Princeton should support student-led clubs as essential to building community

Tim Frawley Guest Contributor

The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.

Ifell in love with rugby when I decided to quit baseball and drive three towns over to try out a new sport during my senior year of high school.

Once I got my first taste of the beautiful chaos that is rugby, I was instantly hooked on the adrenaline, teamwork, and culture of respect that define the sport. When I came to Princeton, my experience with rugby was far more than just the practices and 80 non-stop minutes on Saturdays. The club brought together students from all backgrounds and walks of life to bond as one community. Playing on that team, and co-captaining it during my senior year, ended up being one of the most important parts of my Princeton experience.

To some people, club sports may appear as just a way to stay active and have fun, but to everyone who has played a club sport, they are so much more. They are a couch to crash on when traveling, an inside joke at your 10th reunion, a phone call to a struggling teammate, and a community that reminds you that you belong at Princeton.

Student-led clubs and communities are essential to the Princeton experience and what makes this school so special. These clubs are incredibly effective at knitting new students into the social fabric that will support them and allow them to support others at Princeton.

Princeton has a pool of some of the best and brightest minds in the world, and when given the space to flourish, students can create and maintain pockets of a beautiful culture. These spaces allow students to feel a real sense of ownership, belonging, and responsibility. Yet, some clubs have found it difficult to bounce back from COVID-19 and flourish in the current campus climate. The post-COVID-19 treatment of club sports highlights gaps in the University’s approach to student life — the administration should shift from a top-down approach to one that seeks to support student groups and utilize student feedback to organically foster community.

Over the past years, events and policies have made it more difficult for club sports to attract students and provide meaningful leadership opportunities. With rugby, for example, a long clearance process combined with restricted field access due to construction has limited our ability to recruit new players and play full seasons. We have not been able to play our first games until the end of September or the early weeks of October, by which time all other Ivies and schools in the region are a quarter to a third through their fall seasons. Ultimate Frisbee no longer has regular access to grass fields and instead has to practice on more injury-prone turf fields during the night, which conflicts with meals and typical study times. Other sports have been impacted such as club baseball, which did not have access to a baseball field during my senior year after their last field was removed for new athletic facilities. These are just a few examples and, generally, clubs have struggled with poor school administration communication, late practice times, and scarce resources. These challenges became especially acute immediately after remote school during COVID-19 when club sports were not allowed to practice in any capacity for much of the year, hurting recruitment and the knowledge transfer from graduating seniors to younger classes. Although Princeton dedicates vast resources to its undergraduates, those resources could be used more effectively. Princeton has a large administration with one of the highest ratios of employees to students in the country.

A 2018 article from The Chronicle of Higher Education found Princeton had 74.2 full-time managers per 1,000 students, seventh in the nation for non-profit four-year institutions. This number was second only to Yale in the Ivy League at 81.4. Penn was a distant third at 55.3. The median for 931 colleges was 14.4. Recently, Princeton created another position within residential colleges, residential life coordinators, to help foster community and belonging. However, a top-down approach with a heavy emphasis on administrative control is unlikely to bear fruit because students will still struggle to find community and support without student leadership. I would argue that the larger University-controlled residential colleges with random placement and muted identities have failed to cultivate the same sense of belonging and culture as smaller institutions with more student leadership such as the eating clubs and co-ops. Although Princeton’s campus life strategic plan for 2020–2025 heavily emphasizes positives such as service and inclusion, student leadership is referenced just once with the phrase “student-led initiatives” in a general mission statement.

Clubs are only briefly mentioned.

The well-being of the undergraduate community has far-reaching impacts, from future career oppor- tunities to the mental and physical health of students. Unfortunately, I think the state of student life has steadily deteriorated, at least during my time at Princeton. While this complex problem will have complex solutions, a crucial component is the ability of students to support and connect with each other. No one is better equipped to understand the needs of Princeton students than other Princeton students. I cannot count how many teammates have said that rugby got them through Princeton, and this sentiment was echoed by many students I talked to in other clubs. cial card within six inches of the sensor.” Student members of the committee voiced their opposition to the pilot due to the program’s high costs and the focus on door locks over campus lighting.

With so much “new” on campus, I hope the Princeton administration can support the sub-cultures that have developed over decades and provide the space for new ones to grow. These fragile communities are vastly harder to rebuild than to maintain. Truly empowered student-led communities will be messy, and there will be mistakes. However, I firmly believe the learning opportunities and space for ownership are valuable to the students and the long-term health of Princeton’s community. To the administration, I hope that you can understand the concerns that I have raised and consider meaningful shifts in your approach toward working with student clubs and leaders. Policies and decisions must stay grounded in the very human experiences students have each day at Princeton that cannot be fully captured by statistics or a U.S. News ranking. To the current students, I hope you all can continue to support each other and do amazing work. I’m humbled to think I attended a school with so many smart and dynamic people, and I encourage you to make those commitments to clubs and culture.

Tim Frawley is a member of the Class of 2022. He can be reached at timfrawley20@gmail.com.

One notable opponent was Ted Cruz ’92, who served on the Campus Safety Committee at the time. Cruz noted that the program focused on violent assault over date rape on campus and feared that students would find ways to evade the door locks. Others took to the pages of the ‘Prince’ to write about their concerns. Eric Tilenius ’90 wrote, “we said we wanted the campus lit up, not locked up.”

In a Letter to the Editor, Melissa Weiler ’90 wrote, “For too many years this campus’s poor lighting has been a cause of great and legitimate concern, particularly for campus women. Various groups have lobbied the administration for improved lighting only to be granted meager, ineffectual concessions.”

The University began electronically locking Mathey and Rockefeller College dormitory entryways in 1991, a project that cost the University $700,000. Nowadays, students must scan their University ID card — commonly referred to as a prox — to access stu-

dent dormitories. Cameras appear in the ’90s

In March of 1997, campus crime rates at Princeton exceeded the national average, with rates of burglary rising by 87 percent between 1994 and 1996. The following October, Princeton announced that it would keep dorms locked 24 hours a day, accessible only by prox, mirroring the locking systems of several of its peer institutions.

In 1998, an editorial in the ‘Prince’ revealed plans by the then-serving Public Safety Crime Prevention Specialist to install security cameras in “parking lots and other high crime areas.” The editorial condemned the measure, writing that “if the initiative is implemented, the University will enter a new era of surveillance.”

While the piece acknowledged the push for more campus safety, it also raised questions similar to those raised today: “Public Safety needs to spell out their camera policy: Where will these cameras be placed? What constitutes a high crime area? What crimes will the use of these cameras target?”

The piece concluded with a warning to the University community, writing: “The plan is born of good intentions, but Public Safety should remain wary of setting up a campus where Big Brother has a wide win - dow into students’ lives.”

Surveillance after the PATRIOT Act

A 2003 ‘Prince’ article traced the rise in concerns about privacy at peer institutions following the passage of the PATRIOT Act, which vastly expanded the powers of American law enforcement to engage in domestic electronic surveillance. Cornell students called attention to the monitoring of a private mailing list at the University of New Hampshire that led to a student protest being shut down.

Only a few years later at Princeton, students reacted with concern when the Department of Public Safety (DPS) revealed that it had used Facebook accounts in some of its investigations of student misconduct in 2006. DPS’s deputy director initially denied the claims that the department had used Facebook posts, saying that “it’s like Big Brother watching you and we don’t really operate that way.”

The department later revealed that it had used Facebook to “follow investigative leads” to find pictures, cell phone numbers, and other publicly-available information posted by students.

In one Letter to the Editor, Stephen Kerns ’09 wrote, “Though I find the intrusion an outright violation of our privacy, what I find most reprehensible about the situation is the dishonest and deceitful manner in which Deputy Director of Public Safety, Charles Davall, has responded to the issue.”

DPS announced guidelines for its usage of Facebook in March of 2006, which stated that officers could “continue to use Facebook as a supplementary source for investigations,” but were prohibited from searching the site “parties or other activities” and prohibited from “identifying themselves as students in their Facebook accounts.”

After these guidelines were made public, the ‘Prince’ editorial board wrote that despite privacy concerns, “these guidelines properly balance student concerns about privacy with Public Safety’s need to have effective crime fighting tools at its disposal.”

Today’s conversations

In March of this year, Director of Campus Safety and Health Kelly States commented during a USG meeting to members of the campus lighting working group that lighting decisions are “complicated.” This comment came months after the University had committed to new security measures: to restrict access to residential college common areas, “enhance campus lighting,” and “expand a security camera program.”

The University’s initial announcement relating to security cameras and lighting came only a few weeks after the passing of Misrach Ewunetie ’24. During an intensive fiveday search while Ewunetie was missing, a lack of information prompted many to consider campus safety practices. Ewunetie’s death was not ruled a suicide until December.

Soon afterwards, proposals to add security cameras to campus became a topic of debate, with views both in support and against it. Supporters cited recent incidents on campus, while detractors raised the potential for surveillance.

On March 8, the University announced that it would implement security cameras on “exterior doorways in undergraduate residential college buildings and dorms” by Fall of 2023. This announcement did not include any updates relating to campus lighting.

During the March USG meeting, States commented that the University has to consider additional lighting with “competing priorities” relating to sustainability, light pollution, and research.

Seth Kahn ’25, a member of Students for Prison Reform, Education, and Abolition (SPEAR) wrote an email to the ‘Prince’ about his reaction to the announcement of security camera installations.

“When I heard about the security camera installation, I immediately thought about surveillance in the modern world. Modern surveillance technology has enormous potential for harm, especially around the related expansion of policing and the dangers of facial recognition,” Kahn wrote.

Like students in the ’80s, Kahn would prefer an emphasis on lighting.

“I have not met a single student who does not want increased lighting, but the University has made it clear that their priority is cameras, not lighting,” Kahn wrote.

On April 2, during a USG Senate meeting, Vice President for Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun and Assistant Vice President for Public Safety Ken Strother took questions on security camera and lighting initiatives on campus.

When asked about the University’s expanded ability to potentially surveil students through these cameras and whether the University would expand or change its policies in the future, Calhoun responded that although she could not speak to decisions by future committee members, “there is no intention of having these become surveillance.”

“We don’t intend to surveil our community, our students or otherwise,” Calhoun said.

Sophie Glaser is an assistant Features editor and staff News writer for the ‘Prince.’