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Wednesday February 12, 2020 vol. CXLIV no. 8
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U . A F FA I R S
BEYOND THE BUBBLE
U. professor McComas Woodrow Wilson School announces eleven recipients helps design recordof the 2020 SINSI scholarship breaking spacecraft
By Naomi Hess Associate News Editor
On Friday, Feb. 11, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs announced the 2020 cohort of the Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative (SINSI). Four people, including three seniors and one alumnus, were selected for the graduate program, and seven undergraduates were selected for the prestigious summer internship program. The SINSI program “encourages, supports, and prepares high-achieving students to pursue careers in both internationally and domestically focused federal agencies,” ac-
ZANE R / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
STEVE GRIBBEN / NASA, JOHN HOPKINS APL
The Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs.
Artist rendering of the Parker Solar Probe approaching the Sun.
cording to the Wilson School website. This year featured a record number of 75 applicants, according to SINSI co-directors Rick Barton and Kit Lunney. “Our selection panel found their dedication to public service, seen through both on- and off-campus commitments, to be inspiring,” they said in the Wilson School statement. Laura Hausman ’20, Mikaylah Ladue ’20, Cassie Rodriguez ’19, and Alexandra Zalewski ’20 were admitted to the SINSI graduate program, which includes a full tuition and living expenses scholarship for a two-year Master in Public Af-
fairs program at the Woodrow School. The program also features two-year positions with executive branch departments or agencies, amounting to four years in total. Hausman is a politics major from New York, N.Y. pursuing a certificate in American Studies. Her senior thesis investigates “how U.S. voters respond to disclosures of experience with mental illness by candidates seeking elected office,” according to the statement. She has previously interned for Springboard Collective, Senator José Rafael Nadal Power of Puerto Rico, and federal Magistrate Judge Cheryl L. PolSee SINSI page 2
By Allen Shen Associate News Editor
The University Space Physics group and David J. McComas, a professor in the astrophysical sciences department, contributed to building a record-breaking spacecraft, which is providing new, crucial information about the solar winds and particles from the Sun’s outer atmosphere. Launched atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Aug. 12, 2018, the NASA Parker Solar Probe mission, nicknamed “Parker,” was a $1.5 billion project. The mission seeks to “touch the Sun,” discovering the secrets of the star’s corona by performing unprecedented obser-
vations and measurements of solar winds, magnetic fields, and energetic particles that originate from the star’s mysterious outer atmosphere. Known as an enormous ball of extremely hot hydrogen and helium, the Sun has often been assumed to be hotter at its center than its outer layers. In reality, the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, can be nearly 300 times hotter than its surface, or photosphere. The NASA Parker Solar Probe mission will aid scientists in measuring, observing, and imaging the corona. Set to be completed by 2025, Parker will perform seven Venus fly-bys, using the planet’s gravitational pull to complete 24 orbits around the Sun. See SPACECRAFT page 3
STUDENT LIFE
STUDENT LIFE
Q&A: Exit interview with former USG President Virk ’20
Almost 500 University students register for Datamatch matchmaking service ahead of Valentine’s Day
By Yael Marans Senior Writer
Zarnab Virk ’20 is the departing president of the Undergraduate Student Government (USG). The Daily Princetonian sat down with Virk for an exit interview to reflect on her tenure. The following interview transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and concision. The Daily Princetonian: How
In Opinion
do you feel having finished your term? Zarnab Virk: I feel like it was a really long journey. It was a great experience, but I think I am glad to be able to have time to work on academic work like my thesis. Hopefully, this next semester will be really thesis-focused, and I would love to have more free time to hang out with friends and enjoy the last of college. DP: Can you think of any high-
Columnist Richard Ma argues that the rise in racism from the coronavirus outbreak exposes a history of Western sinophobic attitudes, while a Princeton student explains their struggles with bipolar disorder and urges campus to become more inclusive.
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By Sam Kagan Assistant News Editor
“Which building are you? ARC building — ugly on the outside, OK on the inside Frist — knows a lot of people but … has no real friends East Pyne — just think: Timothée Chalamet Lewis Arts Center — likes Elon Musk Nassau Hall — loves being the center of attention.” As of Tuesday evening, over 465 University students answered this and 18 other humorous questions for Datamatch, an annual matchmaking survey administered by students at Harvard College. Described online as a free “service created for college students by college students to find true love,” the program runs annually during the lead-up to Valentine’s Day, coming up on Friday. Now in its 25th year, Datamatch boasts over 24,800 users from 31 schools across North America. Wildly popular, over 80 percent of Harvard students typically fill out the survey. This is Datamatch’s first year at the University. The service operates at every Ivy League institution except for Cornell Uni-
Today on Campus 4:30 p.m.: Professors discuss the history young Americans need for civic formation in the panel, “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.” Lewis Library 120
versity. “After students at each college have filled out these surveys, we run it through our proprietary matchmaking algorithm to give matches to students within each school,” said Teddy Liu, a leader at the organization with the title “Supreme Cupid.” “Then those matches are released on Valentine’s Day.” On the morning of Feb. 14, each of the University’s participants will receive approximately 10 algorithmically-generated student matches, ranked based on “compatibility.” Though the service is notably romantic in focus, one may select to seek “love,” “friendship,” or “anything, really.” Users will be shown the name, graduation year, and residential college of their matches. Features like profile pictures, bios, and social media accounts number among the optional add-ons, while an in-website chat tool is intended to facilitate communication. In addition to official matches, Datamatch enables a “search” feature to which users may opt-in. The tool will allow students to enter the name of a limited number of Datamatch participants and, See DATA page 3
WEATHER
COURTESY OF ZARNAB VIRK
Zarnab Virk ’20 served as the fifth female USG president in an iteration of five to serve the class of 2019.
lights from your time as president? ZV: There were several highlights in terms of things that we got done. A few of them that come to mind are the academics committee working on the CPT/ OPT (Curricular Practical Training/Optional Practical Training) reform, which was over the summer because, as you may know, a bunch of international students were not able to work during their internships during this time. Another big initiative that we had was sustainability, so we passed two referenda for that. Our Sustainability Task Force is now also a standing committee of USG, so it’s more institutionalized. I’m glad we got to do a lot of work with sustainability and also work with the Office of Sustainability to create a carbon-neutral campus plan. Another one of the big ones was menstrual products in bathrooms. DP: Are there any challenges that come to mind? ZB: I feel like for a lot of the initiatives or projects that were started by either myself or members of USG, a lot of times there would be a lot of roadblocks to accomplishing those things. For example, they would have been tried in the past and, like, they wouldn’t have worked out then, either, and they are still not workSee VIRK page 3
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The Daily Princetonian
Wednesday February 12, 2020
As part of his certificate in the Teacher Preparation Program, he will be a studentteacher in the Lawrence School District in the fall of 2020. Through his student-teaching, he will gain “classroom-based experience he hopes will make him a more effective policymaker,” as the press release explains. Baughman is a Wilson School concentrator from Columbia, Md. pursuing certificates in Chinese Language and Culture, Applications of Computing, and Statistics and Machine Learning. Last year, she interned in the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations on the East Asia and the Pacific team. “I’m excited to spend my second summer serving in the government, and I hope that this helps me find a career path in public service that is challenging and fulfilling,” Baughman wrote in an email to The Daily Princetonian. Cohen is a sociology concentrator from Jersey City, N.J. pursuing certificates in African American Studies, Statistics and Machine Learning, and Teacher Preparation. In the summer of 2019, she was an intern at the Founda-
Asian Studies and the History and Practice of Diplomacy. Last summer, she interned at the Brookings Institution conducting research on U.S.China trade. Wayner is a civil and environmental engineering major from Baltimore, Md. pursuing certificates in Sustainable Energy, Urban Studies, and Environmental Studies. Wayner is an opinion columnist for the ‘Prince.’ She will be interning at the Strategic Energy Analysis Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., during which she will research policies relating to the integration of energy storage into South Asian electricity grids. “I was ecstatic when I heard the news and am honored to be a part of this cohort, especially as the lone sophomore,” Wayner wrote in an email. “Each one of my fellow interns are amazing and inspiring humans, and it’s humbling to know that I’m in the same cohort as them.” Hausman, Ladue, Zalewski, Rodriguez, Bateman, Cohen, Daniel, and Salgame did not respond to the requests for comment from the ‘Prince’ in time for publication.
Barton, Lunney: our panel found their dedication to public service inspiring SINSI
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............. lak in the Eastern District of New York. Ladue of Levittown, Pa. is majoring in anthropology with a focus on legal and political anthropology. She is also pursuing certificates in Latin American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies. In summer 2019, Ladue served as a counseling intern with the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia, where her tasks included giving legal information and referrals to local women. Ladue has conducted research about the the intersection of gender and drug trafficking with the Gender in the Global Community project through the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination. Rodriguez of San Bernardino, Calif., graduated cum laude in 2019 with a concentration in politics and certificates in East Asian Studies and the History and Practice of Diplomacy. She interned at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, a Japanese foreign policy think tank, where she conducted research on AmericanJapanese relations.
She is currently studying Japanese through the InterUniversity Center for Japanese Language Studies, a program run by Stanford University. Zalewski is a Wilson School concentrator from Orange County, Calif. According to the statement, she “hopes to pursue a career in conflict stabilization and is interested in understanding conditions on the ground through direct engagement with locals.” Last summer, she was a SINSI intern at the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations in the U.S. State Department, where she focused on Venezuelan security sector stabilization. Jason “Jay” Bateman ’20, Margaret “Maggie” Baughman ’21, Krystal Cohen ’21, Michaela Daniel ’21, Matthew Grossman ’21, Nikhita Salgame ’21, and Claire Wayner ’22 will receive fully funded, 8-10 week summer internships through the SINSI internship program. Bateman of Kansas City, Mo. is a Wilson School concentrator. According to the statement, “his academic interest is on education policy implementation with a focus on classroom- and district-level disparities between social groups.”
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tion Academy Charter School, where she “she designed and taught a civic engagement summer camp for middle and high school students and continues to lead the school’s grant development efforts,” according to the statement. Daniel of Stonecrest, Ga. is concentrating in Near Eastern Studies, in which she focuses on immigration and displaced populations. Last summer, she was a civic engagement intern at New American Pathways, a refugee resettlement agency based in Atlanta, Ga. Grossman is a Wilson School concentrator from Millburn, N.J. pursuing certificates in Finance and the History and Practice of Diplomacy. This summer, Grossman will be working in the Justice Department in the Civil Rights Division. “I hope I’ll be able to make a positive impact helping the Justice Department enforce civil rights legislation and improve the lives of disadvantaged Americans,” Grossman said. “I’m also hoping to get experience working with the law and to learn more about careers in public service.” Salgame is a Wilson School concentrator from Princeton pursuing certificates in East
Supreme Cupid Lee: Love is never easy DATA
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if they so please, secretly indicate romantic or platonic interest. Datamatch notifies parties if any pairing is mutual. “Datamatch is definitely kind of more of a satire or a parody of traditional dating,” explained Supreme Cupid Ryan Lee. “This is not your parents’ dating site. The questions are all extremely humorous and a bit ‘meme-y’ and represent the culture of each school.” Both Liu and Lee are senior computer science students at Harvard. Centrally based at the studentrun Harvard Computer Society, Datamatch utilizes volunteers at their partner colleges to author school-specific questions, promote the program on campus, and — in some instances — host social events. Princeton Cupids Ian Kim ’22 and Zeytun West ’22 oversee Datamatch at the University. “We wanna foster kind of a fun tradition [from] year to year,” Kim said. “Often, people are worried ‘Is Valentine’s Day gonna be the worst time of the year because I’m single?’ This is a very loose … [and] fun thing to do, … kind of toning the Valentine’s Day craze down a little bit.” Despite its less-than-serious questions, Liu, Lee, and Kim earnestly believe in Datamatch’s ability to foster well-matched couples. “If you think about it, if someone has a similar sense of humor to you, there is a good chance that you might enjoy spending time with them,” Kim said, “whether it’s as a friend or if you have potential to go on a date.” Datamatch’s algorithm is confidential, but the Supreme Cupids sought to shed light on the methodology of their sorting technique. “What it boils down to is similarity,” Liu explained. “When we think of similarity in our case, we think of enumerated choices. We don’t think of the words within those choices, we think of them as like enumerations.” Liu further articulated that filling out surveys in an identical manner does not guarantee a match for any pair. “[Similar answers] would be a proxy for [matching]. We do lots of other advanced things to ensure fairness criteria, make sure everyone has a match, and we also have things to avoid gamifying the system. That would be an overall general trait, but it’s not the only one,” said Liu. Lee believes the system may be explained well through metaphor.
“We want to match you with someone who has a similar vibe to you, but at the same time has differences that seem to connect well,” he said. “[It’s] like fitting two puzzle pieces together from the same set: similar, but still ultimately unique and different. We’re trying to figure out what kind of puzzle set you belong to and what’s your matching puzzle piece.” As of 10 p.m. Tuesday evening, the University’s participants included 219 first-years, 131 sophomores, 65 juniors, 47 seniors, and six graduate students. With 100 students, Mathey College boasts the largest plurality of users. Tiffany Huang ’23 filled out the survey and has been intrigued by the service before even matriculating at the University. “I first heard about Datamatch when I was in sophomore year [of high school], and I thought it was the coolest thing ever, so I got really really excited when I found out it was coming to Princeton this year. I wanted to give it a shot,” she said. Emily Schoeman ’22 shares some of Huang’s excitement, but the Brooklyn native isn’t nearly as convinced by the program’s orthodoxy. “It was really fun, … but I’m not quite sure what they were hoping to get out of it. I felt like since all the questions had such funny answers, I felt like I was clicking a little randomly, and … it wasn’t saying anything about my personality or who I should be in a relationship with,” she said. Though Schoeman intends to check the site on Valentine’s Day, the idea of reaching out to matches gives her pause. “Right now, it seems like taking that step is kind of scary for either person. Maybe I would respond if someone else messaged me. I just probably wouldn’t message them.” Lee has heard concerns similar to Schoeman’s before and encourages Datamatch users to take a leap of faith. “There is a reason why you signed up for Datamatch. You are interested in meeting someone special, potentially, or at least getting to know new people,” he said. “My ask for you is to take a chance … Love is never easy, and love is most fruitful for those who put in the work. At the end of the day, meeting people takes effort, but I think the fruits of the work will be well worth [it]. Just do it … reaching out, messaging, shooting your shot first, it’s totally alright.” Interested students may fill out the survey online at datamatch.me until Datamatch closes at 12:01 a.m. ET on Friday, Feb. 14. The Cupids will post results later that morning.
Wednesday February 12, 2020
The Daily Princetonian
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Virk cites CPT/ OPT reform accomplised by Academics Committee, sustainability progress as highlights VIRK
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ing out now. There were a lot of challenges with pushing things forward. A lot of the policies with the University are very institutionalized. They’ve been around for a long time, and then it takes a proportionately long time to change things that have been around for so long. DP: In practice, what do the roadblocks you mentioned look like? ZB: One thing is people you have to talk to, and there’s also the changes that go on with the University and the shifting campus climate. For example, one of the things that I had intended to do was bring electric scooters to campus, like a scooter share program. I was starting the conversation with Lyft Scooters, Lime Scooters, things like that, starting the conversations there. I’d begun outside conversations, but within the University, there had already been concerns about the growing number of scooters that students have on campus and how this has affected student safety. So it shifted from having the goal be [to] bring more scooters on to campus to, by the end of the year, ... working with the student life committee to help ensure scooter safety to block off pathways so scooters wouldn’t be used as much. A lot of the time, it was a result of natural shifts that happen on campus and not knowing this ahead of time. DP: Are there particular things that you’ve learned over the past year? ZV: I would say I’ve learned a lot specifically about teamwork, how to work with people of different opinions and how to bring that
back into a group. I feel like one of the main things I learned from this was to be able to take constructive criticism to better myself and to be able to learn from this both as a person and a leader. DP: Did anything surprise you about being USG president? ZV: Yeah, one of the things that surprised me, kind of similar to the scooter example, was how much of our work was kind of on an as-needed basis and as things came up. I was expecting I would go in with my platform and my project timeline and things would go this way and that’s how it would be ... But what I realized very soon after coming into the job is that as things would come up on campus, you have to respond to them in the moment. For example, with something like student activism, as it was in the past spring, it came up and we had to respond to it in the moment. I feel like a lot of the work that we’ve done was on an as-needed basis, rather than things that we had planned for. DP: Could you speak specifically to your experience being the USG president during the protests last spring? ZV: I think this particularly was a difficult position to be in just because the content of the activism is something that I definitely support myself, but being in this position, I had to be careful about having USG as a whole decide to respond to it in certain ways. The content was also triggering for a lot of students, so it wasn’t something that we wanted to be pushing out more in-yourface on a daily basis. So I think the approach we took was to help the students get in touch with the administrators to relay these messages, and as that transitioned to the summer, the University cre-
ated a couple of different working groups to work on this, and [I], along with a few members of USG, served on that group. DP: Are there other things that you think the student body doesn’t know about USG or about the things that go on behind the scenes? ZV: There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes that students don’t know about. It’s interesting to be on the other side of it because I know I see all these Daily Prince articles coming out about the new administration, and I think it’s pretty easy to not be very informed about what’s going on behind the scenes if you’re not in USG, which I hadn’t really realized until this last month, when I wasn’t actively participating in it. I guess a lot of people assume that we are either Class Gov[ernment] and we do gear and giveaways and study breaks, but we don’t do any of that. We do gear giveaways for Dean’s Date once a year. I think a lot of campus doesn’t know that the Senate is really involved in so many aspects of University policies and decisions and sometimes the smallest things, like, is there enough lighting on the pathways on campus? Are these bushes sticking out on the sidewalk? Could facilities take care of that to make the sidewalks safer for students? … Or larger campus planning events, like working with the architects of the new University health building, … giving them feedback on things, like what kind of lighting would students like to see, what kind of design, what would make students feel comfortable in this new space. The main thing is, people don’t know how involved we really are in a bunch of different aspects of the University. I think in those
Parker Probe is fastest-ever man-made object SPACECRAFT Continued from page 1
During its closest flyby, Parker will travel at a speed of 430,000 miles per hour at times coming as close as 3.8 million miles. These numbers represent the record for the fastesttraveling vehicle ever constructed by humanity and the closest distance to the Sun ever reached by a spacecraft. David McComas, who also serves as the University Vice President for the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, described the “three basic mysteries” of solar physics that Parker is set to investigate. McComas is the principal investigator for one of the instrument suites installed on the spacecraft. “The same physical processes that occur at the Sun should surely be occurring at other stars, and so by understanding the details of those physical processes at our sun, we’ll understand how they work at other stars and across the galaxy,” explained McComas. “The first is ‘Why is the corona so hot?’ The second, ‘What accelerates the solar winds?’ And the third, ‘What produces and accelerates the solar energetic particles?’” McComas delivered a guest lecture on the Parker mission for the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 11 in Peyton Hall. Parker’s mission of investigating the corona will be carried out by four separate instrument suites, each of which is responsible for directly studying coronal phenomena or imaging solar winds. During the first two flybys of Parker, the instrument suites produced observations that are described in a collection of four papers published in the scientific journal Nature. The first instrument suite, Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun, or ISOIS, is a University-led project under principal investigator McComas, mostly built at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology. ISOIS measures electrons, protons, and ions across a broad spectrum of energies to better understand the origins of these particles and how they are accelerated from the Sun. Colin J. Joyce, Postdoctoral Re-
search Associate for the astrophysical sciences department at the University who conducts research as part of the ISOIS team, spoke about some of the limitations of observing solar physics from Earth that can be overcome with the Parker mission. “A lot of the solar storms that we have been able to observe with ISOIS are very small and close to the Sun. They are small enough that we would not be able to detect them on Earth,” said Joyce. “One of the big questions that we have is why some events are bigger than others. The exciting thing about measuring these small events is that they can really play a big role of creating a population of particles that feed these larger events.” The second instrument suite, known as FIELDS, is constructed and operated through a scientific collaboration led by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley and principal investigator Professor Stuart B. Bale. It is responsible for taking direct measurements of the electric and magnetic fields among the solar winds of the corona. FIELDS detected unexpectedly frequent and large-scale reversals in the directions of the magnetic fields, the cause of which remain unexplained. The third instrument suite, the Wide-Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, or WISPR, is the only instrument suite on Parker used for imaging and not measuring the corona. Led by principal investigator Dr. Russell Howard and developed by the Solar and Heliophysics Physics Branch at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., WISPR takes images of the corona and the inner heliosphere, as well as the solar winds and other solar structures, such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), that pass Parker and are measured by the other instruments. The fourth and final suite, Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation, or SWEAP, is led by principal investigator Professor Justin Kasper of the University of Michigan and chiefly built and jointly operated by the Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. It counts the most abundant particles present in coronal solar winds — electrons, protons
and helium ions — and measure properties such as their velocities, densities, and temperatures. The Parker mission has the potential to greatly improve scientists’ understanding of solar phenomena and ability to predict space weather, helping them to foresee incoming solar energetic particles that can often be dangerous to astronauts and disruptive to electronics. In an email to The Daily Princetonian, Adam Szabo, the Parker Mission Scientist and Chief of the Heliospheric Physics Laboratory at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, looks forward to whatever follows the conclusion of the current Parker mission. “Besides understanding [solar energetic particles] better, Parker will give us our first look of the solar wind below what is called the Alfvén radius,” wrote Szabo. “This new look should give us a new understanding of how the solar wind gets accelerated to supersonic speeds, answer why the solar corona is so much hotter than the photosphere, and from which solar structures the slower solar wind comes from.” Parker is named after Eugene Newman Parker, an astrophysicist and the S. Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor in Physics, Emeritus, at the University of Chicago, who predicted the existence of solar winds in 1958. The Parker Solar Probe is the first NASA mission to be named after a living individual. Now at the age of 92, Parker is thrilled to see the observation of phenomena predicted by his theories over half a century ago. “It was humbling to see the probe’s launch and watch it disappear into the night sky,” said Parker in a statement provided by the University of Chicago. “But now that data is finally coming in and being analyzed, things are getting really exciting.” More missions to study the Sun are already underway: the NASA/ ESA Solar Orbiter, launched on Feb. 9, will travel to Mercury’s orbit with 10 instruments and complement Parker by making solar disk remote imaging. The NASA Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission, set to be launched in 2022, plans to take exceptionally high spatial resolution coronal images of the solar wind.
aspects, our main role is to act as student voice and be the student representatives on these different types of committees, or even when the University seeks us out and comes to our meetings, for student input, our job is really to amplify the voice of the student body. DP: Is there anything you wish you could have done differently? ZV: Not necessarily done differently, but one thing that I found to be very challenging, especially in the first couple of months, was that I was not previously on the USG Senate before coming in, so I feel like I was kind of thrown in to this leadership position that I had not been in before and that many of the members had a lot of experience in. So I wish that I had run for a Senate position earlier and gotten some experience being on a part of the Senate, so I would have come into the position fully prepared. Of course I did catch up. I think it took about a month, or a month and a half to catch up, but I do think there was a really large learning curve. I wish that I had had the experience so that I would have come in knowing what to expect. Yeah, kind of knowing a little bit more about the roadblocks that can happen when you try to make policy changes in the University. DP: Is there anything you’d change about how USG works? ZV: One thing about USG is that I wish it could be larger in some sense and more representative in a way. For example, in one of my conversations with administrators, I think it might have been VP Calhoun, they were telling me about another university they worked at and their student governments had a hand in a lot more of the student groups on campus. Now we are very active in the ad-
ministrative side of school changes, but I wish that we had more members from different student groups, for example have a couple members of the ICC (Interclub Council) on there, or a couple of members of certain groups like the Carl A. Fields Center groups, a couple of RCAs, … so we could really have a system where the Senate is a much larger body and where these representatives can go and report to and from or between USG and their own groups. … DP: And is there anything you wish you could change about Princeton in general? ZV: Not particularly, I like it! I think one thing is that the student culture of being super busy all the time and being very academically focused, which obviously is a great thing, is probably one of the reasons why students aren’t involved in organizations like USG. Like, you know, when you have an exam coming up, you’re not going to want to read some long emails about policy changes. It’s just a comment. I wouldn’t really want to change it. DP: Do you have any advice for future USG presidents? ZV: I guess one piece of advice is to be as adaptable and as open minded as possible because a lot of the things that come up are unexpected, or things that you can’t plan for, things that you have to be ready to take on in the moment. Adaptability and coming in with an open mind. I also think it’s important to not have a long list of smaller things that you want to get done, but to focus on two or three larger things that you want to do really well. I think that’s something that I wish that I had done better to really hone in on a few different things, rather than doing a little bit of everything.
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Wednesday February 12, 2020
Features
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Divestment Duels: Stephen Pacala and Rob Nixon As concerns about the impending climate crisis take the spotlight in political debates, similar controversy surges much closer to home. Divest Princeton is a growing group of students and alumni calling for the total removal of University funds from fossil fuel companies. 720 alums, current students, and faculty members so far have signed an open letter to President Eisgruber, but the movement has also been met with disapproval from administrators and professors. Robert Nixon, the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Family Professor in the Humanities and the Environment, and Stephen Pacala, Frederick D. Petrie Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Director of the University’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative, are colleagues, friends, and on opposing sides of this emerging debate on campus. The Daily Princetonian spoke to the two professors to hear why one supports the movement, and the other, a climate scientist himself, disagrees. By Rachel Sturley Assistant Features Editor
Stephen Pacala
Rob Nixon
COURTESY OF THE PRINCEON ENVIRONMENTAL INSTITUTE
COURTESY OF THE PRINCETON ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
Stephen Pacala, the Frederick D. Petrie Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Robert Nixon, the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Family Professor in the Humanities and the Environment.
“Both investing in and buying fossil fuel products,” says Stephen Pacala, the Frederick D. Petrie Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, “puts money in the hands of the people I don’t like. So ethically, I cannot find a consistent reason why I would divest and not boycott, or boycott and not divest.” Pacala has always had what he calls a “life plan”: work to become the best possible scientist for the first stage of his life before transitioning to deliver on the “social contract.” Degrees from Dartmouth and Stanford, 10 years as a professor at the University of Connecticut, and a move to Princeton saw that first stage become reality. When British Petroleum (BP) showed up on campus 21 years ago, he says, he entered the period of payback. The Carbon Mitigation Initiative, now entering its 20th year, is a partnership between the University and BP with goals to reduce the carbon dioxide surplus in the atmosphere. Pacala, who calls increasing carbon emissions the “mother of all climate problems,” established the initiative and continues to direct it today. The sponsorship may seem strange, given that the ultimate objective of the group is to essentially put BP out of business. But Pacala emphasized that the source of funding holds no sway over the
content of the research. “They were forthright that they thought that the climate problem was likely to be existential for the [fossil fuel] industry, and they wanted to understand it better,” he said. “They don’t have input about what we study. They just give us the money, and then we do whatever we want.” In response to Divest Princeton, Pacala pointed out the discrepancy between divestment and boycotting. The University simply cannot function without fossil fuels; an attempt to stop their use would result in catastrophe. Therefore, he argues, divestment isn’t morally sound. Those who support divestment argue that it is not necessarily about weakening the industry — the University alone cannot effect such a change. The larger concern is about depriving fossil fuel companies of their social license and refusing, as a well-respected academic institution, to legitimize their actions. To Pacala’s mind, the ethical significance of removing financial backing is diluted by the fact that the campus and its individuals will continue to rely on fossil fuels. “If we eliminated the use of fossil fuels right now, a large fraction of humanity would starve to death,” Pacala said. “Saying that it’s bad, considering that if you just stopped using it right away, we would
all die — you just can’t maintain that.” That said, he noted a distinction in scale between industry and company divestment. Individuals and institutions can plausibly both boycott and divest from specific companies they deem unethical, but dissociation from the entire industry is inconsistent with continued practical use. This may not always be the case, according to Pacala. He is hopeful that the solution to the carbon problem may come more quickly than we think. “Really recently, there’s been massive technological hope that’s emerged,” Pacala said. “We are one innovation away from a system that would be cheaper than fossil.” He also called for government subsidies to help wind and solar power reach the scale of overtaking fossil fuel. They have succeeded in the past in creating a market to drive the cost down for solar power, and Pacala is convinced that they could work again. Pacala maintained that social activism plays a crucial role in informing and enlivening the general public about climate change, but symbolism must align with action. Instead of channeling energy into asking the University to divest, concerned individuals should be focused on making the fossil industry completely obsolete.
“Divestment is going to happen,” says Rob Nixon, the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Family Professor in the Humanities and the Environment. “It’s not if, it’s when, and it would be fantastic to see Princeton on the vanguard.” Nixon’s work centers around the intersection of humanities and environmental justice. He is currently focused on using film, literature, and art to represent and understand populations living on the front lines of climate crises. More broadly, he looks at how the arts can precipitate social transformation. “The status quo can seem adamantine, fixed, and yet I think that there are ways that the arts can change the imaginative frame,” he said. Nixon’s stance on University divestment stems from personal history. He grew up in South Africa and left in 1980 as a conscientious objector to the enforced military conscription for all white men. As a political exile and a graduate student at Columbia University, he became intimately involved with campaigns for divesting from the apartheid regime. Though the current debate concerns corporations rather than a nation state and exists in different historical circumstances, Nixon noted that there exist striking rhetorical echoes in the dialogue today.
“Some of the arguments against divestment that I see prominently articulated today …are very reminiscent of that period,” he said. He noted that a pervasive viewpoint in the 1980s was to catalyze change through engagement rather than enforced isolation. Leaders of both the United States and Britain opposed divesting from South Africa for this reason, Nixon recalled. “The South African government saw that as a kind of affirmation, as a license not to change,” he said. “So what from the topdown looked like constructive engagement, from the bottom-up was appeasement. I see some of this reemerging in this particular struggle.” He challenged the idea of a slippery slope, that removing funds from big oil would set a concerning precedent. Nixon countered that movements require a symbolic hub —and there isn’t one more powerful than the fossil fuel industry. He has a rebuttal, too, to the claim that the University should stay out of politics in order to retain academic integrity and freedom. “Staying in is also political,” Nixon said. “Princeton right now has an opportunity to assume moral leadership or to be an ethical laggard.” Nixon is confident that the University will
eventually divest, particularly with the increasing power of precedent. New York City, the country of Ireland, and the World Council of Churches are notable parties that have already committed to divestment. As the current generation begins to fill leadership positions, he continued, climate issues will come to the forefront. Ultimately, Nixon asserted, the most valuable resource is not oil or water, but time. To Professor Pacala’s argument that the University should only divest once they can also boycott fossil fuels, Nixon emphasized that we should be doing everything to accelerate decarbonization in advance of it being feasible, and the first step in this is removing funds from the industry. Nixon and Pacala agree wholeheartedly on one thing: the need for government subsidies to shift toward renewable energy. Only then, said Nixon, can the fossil fuel companies be forced to reconsider where their revenue will come from in the future. “I think it’ll ultimately be a grassroots movement that pushes us to take the right steps to solving the climate crisis,” he said. “The leadership of institutions has to feel under pressure.” And we, according to Nixon, are morally responsible for applying this pressure to hasten the transformation to a cleaner future.
Opinion
Wednesday February 12, 2020
page 5
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }
Racism and the coronavirus: Quarantine sinophobia
editor-in-chief
Jonathan Ort ’21
Richard Ma Columnist
BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88 secretary Betsy L. Minkin ’77 treasurer Douglas Widmann ’90 trustees Francesca Barber David Baumgarten ’06 Kathleen Crown Gabriel Debenedetti ’12 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 Michael Grabell ’03 John G. Horan ’74 Joshua Katz Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 Kavita Saini ’09 Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 Abigail Williams ’14 trustees emeriti Gregory L. Diskant ’70 William R. Elfers ’71 Kathleen Kiely ’77 Jerry Raymond ’73 Michael E. Seger ’71 Annalyn Swan ’73
O
n Jan. 30, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global health emergency, increasing concerns around an already contentious situation that has caused the U.S. government to issue a travel advisory on visiting China, where the outbreak occurred. In response, many universities, including Princeton, have issued advisories on dealing with the ramifications of the outbreak. The University of California at Berkeley recently came under fire for an Instagram post advising students on how to navigate the outbreak that listed xenophobia among common reactions, with numerous parties questioning this normalization of racism. Though this post has since been taken down, it highlights the potential for racist attitudes to develop in reaction to the outbreak. Although the gravity of the coronavirus should not be underestimated, the racist and Sinophobic re-
actions prompted by the outbreak are not only inappropriate, but are detrimental to the formation of a more understanding, open-minded, and collaborative global culture. In addition to UC Berkeley’s post, other media sources have also contributed to this worrying trend, including a French newspaper which ran the headline “Yellow Alert” and other outlets which spread an old video of a Chinese blogger eating bat soup. Many in the west have adopted an attitude of disgust in reaction to this video. Numerous voices on social media have blamed the outbreak on Chinese cultural eating habits. On Twitter and Facebook, comments arguing the Chinese “deserve” the illness for eating “disgusting” things garner tens and hundreds of likes. This casual racism does not stay online: Asian students have reported coronavirus-inspired racist comments against them, often focused on their diet and culture. The intolerance towards other cultures evidenced in these reactions reveals a level of Eurocentrism that is dam-
aging to any attempts towards true globalization, an oft-cited goal in the modern world. These Eurocentric attitudes are deep-rooted — the West has long portrayed Asian cultures as bestial and threatening, and this viewpoint played a large role in the xenophobia of the 19th and 20th centuries. Media sources portrayed Asians in such derogatory and fearmongering ways that immigration policy actively prevented them from coming to America, and state and local laws placed discriminatory taxes and regulations on existing Asian Americans. Today’s controversy surrounding the eating habits of Chinese people is just a continuation of such racist beliefs. As a kid, my classmates would ask me if I ate dogs and cats — I didn’t, but I still felt compelled to deny it strongly out of shame, often to no avail as my friends continued to make fun of me. People in America grow up hearing about the bizarre eating habits of other cultures and learn to turn their noses up against such “disgusting” practices, even though what
they hear often gets incredibly distorted. This casual racism is perpetuated on a day-to-day basis, and it is especially virulent because it often slips past today’s filters for what constitutes racism. If not kept in check, it will continue to promote distorted views of foreign cultures and denigrate people who trace their heritage to these cultures. The reaction to the coronavirus outbreak highlights our need to grow as a society and approach other cultures with a more open mind. There are vast differences in customs and beliefs that must be seen as simply differences, not deficiencies. Condescension and disgust may give one a feeling of superiority, but they have never been conducive to harmony and progress. If unchecked, they lead to discrimination on a damaging scale — an illness far different from the coronavirus, but in a similarly urgent need of redress. Richard Ma is a sophomore from Kirksville, Miss. He can be reached at richardma@princeton.edu.
trustees ex officio Jonathan Ort ’21
144TH MANAGING BOARD managing editors Benjamin Ball ’21 Elizabeth Parker ’21 Ivy Truong ’21 Cy Watsky ’21 Sections listed in alphabetical order. chief copy editors Lydia Choi ’21 Anna McGee ’22 associate copy editors Celia Buchband ’22 Sydney Peng ’22 head design editor Harsimran Makkad ’22 associate design editors Abby Nishiwaki ’23 Kenny Peng ’22 head features editor Josephine de La Bruyère ’22 head multimedia editor Mark Dodici ’22 associate video editor Mindy Burton ’23 head news editors Claire Silberman ’22 Zachary Shevin ’22 associate news and features editor Marie-Rose Sheinerman ’22 associate news editors Naomi Hess ’22 Allan Shen ’22 head opinion editors Rachel Kennedy ’21 Madeleine Marr ’21 associate opinion editors Shannon Chaffers ’22 Emma Treadway ’22 head sports editors Tom Salotti ’21 Alissa Selover ’21 associate sports editors
NIGHT STAFF copy Allie Mangel ’22 design Mindy Burton ’23 Juliana Wojtenko ’23
Recycle your ‘Prince’!
COURTESY OF GERALT / PIXABAY
The weight of the mental health mask Guest Contributor
I
t was the start of the year, and each time I met with an old friend or acquaintance, I was met with the customary, obligatory greeting of all students: “How was your summer?” Each time, I had a decision to make. I could tell the truth. I could tell them about the diagnosis, the confusion, the psychiatrist appointments, the various meds that made me cripplingly sick and cripplingly depressed in turns, the embarrassing reality of being too unwell to work. Instead, I said, “Great! How about yours?” Here at Princeton, we have a culture of stress. In fact, “stressed” is such a typical response to “How are you?” that we don’t bat an eye. But there’s a disparity in the type of stress that is deemed acceptable. Academic stress can be talked about aloud. Mental health, not so much. By the time I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder this summer, it was a relief, reassurance that there was a reason why my emotions were more turbulent than the Gulf after a hurricane, why I seemed to feel everything so intensely and erratically. There was, if not a method to my madness, a reason behind it. That summer was just the latest chapter in a long, difficult journey that spanned my entire Princeton experience. Just a few months earlier, I
had experienced a disaster with psychiatry meds that brought on a manic episode so extreme that it tipped into psychosis. For days, I went around campus feeling paranoid that everyone I walked past was involved in some elaborate conspiracy to institutionalize me. Every whisper became menacing; every friendly face, a trap. I found myself questioning whether I even really existed, or if I was a fictional character in a novel someone had thought up and just didn’t know it. I was so terrified I ended that week under my bed, knees to my chest, rocking back and forth and whispering “it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real” in a vain attempt to reassure myself. I called my parents rambling, and they took me home for the better part of a week to get the drugs out of my system. However, even when I got back, I wasn’t the same. My brain was stuck in molasses, taking an absurd amount of time to process even the easiest questions in class. A three-page paper took over a week to piece together. Meanwhile, finals period had started, and while the folks at my eating club were complaining about their exams and presentations, I had dozens of pages worth of papers to write and the mental capacity of a potato. The worst part was the inability to acknowledge any of this, to act like I was stressed for the same reasons everyone else was. Mental illness is inherently isolating, but even more so
when it forces you to live a lie. To protect yourself, it’s necessary to wear a facade, and it’s that facade that everyone comes to believe is the true you. The result: I’m left with very few people who actually know me. My friends think I’m irresponsible. That I skip classes on the regular because I don’t care about my education, when in reality it’s often because I was too depressed to move or having a mixed episode — an uncomfortable state of agitation where one experiences some symptoms of both mania and depression — and couldn’t be around people. They think I don’t read for class because I’m lazy, when in reality, my disorder makes it hard to concentrate. They think I bail because I’m flaky, not because I’m experiencing the intense negative side effects of whatever new medication I’m on. What disgusts me the most is that even though I hate these false assumptions, I find myself leaning into them, playing the part to protect myself from their reactions if they ever found out the truth. As a campus, we’re getting marginally better at recognizing and destigmatizing depression and anxiety. But we still have a lot of work to do — especially when it comes to the rest of the mental health spectrum. Most do not have a full understanding of what bipolar disorder is. The average person doesn’t even know what it entails, assuming it’s when you go back and forth between happy and sad like a seesaw, uneducated on its
complicated reality. If the byline under the title had my name, those who know me would be shocked. I’m friendly and sociable, I go out, I’m in an eating club and involved in multiple groups on campus. I haven’t let my mental health stop me from living just yet. But I could breathe so much easier if I didn’t have to carry the weight of maintaining this mask. If every time someone mentioned a personal struggle, it wasn’t met with uncomfortable silence or an immediate change of subject. This reluctance to talk about mental health is compounded when you’re a person of color, as I am. Marginalized communities often see admitting psychological struggles as a sign of weakness, something to be ignored or hidden, making it even more difficult to “come out” with mental health issues. Fifteen percent of people with bipolar disorder die by suicide. Fifty percent attempt it. Depression already makes one feel alone, and needing to hide to protect one’s reputation and standing adds another level of alienation. The crippling fear of being treated like a freak, a “crazy” person, is enough to push someone into isolation. If we could only work together to make campus more open and inclusive of the entire mental health spectrum, we might just save lives. Editor’s note: Due to the sensitive nature of this piece, the author has been granted anonymity.
Sports
Wednesday February 12, 2020
page 6
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } WOMEN’S TRACK AND FIELD
Women’s track and field grabs first place at HYP meet By Emily Philippides and Jesse Brewer Associate Sports Editor Contributor
This past weekend at the H a r v a rd-Ya le-P r i nce t on (HYP) competition, the women’s track and field team had several strong performances that helped secure a team victory against both Harvard (67– 58) and Yale (67–56). It was their sixth year in a row coming out on top. Claiming 67 total points, the Tigers performed with a broad depth of talent across all event groups. In the throwing arena, sophomore Luisa Chantler Edmond, first-year Annika Kelly, and senior Ellen Scott-Young claimed spots two through four with distances of 18.14m, 17.38m, and 17.26m respectively. As this was her first time throwing over 18m in competition, and after observing a number of personal bests set by her teammates, Chantler Edmond said she is excited to see where the team is headed: “We had a really good amount of PRs,
which makes a bold statement that we aren’t here to mess around.” In the pole vault, sophomore Hanne Borstlap cleared 4.0m to win the event only weeks after returning from injury. First-year Tia Rozario also took first place in the triple jump with an impressive distance of 12.13m. On the track, distance specialists sophomore India Weir and junior Melia Chittenden both posted PRs in the mile with times of 4:48.51 and 4:50.25 to place second and third respectively. In the 60m hurdles, sophomore Isabella Hilditch finished on top in a time of 8.53 seconds. Junior Sophie Cantine and senior Madeleine Sumner also posted personal bests in the 1000m with times of 2:48.48 and 2:48.72, placing second and third respectively. In the shorter distances, first-years Maggie Hock and Charlotte O’Toole had stellar performances in what was only their third collegiate track and field competition. Hock grabbed second in the 800m run, crossing the line in 2:10.41,
while O’Toole claimed first in the 500m run in a personal-record time of 1:14.57. Reflecting on her performance, Hock says: “We had a really strong representation from all grades, and I’m excited to see how it
will all come together for the Ivy League Championships.” Speaking of the team’s powerful performance, head track coach Michelle Eisenreich commended the “grit and resilience of this
group of women” and believes they will continue to work hard and improve over the next three weeks as they “make the final push to the (Ivy League) Heptagonal championships.”
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Senior Ashley Willingham running the third leg of the 4x400 relay.
MEN’S TRACK AND FIELD
Men’s track and field sweeps HYP meet for 28th consecutive year
By Emily Philippides and Jesse Brewer Associate Sports Editor Contributor
At the Harvard-YalePrinceton (HYP) meet held at Yale over the weekend, which the Tigers have won for the past 27 consecutive seasons, the men’s track and field team saw stellar performances from many members of the team. The Tigers came out on top with a total of 89 points
from a number of events, outscoring Yale’s 63 and Harvard’s 28. In the pole vault, firstyear Simen Guttormsen had an outstanding day as he posted an Ivy-League leading mark and a 5.31m PR. Guttormsen said, “HYP was a great meet for me. I am very happy with my own performance, and a great team clapping and support made it fun to compete. Now I am really excited for the coming
weeks and especially to take on other Ivy teams.” In the shot put, sophomore C.J. Licata and junior Kelton Chastulik claimed the first and second spots, with marks of 17.95m and 17.20m, respectively. In the triple jump, sophomores Dayo Abeeb and Austin Princewill finished first and second, with performances of 15.48m and 15.18m. On the track, first-year Connor Nisbet and sopho-
more Jakob Kintzele had strong performances as they claimed the top two spots in the 3K, with times of 8:13.54 and 8:14.17, respectively. In the 1000m, junior Sam Ellis ran his way to the top of the Ivy League rankings as he chased the school record. Despite falling just shy of it, he placed first overall, with a time of 2:22.26. Reflecting on the team’s and his own performance,
Ellis said, “I was happy with the team win and glad we had so many PRs, and I think we’re in a good place for moving forward. Personally, I was trying to run our school record, so I was slightly disappointed that I fell short of that, but I’m feeling very confident going into my mile race in Boston this weekend.” Looking forward, Ellis’ ultimate goal is to “perform at Heps (Heptagonal Championships) and contribute to the team’s win.” There were also several first-place finishes and impressive marks posted in the shorter distances. Sophomore Christian Brown won the 60m hurdles in a time of 8.04 seconds, with Princeton also claiming spots 4–7 in the event. Shortly after, sophomore Michael Phillippy grabbed the gold in a personal record of 48.15 seconds across 400m, outleaning the second-place finisher from Yale by a mere 0.02 seconds. Head men’s track and field coach Fred Samara was “very proud of the competitive effort” as the team “march[es] towards their sixth league title in a row.” Next up on the schedule, the Princeton Tigers will head to Boston University to compete at the Valentine Invitational on Feb. 15.
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Junior Sam Ellis competing in the 1000m.
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Men’s Track & Field wins 28th consecutive HYP crown.