and in support of their teachers, students’ and alums’ letters to the administration alike have received auto-replies and brief responses to their concerns. This Substack is a space for these letters. This one is by Ellen Yang, ‘25.

Dear Stanford,

My name is Ellen, and I am a senior majoring in English and Linguistics. It’s hard to believe I’m about to start my final year here. Next week, I'll begin writing my honors thesis. Almost daily, I check flights from Boston to San Francisco, hoping to find tickets my family can afford so they might attend my graduation.

Four years ago, I moved across the country alone. My parents couldn’t fly with me. I arrived with four suitcases. The only way to get anywhere in the airport was by dragging them two at a time. I would hoist two up, run a few yards forward, then race back to retrieve the others. By the time I reached the exit, almost an hour had passed, and my coworkers from a tech startup were waiting to drive me to Stanford.

The day I moved into Stanford was my first time in California. My parents still haven’t been here. As the eldest of three and the first in my family to attend college in America, I had arrived in a place they could only imagine.

It’s strange having your coworkers move you into college, but that’s the version of the “American Dream” Stanford sells—a dream and a bet built on Silicon Valley, where humanity is often reduced to data points and innovation is synonymous with monetization. I know this world intimately. For the past four years, I’ve led marketing teams and designed viral social media campaigns for multiple multimillion-dollar companies. My last two jobs have been at generative AI startups, where some might say I’m scripting my own obsolescence. I started working in marketing at 15 because it felt like the most “realistic” way to stay creative while ensuring financial stability. Marketing, after all, is just a more profitable form of storytelling.

I began my freshman year as a Management Science and Engineering major, holding onto the hope that at least a minor in English might sustain me through grueling STEM courses. I was desperate to matter, to belong, to be seen as someone capable of changing the world. At Stanford, we all want to do something that matters.

The irony is that I grew up writing. I valued language above all else. As the child of immigrants, mastering English was essential—not just to help my parents navigate their new country, but to prove that I belonged in my predominantly white town. Despite scoring in the 99th percentile for reading and writing on Massachusetts’ state tests, I was repeatedly and forcibly placed in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes throughout elementary school because my parents had immigrated here. And even now, no matter what it looks like in places like California or anywhere else in this country, writers of color remain a minority—still too often dismissed, still othered.

My path as an engineer at Stanford ended a few months after my own life almost ended. After struggling through so many difficult quarters, I could not understand why Stanford was not working for me. I did not see the point of even going to my classes anymore because I knew that trying my very best in any them would still leave me at the bottom of the class. Higher education is an incredible opportunity—to attend the best university in the world is an immeasurable privilege. I could not reconcile with either opportunity or privilege because I thought that the point of college was to grow from good to great, to fashion myself into someone worthy of those two things. There was that sinking feeling that I was becoming less of myself, not more. After one particularly difficult set of midterms, I found myself screaming and crying on Wilbur Field, ashamed and lost, unable to see the point of it all.

The next quarter, I took a creative writing class on a whim. I hadn’t written fiction in years, but something in me still wanted to try. My first class was with Michael Shewmaker, who stripped away the intimidation of the short story and replaced it with permission—to create, to fail, to share. Austin Smith taught me that rigor and creativity don’t need to live on opposite ends of the spectrum—that a classroom could be as deliberate and artful as the writing it inspires. And most recently, Tom Kealey and Scott Hutchins taught me to lose my fear of the page. They helped me write a 50,000-word draft of the novel that had been buried inside me all along—one that is, funnily enough, about two high schoolers who, through writing to and with each other, survive a suicide cluster in their town.

Earlier this year, Stanford awarded me the Major Grant. With the $9,000 in funding (funding I had only received with the help of letters of recommendation from two Jones Lecturers), I revised my novel, shaping it into something closer to publishable. That led me to apply to Oxford’s Creative Writing Summer School, where I spent three weeks at Exeter College completely immersed in the craft of writing. There, I saw what it looks like when the arts are taken seriously. At Oxford, we stood up when our writing professors entered the dining hall. We read and wrote religiously, all grateful to be part of a robust creative writing program. This was a world where creativity wasn't an afterthought. It was the future.

Now, I’m working on the second, 75,000-word draft of my novel and preparing to search for a literary agent. It feels bold—even reckless—to say I want to publish this book and then many more. Until recently, I didn’t even call myself a "writer." But a month ago, I launched a Substack (newmaterialgirl.com) to share literary and cultural criticism informed by my study of English and linguistics, and last week, I got my first paid subscriber. Does getting paid to write finally make me a writer? Or is it the act of writing itself? At a university, and in a world, where writing feels undervalued, who decides what paths are worth taking? Who still believes that writing is a serious, viable pursuit?

You should. Writing is why I’m still here.

Please reconsider your decision to let go of the lecturers who transform lives. Save this program. Help your students choose hope.

Sincerely,

Ellen Yang

Class of 2025