For the last four years, Elizabeth Okazaki has attended graduate physics seminars, used the offices reserved for doctoral and post-doctoral physics students and — 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 (http://stanforddaily.com/article/2007/5/24/imposterCaught), 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.

Okazaki, the students said, has claimed to be a visiting scholar in the humanities, looking to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on string theory. On several instances, she has said that she was working with Physics Prof. Leonard Susskind, one of the world’s most respected string theorists.

But Susskind told The Daily that Okazaki was not officially associated with him or his lab in any way.

“As far as I know, she has no official connection with anyone in the physics department,” Susskind said. “In fact, as far as I can tell, she has a very limited knowledge of physics itself.”

Susskind also told The Daily that Okazaki had said she was affiliated with an academic department on campus, yet StanfordWho and Facebook searches for Okazaki showed no indication that she has ties to Stanford.

When approached by The Daily after she emerged from an advanced physics seminar for graduate students, Okazaki repeatedly asked that a story not be written and declined to confirm or deny that she is a squatter or imposter. The woman also would not confirm her name or describe the nature of her research. Before walking away and declining to comment, Okazaki said she found the whole pretense of the story “to be quite bizarre.”

But to the physics doctoral students who work in the lab, Okazaki’s lack of an affiliation with Stanford was not surprising. Dan Green, a doctoral student in theoretical particle physics, said he became suspicious that Okazaki was at the lab under false pretenses more than two years ago. He said that his relationship with Okazaki soured about a year and a half ago when she moved into a visitor’s office in the building and stayed there for more than a month.

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.

“The department is very aware of who this person is,” Rajendran said. “There’s tenderness for this girl, in my opinion, because she’s a past colleague of theirs.”

In an interview with The Daily, Yau acknowledged meeting with several physics students about Okazaki’s presence in the lab and confirmed that Okazaki worked in the administrative offices as a temporary employee for a brief period. The administrator, however, defended Okazaki’s presence in the lab.

“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.”

Yau also vehemently disputed the fact that Okazaki has a key to the lab, which some students said Okazaki has used on several instances to open office doors. The administrator claimed that Okazaki’s frequent presence in the lab, especially after the building had closed and on weekends, could be attributed to the carelessness of the physics students, who she suggested must be permitting Okazaki to enter the building.

“We have sent out so many emails because students don’t ask questions when people follow them in through the door,” Yau said. “Students even prop the door open on weekends.”

The department administrator also suggested that Okazaki has not committed any crime in attending a number of advanced physics lectures and seminars or in assuming office spaces in the building. Yau told The Daily that the lab was a “public space” and that she could not legally prohibit Okazaki from entering the building without a restraining order.

The administration’s apparent unwillingness to prevent Okazaki from assuming a permanent presence in the building angered many of the doctoral and post-doctoral students who spoke with The Daily. The students attributed Okazaki’s four-year-long stay in the department to both the administrative office’s refusal to act as well as the attitude in the physics department.

“She’s smart enough to leave most of the faculty alone,” Green said. “Most people here are non-confrontational, so few have really pressed the issue. Her visible presence changes over time depending on how much people have tried to get rid of her.”

While no one who talked with The Daily viewed Okazaki as a “security threat,” most described her as a “nuisance,” and some suggested that her continuing presence evinced how easy it is to gain unauthorized access to the building.

Over the last three months, different laboratories, including the Varian Physics Lab, have been burglarized several times with hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment stolen. Green expressed frustration that the department’s administrators continually called on physics students to be more vigilant when he said the office refused to deal decisively with Okazaki.

“The most likely person to prop the door open,” he said, “is the person who doesn’t have a right to be here and who’s not on the list.”

Many students said they felt sorry for Okazaki, who they speculate is homeless.

“I feel really bad for her,” said Alessandro Tomasiello, a post-doctoral scholar in theoretical particle physics. “I don’t want to have a conversation with her that will actually hurt her.”

Green partially attributed the lack of protest regarding Okazaki’s four-year-long stay in the department to the fact that Okazaki is an Asian woman.

“If she were a large, intimidating man, there’s no doubt that something would be done,” he said. “There’s a huge bias against appearances and it’s prevented people from taking action. I can’t see any reason why our department is special. This could really happen all over the place.”

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If you have any information related to this story, please contact Daniel Novinson at dannovi@stanford.edu.

Copyright The Stanford Daily 2007. All rights reserved.