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Tuesday March 3, 2020 vol. CXLIV no. 22
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BEYOND THE BUBBLE
Coronavirus pandemic leaves students scattered, sidelined By Albert Jiang Staff Writer
COURTESY OF JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
The Louis A. Simpson Building, which houses the Davis International Center. STUDENT LIFE
“Justice delayed
As coronavirus (COVID-19) swept across northern Italy last week, Julius Foo ’21, a Woodrow Wilson School concentrator studying abroad at Bocconi University in Milan, found himself in the crosshairs of a pandemic. His primary concern was not the spread of coronavirus itself, but rather being stranded in Italy. Ticket prices were skyrocketing. Flights began to sell out. “Panic was spreading just as quickly as the virus across the city,” Foo said. Foo, along with other students studying abroad at Bocconi University, voluntarily fled the country due to the escalating severity of the coronavirus. Though the University asked students to remain in Milan in a Feb. 25 email, the University later updated their guidelines. By then, many students had already dispersed across Europe. About a week ago, on Saturday, Feb. 22, Bocconi University notified the students that all
classes in northern Italy universities were to be canceled until Friday, Feb. 28. The University reached out to students about the rapidly developing situation in Italy on Feb. 25. On Saturday, Feb. 29, an updated announcement extended the cancelation until Mar. 7. Coronavirus has now impacted several international programs such as South Korea study abroad, Princeton in Beijing, the Novogratz Bridge Year China program, and the International Internship Program (IIP). In light of updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) travel guidelines and U.S. Department of State (USDOS) advisories, the University has prohibited all sponsored travel to CDC Warning Level 3 countries, which now include China, South Korea, Italy, and Iran. In addition, recommendations were issued against University-sponsored travel during fall semester 2020 and Wintersession. See COVID-19 page 2
ON CAMPUS
is justice denied”: Students protest violence in India Contributing Writer
On Monday, March 2, around 40 students, University faculty, and Princeton community members gathered on Frist Campus Center’s North Lawn to protest against continued violence in New Delhi, India. Last December, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi enacted a new Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) offering citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Christians, and Parsis from India’s neighboring countries, specifically Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. However, this act specifically excludes Muslims, who comprise a majority of the nation’s non-Hindu population. Since the bill’s passage, violence has erupted in India. In the past week, the capital has been hit by riots against Muslim communities which have resulted in over 40 deaths and close to 300 people injured. The government’s exclusion of Muslims is rooted in the nationalist beliefs of the Hindutva movement, explained Assistant Professor of History Divya Cherian in an address to the protesters. “Hindutva is a political philosophy that excludes Muslims & Christians from the Indian nation. It does not translate simply to Hinduness — even though that is a semantic slide that its proponents like to encourage,” Cherian said.
Along with Cherian, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History and Acting Director of the Program in South Asian Studies Gyan Prakash and Emma Thompson GS also gave speeches. Members of the South Asian Progressive Alliance provided a historical context and urged the Princeton community to stay engaged with the matter. Speakers reiterated that their protest was in no way one against Hinduism. On the contrary, they said that they were trying to defend the principles of inclusivity, equality, and democracy upon which the religion is founded. They criticized Hindutva and its targeting of Muslims, claiming that it undermines Hinduism’s most fundamental principles of equal citizenship and nondiscrimination. “This is a fight for all those who stand for pluralism, democracy, […] and that Muslim lives matter,” said Cherian in her address. Prakash took the opportunity to further discuss the Hindutva violence and its relation to Indian democracy. He described the violence of Hindutva as “attack on civic nationalism” and “a diabolical effort to undermine Indian democracy.” One graduate student noted that the recent events have important implications for not only South Asians but also Princeton community members See JUSTICE page 2
COURTESY OF ROHAN SHAH ’20
The Alimtas team with Dr. John Diekman ’65 after pitching to 5AM Ventures in San Francisco, CA.
Student entrepreneurs pitch new U. technology in Silicon Valley By Katie Tam Senior Writer
In 1946, University chemistry professor Edward C. Taylor, then a graduate student at Cornell University, came across an interesting compound whose structure resembled that of pigments found in butterfly wings. The compound, later discovered to be folic acid, was a vitamin essential to the growth of cells — including cancer cells. Taylor thought that targeting folic acid might be an effective way to arrest the growth of tumors. He synthesized a potential therapeutic but didn’t have the resources he needed to rigorously test the product. In the early 1980s, Taylor turned to Eli Lilly, the biopharmaceutical firm for which he consulted, for help. Over the next few years, Taylor collaborated with Eli Lilly to test hundreds of candidate drugs, leading to the breakthrough development of Alimta, now widely used to treat lung cancer and mesothelioma. “Without this kind of collabo-
ration, Alimta would still be a curious compound sitting on a shelf in my lab,” Taylor said in an interview before his death in 2017. The story of Alimta was an inspiration for Rohan Shah ’20, a founder of Alimtas Bioventures, a subteam of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club focusing on biotechnology and life sciences entrepreneurship. The group partners with the University’s existing Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) to identify promising new technologies coming out of the University’s research labs and develop plans to get them from “bench to bedside,” explained Shah. Alimtas was something of a compromise. Shah and cofounders Niko Fotopoulos ’21 and Avinash Boppana ’21 knew they couldn’t start a biotech company out of their own dorms. At the same time, they didn’t just want to invite speakers and host conferences. They wanted students to get handson experience. “We found this middle ground where we could help
In Opinion
Today on Campus
Contributing columnist Ollie Thakar explains why he prefers wooden pencils to mechanical ones.
1:30 p.m.: Making Maps and Presentations using ArcGIS Pro
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the University build companies around promising, impactful, life science discoveries,” Shah said. Alimtas selects technologies discovered by researchers at the University, develops business plans through “due diligence,” and then pitches these plans to venture capital investors and biotech firms. “It’s like you are test-driving a professor’s business,” Shah explained. The feedback Alimtas gets from investors helps refine methodologies down the road. According to Shah, this partnership between students and professors has significant benefits for both parties. “We are helping faculty, and in the process, we are learning a lot, and they are benefitting as well,” Shah said. “It’s a symbiotic relationship that I think has produced a lot of value both for the students and for the University.” The team’s most recent project is on a hepatitis B drug discovery platform developed by See SILICON page 3
WEATHER
By Christiane Konstantopoulos
HIGH
58˚
LOW
43˚
Rain chance of rain:
80 percent
The Daily Princetonian
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Tuesday March 3, 2020
Foo: Panic was spreading just as quickly as the virus COVID-19 Continued from page 1
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“The University is working closely with students in the affected countries to understand their individual situations, help them evaluate their options, and provide appropriate support,” said Deputy University Spokesperson Mike Hotchkiss. “We have been in direct contact with these students and their parents.” Italy Study Abroad In an email obtained by The Daily Princetonian, Director of the Study Abroad Program Gisella Gisolo requested that students inform the University of their whereabouts as well as their “level of comfort” with continuing their studies in the host city. However, multiple sources confirmed to the ‘Prince’ that the University asked students to remain in Milan — or return, if they had left — with the email stating that “being far away from Milan might introduce newer, unpredictable risks.” Several students expressed that the idea of returning back to Europe’s worst affected country was frightening and an unacceptable option. Students were also frustrated by the University’s initial response, characterizing it as “disorganized” and “unsettling.” “At the end of the day, Princeton was just trusting that Bocconi had a plan to get classes going again and they were clearly worried that we were going to get away from progressing with our study abroad courses,” Foo said in a written statement to the ‘Prince.’ “From afar, Princeton could not empathise. That was a disappointment.” In response to the canceled classes, Bocconi University elected to move their courses online. Given that the study abroad program was an exchange, students expressed frustration that Bocconi students were able to fully enjoy their experience at their university, while Princeton students had no choice but complete their courses in front of a com-
puter screen. “We are heartbroken, and what was supposed to be a dream once in a lifetime experience has turned into a disaster,” Foo said. “I wish Princeton would support those feelings and offer something more than haphazard and confused information.” It wasn’t until the Friday email that students were informed of the University’s new travel restrictions. Only then did the Office of International Programs (OIP) instruct students to return to their respective homes, a decision which Foo felt was made much too late. At that point many of the students had left Italy, scattering across Europe and settling in places from London and Edinburgh to Morocco and Berlin. To make matters worse, the eight University students who were studying abroad in Italy — seven Milan and one in another northern Italy city — left many of their belongings behind when they evacuated. In a follow-up email on Feb. 29, Gisolo asked students to communicate their travel plans and offered to retrieve their belongings for them. Meanwhile, the number of cases in Italy has risen to over 2,000 — marking an increase of over 50 percent on Sunday alone, with a death toll of 52 as of Monday afternoon. Hotchkiss, said in an email statement to the ‘Prince’ that “each students’ needs are being assessed and addressed on an individual basis.” “As an example, we have offered financial assistance with change fees for flights home,” he added. South Korea and China Study Abroad Meanwhile, students in other study abroad opportunities in mainland China and South Korea have had their programs canceled entirely. As of Monday, South Korea has more than 4,000 confirmed cases and 28 deaths. There are currently no University students studying abroad in either country, according to Hotchkiss. Nicolas Chae ’21, one of three
students who were originally planning on studying abroad at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, was informed of the cancellation on Tuesday, days ahead of the general alert. He has remained in the United States since the announcement, and plans to do so until further notice. “Since school had been delayed two weeks due to emerging cases of the virus, we decided to wait to book our flight until we knew for sure we’d be able to go,” he said. “So luckily I never ended up in Korea before it got canceled.” Ultimately, the University stepped in and canceled the semester abroad at Yonsei. However, at that point, it was too late to re-enroll for Princeton’s spring semester. Even so, Chae felt that the University’s response was timely as the extent of the outbreak was unpredictable. He is communicating with advisors, deans, and others to discuss his options. “To be honest, I’m sure they’re doing the best they can given these circumstances,” he explained. “But the opportunities they’ve presented us are very underwhelming and don’t provide me a lot of feasible or fulfilling options for this coming semester.” Other Programs In an email Monday to students, Director of the International Internship Program (IIP) Shahreen Rahman announced that internships in mainland China and Italy are no longer supported due to their CDC Level 3 designation, directing students to the Center for Career Development for domestic opportunity recommendations. The email indicated that for affected students, they will request their IIP partners to defer offers of internship for summer 2021. According to Hotchkiss, the Novogratz Bridge Year China program has been relocated to Yilan City, Taiwan, where the students will be working on service projects and learning Mandarin. “We are monitoring the location closely and if circumstanc-
es change, the program may end early,” Hotchkiss said. The status of Princeton in Beijing is unknown, aside from a Feb. 4 notice indicating that staff are “monitoring travel advice.” The program director did not respond to the Prince’s request for comment. Other affected University programs include the Peking Opera Shanghai Immersion Program, which has been postponed until 2021. The University Responds The University has taken steps to support students in each of the affected programs. Students studying abroad were offered the option of enrolling in a quarter system school like Northwestern University but would ultimately have to remain there until August in order to complete the two quarters that are equivalent to one semester. Alternatively, students were permitted to take the current semester off and come back in the fall or take a leave of absence. Students expressed concerns that financial aid would not be flexible or understanding in helping students afford living costs, should they choose to find an internship for the semester. The options offered by the University to Woodrow Wilson School concentrators included taking online courses to supplement the Bocconi courses, electing to take Advanced Standing, or choosing to take a leave of absence and graduate in January 2022 instead of May 2021. “The University has given us very poor support overall,” Foo explained. “They don’t know what to do and, being so far away, their empathy is limited. Now, we are grappling with the question of how to complete a Princeton semester of credits with the worry that perhaps we might not graduate in time or be course deficient.” “It is an unprecedented situation, but for a school with such a big endowment, I find it surprising they’re not willing to push the budget to accommodate us for a semester already being lost, and not doing more to help us with our options,” Chae continued. “I think it’s too early to tell whether or not we’ll be receiving helpful guidance about what we can do to have a productive and fulfilling semester.” Chae expressed dismay that some of the options would leave students with no availability for summer opportunities. “We understand and share the frustration of students whose plans for the semester have been affected by this global health emergency,” Hotchkiss wrote in an email statement. “Inconvenience, disruption and frustration are, unfortunately, unavoidable. We will continue to work diligently with all affected students to address their situations and their concerns, with their safety and security as our top priority.” The University indicated that they are aware of roughly 100
students, faculty, and staff with plans for University-sponsored travel to Europe over spring break. Over 500 students, faculty, and staff currently are either on trips, or have travel plans to Europe prior to the summer. Programs in Italy have been canceled or shifted to alternate destinations in Europe. “Princeton is certainly not unique among colleges, universities, and other institutions across the country responding to this evolving global health emergency,” Hotchkiss wrote to the ‘Prince.’ “We have been sharing information and best practices with our Ivy League colleagues and other peer institutions such as Stanford and MIT.” In the United States, as of Monday night, there are currently over 100 reported cases of the coronavirus across 14 states, with six confirmed deaths, all in Washington state. Worldwide, there are over 90,000 known cases of varying degrees of severity with more than 3,000 deaths spread across six continents. The CDC requires individuals returning from mainland China to self-quarantine for 14 days. Members of the University community who have been in close contact with a patient diagnosed with COVID-19 are expected to complete a short form and undergo self-quarantine. For countries under CDC Alert Level 2 — advising enhanced precautions — the University recommended canceling or rescheduling sponsored travel due to elevated risk of contracting COVID-19, possible travel interruptions, and potential return restrictions. As of Monday, the countries listed by the University in the Level 2 category include Japan and Mongolia, although the latter is not listed by the CDC in its travel health notices. Hotchkiss reaffirmed the University’s commitment to monitoring the global health emergency and conducting planning to account for a range of scenarios. “We will continue to communicate about developments and engage with students, faculty, and staff with a focus on ensuring the health and safety of the University community,” he said. “University Health Services is equipped and prepared to see patients with coronavirus at McCosh Health Center and is in constant communication with the New Jersey Department of Health for updated guidance on how to best deal with such cases,” Hotchkiss added. “UHS has a board-certified infectious disease specialist on staff to coordinate the medical response to this type of situation.” The most up-to-date information on the University’s response and frequently asked questions can be found on the University Emergency Management’s website. Procedures for self-quarantine are available on the Environmental Health and Safety website.
Cherian: This is a fight for all those who stand for pluralism, democracy, and that Muslim lives matter JUSTICE
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and American citizens at large. On a closing note, Thompson stood up to discuss these implications and measures that can be taken to continue the momentum from the campus protest. They urged people to donate to relief efforts, educate
friends and family, and contact members of Congress to pressure Trump into pushing back against Modi. “Justice delayed is justice denied,” said Kamya Yadav ’21, another member of the South Asian Progressive Alliance. Protesters dispersed at around 5 p.m. with protestors chanting, “the people, united, will always be victorious.”
The Daily Princetonian
Tuesday March 3, 2020
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Shah: It’s like you are test-driving a professor’s business SILICON
Continued from page 1
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Alexander Ploss, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology. In December of 2019, ten members of the Alimtas team traveled to San Francisco, Calif. to pitch the platform to the leadership of biotech giants like Gilead and Genentech. The team, which is made up of students from multiple class years majoring in different departments — many with little to no experience with entrepreneurship — presented complex technologies to senior scientists. “It’s amazing to see people from diverse backgrounds be so engaged and be speaking at such a high level,” Shah said. “People are learning skills that they can use for the rest of their lives.” The understanding of how research scales into businesses, how the healthcare industry works, and who the major stakeholders are in biotechnology, is not something that many students could learn in classes or online, according to Sarah Lin ’22, current co-director of Alimtas alongside Ryan Thorpe ’22. “There’s definitely several tiers of knowledge that we have gained as a club,” Thorpe added. Alimtas’s founding was partially motivated by Shah’s personal experience with cancer. Two of his cousins passed away from leukemia, the most recent in 2013. Four years later, a type of therapy called CAR-T was released, a way to fight cancer by retraining the body’s immune cells. The rapid development of this new technology, one that could have saved his cousin’s life, propelled Shah to become a Molecular Biology major and drew him towards translational
research. “You can cure people harnessing biology,” Shah said. “Yes, there is a huge failure rate, but if it does work, you can transform the lives of millions of people.” Shah spent his first summers in college interning at biotechnology companies and saw that the industry was taking off and that students needed to be prepared with the knowledge and expertise to enter this burgeoning field. “There is a need for people who straddle both the science and business sides — who can be on the cutting edge of creating companies that are bringing these technologies to market and solving these huge issues,“ Shah said. Alimtas’s first project was on a scaffold for patterning tissue repair in spinal cord injuries, developed by Professor of Chemistry Jeffrey Schwartz. The team of 12 quickly realized, though, that they needed to learn more about technology transfer. They sought mentors on and off campus, including Anne-Marie Maman ’84, Executive Director of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council; Anthony Williams, New Ventures Associate at OTL; and Andrew Wood, commercial transformation lead, Global Human Health at Merck. According to Maman, the group gives students who have an interest in life sciences and in entrepreneurship an opportunity to understand how the business side of biotech works. Regulatory issues and lengthy timelines — taking 10 years to get a drug to market is considered fast — make this venture different from launching an app or retail company. Both Maman and Williams were impressed with the quality
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of the Alimtas’s work, especially considering that the team is entirely composed of undergraduates doing the kind of research typically done by specialized business school students. “It’s a struggle to find people who have a combination of the drive, enthusiasm, interest, and business focus to help us by doing some of this development work,” Williams said. “Alimtas has proven themselves to be very capable at coming up with novel and well-researched business plans.” The team meets once or twice a week, where they often split into smaller groups to discuss strategies and consult with mentors. Each meeting might focus on a specific module, such as how to value a certain technology, or the process of conducting clinical trials. The goal is to conduct “due diligence” — meaning that students understand the scientific details of the technology, how it compares to existing solutions, and the pipeline for development and financing. Intensive research goes into each colorful, organized slide of a “pitch deck,” which they present to investors. Most of the members of the Alimtas team had extensive research experience in the laboratory — but knew little about how to bring biotechnology research to market. “I didn’t really know how, after you make a discovery, how that gets out there and impacts people’s lives,” electrical engineering concentrator Thorpe said. Lin, who is a molecular biology concentrator, said that even she was unaware of the process of drug discovery, comparing it to a black box. But through discussion and hard work, the team
went through the steps of what it takes to create a company. The first step might be understanding the science. Hepatitis B is a viral infection that affects the liver, where chronic infection can lead to liver cirrhosis and carcinoma. The World Health Organization estimates that in 2015, more than 200 million people worldwide were living with chronic infection. The new drug platform is based on Ploss’ discovery of a factor that blocks the transformation of a certain type of DNA in the hepatitis B virus necessary for its pathogenicity. Alimtas has had an impact on the hepatitis B platform. Following the pitch in San Francisco, Ploss was contacted by multiple interested investors. He was also awarded grants, including funding from the University’s Intellectual Property Accelerator Fund for testing in cell culture and animal models. However, the work is still far from sustaining a company, and Alimtas’s business plans are simply a suggestion. The intellectual property behind the technology ultimately belongs to the University, which works with professors to license it to outside partners or to start their own companies. Hubs like the newly founded Princeton Innovation Center BioLabs could provide a space to conduct the necessary earlystage research. The facility, which can provide office and wet lab space for more than 25 startups, capitalizes on a renewed interest from the New Jersey area and the country at large in commercializing healthcare technologies. At the end of the semester, the team plans to travel to Boston, where they will expand their reach to more partners and
investors. “I’m hoping that by bringing in new people from the industry side, and also students who are excited about biotech and entrepreneurship, we can really push forward the level of entrepreneurship to an even higher level,” Thorpe said of Alimtas’s future. However, the real goal, Shah noted, was always to inspire students to get involved in biotechnology and prepare them for future careers. To that end, each year the Alimtas team selects a new technology to develop and pitch, gaining exposure to a range of fields and ideas. “Our main objective as students is to learn,” Shah emphasized. “We are trying to learn how to do this, to be exposed to the biotechnology industry.” Being a part of Alimtas has changed Thorpe and Lin’s perspective of what entrepreneurship means, as well as their career paths. “Coming into Princeton, people told me research or med school,” Lin said of the options available to a biology major. “But there is so much opportunity in industry, where you combine basic scientific research skills with thinking about what the world needs.” In that case, Alimtas’s greatest achievement may be opening avenues of opportunity. “The ultimate value of Alimtas is not what we are doing for the professors or the University,” Shah said. “It’s about inspiring students to go into this industry. In the end, these students will become the next generation of leaders who will discover and develop new medicines like Alimta.”
Tuesday March 3, 2020
Features
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In this lab, things change to stay the same By James Anderson Staff Writer
The University is always changing. Forbes is incorporating Pink House to create a four-year residential college. The Block 95 meal plan will soon be a thing
of the past. Scudder Plaza boasts a new — and controversial — colossus of a sculpture. Electric scooters are no longer allowed inside buildings. Every one of the University’s changes aims — well, plainly — to change things. But there’s one exception to that rule.
Here are some items to which the University library system plays host: 11 million total holdings. 100,000 rare coins. Ancient tablets. Papyri. The box in which the 1765 Stamp Act traveled from King George’s court to the colonies. The first six printed editions of the Bible.
COURTESY OF JAMES ANDERSON / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
Conservation Technician II Man Liu restores a book’s spine.
COURTESY OF JAMES ANDERSON / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
In the foreground, a suction table and humidity board, used primarily to clean artwork with water without allowing the color to bleed. Behind it, a vat where materials are sometimes submerged for cleaning.
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Shakespeare’s first four folios. Here are some issues with which Firestone Library must contend: Dust. Mold. Humidity. Acidity. Graceless students. The destruction wrought by mice. Time. So, this, lurking a stairwell and a world below the Library’s airy lobby, is Firestone’s solution to that slew of threats: the Conservation Lab, where things change to stay the same. The Conservation Lab has two divisions: General Collections Conservation and Special Collections Conservation. While General Collections Conservation handles the vast majority of the University’s holdings, Special Collections is responsible for the Library’s treasures. Access to the C Floor’s Special Collections unit is already tightly controlled. Visitors must stow all possessions in designated lockers before entering. A security guard directs them to wash their hands before buzzing into the Reading Room. The room itself is lined with no fewer than 20 bullet cameras. Director of Library Communications Barbara Valenza was noticeably tightlipped when it came to Special Collections’ additional security measures. “Only the people who need to know, know,” she said. Special Collections’ protections may seem excessive, but research libraries have found themselves the frequent targets of burglary attempts. Rare maps dealer and serial thief Edward Forbes Smiley III was discovered in 2005 in Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library cutting out maps with an X-Acto knife; in 1969, a robber almost stole Harvard University’s 1455 Gutenberg Bible but fell from a rope and injured himself. The video cameras, handwashing, and prohibition on pens can protect Special Collections’ holdings from disaster, but not everyday decline. This much is inevitable: everything ages. So when circulation desk staff or Special Collections archivists find a holding damaged — binding broken, page torn, illustration faded — they send it below ground, to the Conservation Lab. If it is particularly old or valuable, technicians treat the piece in-house. If the damage is minor and the holding comparatively unimportant, conservators ship it off to a commercial bindery. Before treatment begins, conservators file a condition report, and the curator responsible for the holding signs a treatment proposal. Curators and conservators work in tandem; the former might be aware of a fault of historical significance — like the Liberty Bell’s famous crack — that a conservator might be tempted to repair. And then they get to work. Strewn around the bright and busy Conservation Lab are the tools on which conservators have relied for centuries: pastes and glues, fibrous sheets of Japanese paper called kozo, bone folders, needles for resewing bindings. In one corner sits a machine for extracting moisture from works, near a vat
where paper — only the sturdiest kind — is washed. Arranged around the room are boxes and sheaths and racks for unbound pages. During this reporter’s visit to the lab, Project Conservator Victoria Wong was bent over her desk. On it sat a Cyrillic language book with a small gouge through its pages. Slowly, meticulously, Wong prepared variously-colored sheets of kozo paper to cover the hole. “Because the gouge goes through the whole book,” she said, “I basically had to tone papers to match all the inks that it goes through.” Near her, Rare Books Conservator Mick LeTourneaux was repairing a book dating from Rome, 1576. The tome’s riceband binding had broken; only strips of vellum — animal skin or membrane strips — held the covers together. LeTourneaux said he would use a fermentation process to flatten some of the pages, then strip the joints and reinforce them with wheat paste. Most of the Firestone conservators’ work comprises minor, routine repairs. Sometimes, though, despite best efforts — most of Special Collections’ holdings live in a vault that selffills with oxygen-repelling gas in the event of fire — calamity strikes. The last one was in December 2018; as the library was renovated, a worker accidentally set off a first floor sprinkler. Water seeped down to the A Level stacks, endangering over 20,000 books. Even in the face of those large-scale emergencies, the Conservation Lab doesn’t panic. “It was amazing,” said preservation librarian Brenna Campbell. “We had staff helping, we had students helping, and we had teams of people sorting wet books from dry books.” Several hundred books were carted down to the Lab. In the end, only about 20 had to be replaced. Disaster was averted, but Campbell noted that those “collections emergencies” may soon become the new normal. Climate change, she says, threatens to make conservators’ work increasingly difficult, as storms become increasingly severe. No matter the cause of the damage — storm, flood, or careless reader — Firestone’s ethics of book preservation remain the same. Above all, the conservators seek to preserve history. “It might be better to preserve the historic sewing structure even if it’s kind of weak than to resew it and lose that piece of material history,” Campbell said. As a general rule, the Lab uses a light touch and, when possible, makes changes that can later be reversed. “It’s not about making something new or restoring it in that sense,” Campbell said. “It’s more about what needs to happen to make that book or that document stable enough to be used by scholars.” Once it has been restored, back above-ground — without fanfare or fuss — travels the book, manuscript, or print, to its shelf or vault, for a new cycle of readers and repairs.
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Tuesday March 3, 2020
Opinion
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editor-in-chief
Jonathan Ort ’21
BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88 secretary Chanakya A. Sethi ’07 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 Betsy L. Minkin ’77 Alexia Quadrani Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 Kavita Saini ’09 Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 Abigail Williams ’14 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 editorial board chairperson Zachariah Sippy ’22
Ollie Thakar
On varieties of pencils
Contributing Columnist
Two weeks ago, I wrote a column justifying my obstinate refusal to switch from paper notes to digital notes; in a similar vein, I wish to write this column to justify yet another obsolete school-related habit of mine: standard pencils. More and more often, I see my fellow students resorting to mechanical pencils. And less and less frequently can I find public-use pencil sharpeners on campus. My family members — the same ones who unsuccessfully tried to persuade me of the merits of electronic note-taking — have all given up standard pencils in favor of pens, mechanical pencils, or nothing at all. So, naturally, I also entertained some reasons why I might consider switching to mechanical pencils. The most obvious advantage of mechanical pencils is that they do not require pencil sharpeners. A mechanical pencil does not require any maintenance until its lead runs out. Meanwhile, in order to maintain my pencil habits, I must keep not one but two pencil sharpeners. One, a small manual one, fits into my backpack for emergency situations, such as breaking the point off a pencil during a class or using a pencil up in the course of an examination. It leaks pencil dust into my bag and lacks the capability to produce pencils that are truly sharp, but proves effective in desperation. The other, an electronic model, sits on my desk in my dorm room, and I use this occasionally to re-sharpen very dull pencils. It makes a sound reminiscent of loud dental equipment and occasionally sprays pencil shavings back onto the desk, yet, sharpens pencils just to my liking. Using mechanical pencils would eliminate the necessity to keep both of these instruments with their many flaws. Furthermore, mechanical pencils are capable of writing much finer than standard pencils. The finest one can write with a standard pencil depends on how sharp it is; the more one writes with a standard pencil, the less fine it can be. Mechani-
COURTESY OF PICKPIK
Why standard pencils are better than mechanical pencils...
cal pencils avoid this problem by maintaining the same thickness of lead. Mechanical pencils create notes that look, well, mechanical. They create consistency in note-taking that standard pencils simply lack, which is certainly attractive. The environment also plays a role in the pencil industry as well. Mechanical pencils consist of reusable bases, with lead to be replaced. If I were to buy a collection of mechanical pencils, I could theoretically use their bases forever, only ever needing to buy canisters of lead supplements. Standard pencils, on the other hand, grow shorter after use. In fact, not enjoying the feel of pencils shorter than about two inches, I often discard short pencils, wasting a certain amount of wood, in addition to all of the wood that becomes wasted each time I sharpen my pencils. In short, mechanical pencils provide not only an environmentallyfriendly alternative to standard ones, but also an economic option, causing less waste and requiring less replacement. Yet, in exactly the same way as I discovered that the alleged shortcomings of paper notes were precisely their strengths, I see again that the alleged shortcomings of standard pencils are
what attract me to them. Both mechanical pencils and standard pencils require a certain degree of maintenance; while the regular sharpening of standard pencils is certainly more frequent than lead replacement in mechanical pencils, replacing lead is significantly less cathartic of an activity than grinding down a pencil. Each time I remove my pocket pencil sharpener from my bag, I feel a certain professional feeling, a confidence, that is absent from a simple lead refill. The fact that mechanical pencils write so finely allows for beautiful looking notes, but also makes them difficult to use. If I write firmly with a mechanical, it will break. My general clumsiness prohibits me from using any mechanical pencil with a lead below a thickness of 1.3 millimeters without breaking the pencil at least once a word. A 1.3-millimeter lead is so thick that it defeats the purpose of using mechanical pencils to write with a thin, even breadth. While I could train myself to write more gently, it is undeniably easier to simply write with a pencil that requires less care not to break. Furthermore, the option to write firmly and darkly with a standard pencil increases my
confidence. Writing hesitatingly, which I need to do with a mechanical pencil lest it break, does not inspire this same confident feeling in me as writing darkly with a standard pencil. Additionally, I can choose whether to write darkly or not with a standard pencil, a choice which I sacrifice when using a mechanical pencil. In drawing graphs in my notebook, for example, I can draw thin and thick lines, dark or light, all with the same tip of my pencil. A mechanical pencil simply lacks this multi-functionality. While I may soon become the only student I know who uses standard pencils, I will certainly not switch to mechanical pencils anytime soon. Although they have increased in popularity considerably, mechanical pencils still retain several shortcomings that keep them out of my school supplies: they break uncontrollably and only write with one thickness. The standard No. 2 pencil, whose ubiquitous yellow patina has decorated classrooms for generations, will continue to occupy a deserved place among my desk supplies as well. Ollie Thakar is a first-year from Baltimore, M.D. He can be reached at othakar@princeton.edu.
head sports editors Tom Salotti ’21 Alissa Selover ’21 associate sports editors Josephine de La Bruyère ’22 Emily Philippides ’22
NIGHT STAFF copy Genele Hua ’23 Christopher Kane ’23 Frederick Hagen-Gates ’22 Ceclia Zubler ’23 design Sophie Li ’23
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Sports
Tuesday March 3, 2020
page 6
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } WOMEN’S HOCKEY
Women’s hockey books trip to ECAC semifinal with dramatic win in double overtime
By Chris Murphy and Owen Tedford Editor in Chief Emeritus, Senior Staff Writer
Three Tigers rushed down the ice, with one defender looking to stymie the rush. Princeton executed a pass, fired a shot on net, and forced the rebound in the back of the net. In a flash, the game, and the series, was over: a mob of orange and black stormed the ice with the knowledge that they would be playing next weekend. The three-game ECAC Quarterfinal series against Quinnipiac lived up to expectations. Between two teams with plenty to prove, there were tons of big hits, highlight-reel saves, and an atmosphere that felt more like a street fight than a hockey game. If you didn’t know these teams didn’t like each other before the series, you certainly did afterward. Entering as the No. 2 seed, the Tigers came out looking like they would make quick work of the Bobcats. Just 22 seconds into the game, sophomore forward Sarah Fillier found senior defender Claire Thompson in front of the net, and Thomspon buried the puck to give Princeton the early momentum. Moments later, senior forward Carly Bullock scored again, giving the Tigers a 2–0 lead before most were even in their seats. Another consecutive two-goal onslaught within the first period — this time brought by freshman forward Annie Kuehl and sophomore forward Maggie Connors — doubled the Ti-
gers’ lead to 4–0 and essentially ended the game before it even began. Credit, however, must be given to Quinnipiac senior goalie Abbie Ives; despite being overwhelmed to start game one, she weathered the storm of Princeton pressure and blocked out the rabid Princeton fanbase to keep the Bobcats in the series. The Bobcat turnaround started later in the first period — while the Tigers were entirely uninhibited in the first ten minutes of the series, the next 200 would prove to be much more difficult. Throughout the remainder of the first game and all of the second, Quinnipiac would force Princeton into many odd-man offensive opportunities, frequently making the Tigers turn the puck over before they could sustain any sort of pressure. Meanwhile, the Bobcats did the opposite, holding possession for extended periods of time and forcing the Tigers to tire on defense. The strategy worked for most of the second game. After Bullock scored in the waning minutes of the first period, the Tigers had few scoring chances for the rest of the game. The Bobcats, on the other hand, capitalized on the few rebounds that senior goalie Stephanie Neatby gave up in the game, taking a 2–1 lead into the final minutes of the game. With the Bobcats trying to win in regulation, Bullock had other plans, scoring her second goal of the game after video review determined her deflection was not a kick. Riding their momentum
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Women’s hockey players celebrating after their double overtime win against Quinnipiac.
into overtime, Princeton could not close the deal — Quinnipiac scored the game-winning goal off a faceoff, one of their few wins in the circle the entire series. So the series came down to Sunday: a “do or die” game three to advance to the semifinals. The game was ugly and physical — the teams at one point had a combined 11 power play opportunities. Princeton was forced to weather the loss of senior defender Sylvie Wal-
lin, who suffered a leg injury in the first period. With an even thinner defensive line, the pressure was on junior goalie Rachel McQuigge — making her first start of the series — to hold off the increasing Bobcat offense. For the first 55 minutes of the game, she was unstoppable, as the Tigers built a 2–0 lead. When Thompson fired a snipe from just inside the blue line that found its home, and many in the stands felt this was the turning point.
Quinnipiac however, had other plans. With their season on the line, the Bobcats rallied, putting together their best fiveminute stretch of the series to tie things up before the regulation horn sounded. For the second straight game, there would be overtime. Thanks to Neatby’s work in the first few games, the Tigers had fresher legs in net. While the Bobcats dominated the first half of overtime one, it was the Tigers who generated scoring chances and looked as if they were on the verge of winning. Ives continued to hold the line, making save after save, knowing that the next goal she let in would mean the end of her career. It would take until midway through the second overtime for Princeton to finally break through. The game officially became the secondlongest in Princeton history, trailing only the triple overtime contest against Quinnipiac in 2017. The win for Princeton was huge: by defeating the No. 10 Bobcats, the Tigers added to their NCAA Tournament resume, making their chances of playing in the national contest much more likely. For now, though, they have an opportunity to defeat the team that has ended their ECAC tournament runs more than anyone else: No. 5 Clarkson. The Tigers are winless in seven semifinal games, with their last three defeats coming from the Golden Knights. Should the Tigers win that, they would face the winner of No. 1 Cornell and No. 10 Harvard.
MEN’S TRACK AND FIELD
Men’s track and field wins Ivy League Championship, women take fourth By Emily Philippides and Jesse Brewer Associate Sports Editor, Staff Writer
Princeton men’s track and field had a weekend to remember in Ithaca, N.Y. after securing a team victory at the Ivy League Indoor Track and Field Championships with 173 points, well ahead of secondplace Harvard (116 points) and third-place Penn (91 points). This is the program’s 23rd Ivy League victory in school history and its ninth since 2010. On the women’s side, the Tigers improved upon last year’s fifth-place team finish to place fourth overall at this year’s championships with 68 points, behind Cornell (82.5 points), Harvard (126 points), and Penn (133 points). Notable individual performances for the men’s team include junior Joey Daniels’ win in the 60m hurdles — an event he has won for the past two consecutive seasons — in a time of 7.77 seconds, which not only set a new school record but also a meet and conference record. Sophomore Andrei Iosivas, who was named Most Outstanding Field Performer at the conclusion of the meet, also defended his league title with a total score
of 5523 in the heptathlon. Other first-place finishers include sophomore C.J. Licata in the shot put (18.55 meters), senior Justice Dixon in the 200m (21.66s), junior Jeff Hollis in the high jump (2.14 meters), and junior Sam Ellis in the 1000m (2:25.65). The Tigers also put together a strong group for the Distance Medley Relay as Ellis, senior JC Colangelo, sophomore Scott Thompson, and junior Eli Krahn came out on top in 9:58.20. The sophomore class’s strong performances impressed, too, with Christian Brown finishing behind Daniels in the 60m hurdles (7.91s), Greg Sholars finishing in second in the 200m (21.72s) and third in the 60m dash (6.86s), Dayo Abeeb placing second in the triple jump (15.35 meters), and Michael Phillippy crossing the line in second in the 400m (48.42s) in a time that would, with the flat-tobanked track conversion, translate to a new personal record. Junior Ed Trippas, last year’s Ivy League and NCAA Regional 3K steeplechase champion, finished less than two seconds behind Kieran Tuntivate of Harvard in the 5K. In an exciting dash to the finish, Trip-
pas split 59.02 over the last 400m of the race and crossed the line in a new personalbest time of 14:22.34, coming
spirit and dedication is exceptional. It’s really a 33-man team that just believes in itself so much and performs
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Men’s track and field with Ivy League Championship banner.
just shy of the win. On the field, junior Kelton Chastulik finished behind Licata in the shot put after throwing a new indoor personal-best mark of 17.80 meters, and senior Gab Montefalcone finished behind Iosivas in the heptathlon with 5353 points. “[The] team could not have performed better than it did,” Men’s Head Coach Fred Samara said, in an interview with the Ivy League Network. “From the first event to the last event, we had amazing performances, many many [personal records]. Our team
at the highest level when it comes to the Heps,” he said. On the women’s side, numerous Princeton Tigers placed amongst the top three in their respective events. In the throws arena, sophomore Luisa Chandler-Edmond took second place out of an extremely talented field in the weight throw with a mark of 18.74m, while first-year Annika Kelly was close behind in fifth with a throw of 17.14m. In the shot put, junior Julia Harisay earned a sixth-place finish with a throw of 13.95m. The women also competed
fiercely in the longer distances, with two top-five finishers in the mile as sophomores India Weir and Gillian Wagner claimed fourth and fifth place in times of 4:59:63 and 5:04:83, respectively. Weir then came together with junior Peyton Brown, sophomore Isabella Hilditch, and junior Sophie Cantine in the Distance Medley Relay (DMR) to earn third place in an impressive time of 11:34:58. Also finishing in third was the 4x400 relay team comprised of junior Katie DiFrancesco, senior Heide Baron, first-year Arianna Smith, and senior Ashley Willingham, crossing the line in a time of 3:45:49 — the fifth fastest in school history. DiFrancesco finished fifth in the 200m with a time of 24.53s. Other excellent performances on the track came from the first-years, with Charlotte O’Toole running 1:15.26 to place third in the 500m, Olivia Hee placing fifth in the 60m dash in a time of 7.61s, and Maggie Hock also finishing in fifth over 1000m, crossing the finish line in 2:54.64. Both the men’s and women’s teams will be taking a muchneeded rest before they start preparing for the outdoor season in mid-March.
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