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Thursday october 1, 2015 vol. cxxxix no. 79
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U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S
Report finds increase in crimes from 2013 to 2014 By Paul Phillips news editor
In Opinion Columnist Colter Smith argues for a free textbook program at the University, and Columnist Newby Parton discusses transracial identity. PAGE 4
In Street This week in Street, Editor Lin King brings us behind the scenes of Mudd Library, Associate Editor Harrison Blackman launches our Unfamiliar Street series, and Staff Writer Danielle Taylor tries out for a dance group sans experience. PAGE S1-S4
Today on Campus 4:30 p.m.: Israeli writer, playwright, journalist and novelist David Grossman will deliver the 10th Anniversary Kwartler Family Lecture. Betts Auditorium.
The Archives
Oct. 1, 1952
Four young thieves reported for thefts on campus were apprehended. The vandals raided the University Store, Murray-Dodge Hall, and Farr’s Hardware on Nassau Street. They were aged 14-17.
News & Notes Bomb threat called into John Witherspoon Middle School
A bomb threat was called in at John Witherspoon Middle School at 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday, according to a Princeton Police Department press release. A computer-generated telephone threat was sent to the main office reporting a bomb in the building. Princeton police officers were put on alert and investigated the threat very soon after. All of the students and faculty in the middle school were evacuated and redirected to a safe location. Students were allowed to return to the premises at 1:20 p.m., though police officers remained patrolling the school during the day. There has since been a complete search of the middle school grounds by the New Jersey State Police and the Mercer County Sheriff Department, and they concluded that there was no explosive device. Princeton High School and Riverside Elementary School received similar threats by telephone last week, but officials investigated these threats and labeled them as hoaxes. Allentown High School was evacuated due to a bomb threat on Thursday, NJ.com reported.
LOCAL NEWS
There were 77 crimes reported on the University’s main campus in 2014, an increase from 56 crimes reported in 2013, according to the 2014 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report released Wednesday. The increase was mainly caused by an uptick in the number of motor vehicle thefts reported – there were 16 motor vehicle thefts reported in 2014, compared with four in 2013 and one in 2012. Twelve golf carts were reported stolen, and all were recovered. The Department of Public Safety deferred comment to University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua. Mbugua noted that the report’s text is updated annually. “This year there were changes made in line with new guidance and policies surrounding the Violence Against Women Act requirements. There is a section that was updated with language from Rights, Rules, Responsibilities about Title IX complaints,” he said, adding that the fire safety section also changed. Burglaries, which rose substantially from 28 to 41 between 2012 and 2013, went back down to 34 in 2014. Eight instances of rape were reported to University officials in 2014, a slight increase compared to the six instances reported in 2013. Twenty-eight sexual offenses, two domestic violence offenses, one dating
violence offense and five stalking incidents were reported to confidential counselors in 2014, the report said. There were also five fondling incidents reported in 2014, compared to none in 2013. The University community was alerted of two fondling events via email on Sept. 17 and Sept. 20 of this year. Mbugua said the University community did not receive email alerts about the 2014 fondling incidents because three were reported by the Campus Security Authorities, where the victim did not want to file a criminal complaint and the incidents were handled administratively, while the other two reports came from domestic locations off-campus. In the report, rape, fondling, incest and sodomy count as subsets of sexual assault. Due to changes made in 2014 to the Clery Act, which governs the reporting of crime statistics on college campuses receiving federal financial aid, sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, stalking and hate crimes are now categories included in the report. Sexual assault and violence previously fell under the categories of forcible and nonforcible sex offenses. The report defines sexual assault as “any sexual act directed against another person, without the consent of the victim, including instances where the victim is incapable of giving consent,” See REPORT page 3
COURTESY OF CKWILLIAMS.COM
Creative writing professor C.K. Williams died last week at 78 of multiple myeloma.
Renowned poet, Pulitzer Prizewinning professor dies at 78 By Kristin Qian staff writer
C.K. Williams, acclaimed poet and respected creative writing professor, died of multiple myeloma on Sept. 20 at his home in Hopewell, N.J. He was 78. Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection of poems titled “Repair,” Williams won awards including National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974 and the 2003 National Book Award. He had taught creative writing at the University since 1996. Williams was famous for long lines in his poems, but was also admired for his translations, especially of Euripedes’ “The Bacchae,” as well as poems by Polish poet Adam Zagajewski and French poet Francis Ponge. He composed a memoir titled “Misgivings: My Father,
My Mother, Myself,” which intricately chronicled the inner workings of his family relations. He wrote about political issues and social injustices, and touched on topics including urban life and love. His second wife, Catherine Williams, said that for as long as she knew him, Williams wrote every morning of his life, from 8 a.m. to noon, no matter what. Her favorite poem of his, she said, is “Invisible Mending,” a poem from “Repair.” “It’s one of his most beautiful poems. I don’t know if it’s the most beautiful poem, but it’s the one I feel very close to,” she said. Before his death, around mid-August, Williams left Catherine a manuscript of his last collection of poems, titled “Falling Ill,” which he had been working on for the last two and a half years, she said.
“It’s 52 poems, all the same length, without punctuation, all the same number of stanzas, and it’s all about his illness and being ill,” she said. She added that her husband had asked that the cover be a painting by their son, Jed, who is an artist. Williams also explored other forms of creative expression during his career, including theater. Robert Sandberg, who directed “Beasts of Love”, one of Williams’ plays, said that Williams loved the collaboration and excitement of seeing people work on his plays. The production, a part of the University’s “Myth in Transformation: The Phaedra project,” was performed at the University Art Museum in February 2014. “He was really happy,” Sandberg said. “I had the sense that a work of imagination in which he had created See OBITUARY page 2
U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S
Pre-law advising anticipates structural changes By Nahrie Chung staff writer
Lyon Zabsky, long-time pre-law advisor at the Office of Career Services for over 15 years, retired from the University on Sept. 1. Rather than replace Zabsky with a single pre-law advisor, Career Services will employ law school experts to meet with students in the interim while cross-training the entire counseling team with pre-law advising capacities for the future, according to Evangeline Kubu, director of External Relations and Operations at Career Services. Zabsky said she worked at Dow Jones with the Wall
Street Journal before making the switch into career counseling at the University 22 years ago. During her time as pre-law adviser, Zabsky said she worked closely with both students and alumni from all classes. “After 15 years, I decided it was time to make a change and I wanted some more time to myself, so I didn’t want a full-time position,” she said. “What I’m doing now [is] working with this great team called PreLaw Experts — it’s former Law School Admissions Council executives, vice presidents and admissions deans.” After getting to know students through the sometimes formidable applica-
tion process, hearing news about their law school acceptances was often Zabsky’s most exciting moment to witness, she said. She added that the University education prepares almost every student for advanced education of any kind, especially law. “It is something Princeton has always, always supported,” Zabsky said. ”The commitment is there so I’m sure they’ll follow through on it.” Kubu emphasized that the University is “actively committed to meeting the needs of students, first and foremost.” Career Services plans to bring in law school experts
to provide information sessions and one-on-one advising to students while cross-training the entire counseling team in the long-term, Kubu said. By engaging consultants from top pre-law advising organizations to offer training sessions, the goal is to equip every counselor with specific pre-law capacities so that all students interested in law are receiving excellent advising, she added. “We believe this will help scale our efforts across the entire undergraduate student body,” Kubu said. Kubu explained that students interested in law school are often considering many other fields when they
seek career counseling, so the entire counseling team’s ability to address not just law school but many possibilities simultaneously will be more helpful to students with varied interests. Career Services hosted a presentation on applying to law school on Monday with Karen Graziano, former president of the Northeast Association of Pre-Law Advisors. According to a Sept. 27 promotional email distributed to various prelaw student interest groups from Career Services, Graziano conducted “a workshop covering timelines, the LSAT, the Law School Admissions Council, how See PRE-LAW page 3
LECTURE
Professor talks potential China threat to U.S. By Katherine Oh staff writer
VINCENT PO :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Wilson School professor Thomas Christensen lectured on the relationship between China and the U.S.
While China’s power may not yet be comparable to that of the United States, China could still pose a significant threat to U.S. security, coDirector of the China and the World Program at the Wilson School Thomas J. Christensen argued at a lecture on Wednesday. “I don’t think China is going to be a peer competitor of the U.S.,” he said. “That’s where my optimism ends.
China is already powerful enough to spoil our whole day.” Christensen is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under the Bush administration from 2006 to 2008. His discussion centered on the role of China in the modern world through the lens of his new book, “The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power.” See LECTURE page 3
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Thursday october 1, 2015
Williams known for nuanced, emotional writing OBITUARY Continued from page 1
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was there in front of him.” He added that that the language in “Beasts of Love” was especially great because it captured the sense of Greek tragedy in terms of heightened and elevated language, and yet it felt contemporary. Sandberg said he felt the same way about Williams’ “The Bacchae” translation, which he had taught in his dramatic literature courses previously. “You felt like you were in both an ancient and immediately accessible world at the same time,” Sandberg said. Williams’ writing was known not only for his signature weaving, long lines, but also for the emotional and inner depth he brought to his writing, according to critics and other authors. Creative writing professor Edmund White, one of Williams’ colleagues who was brought to the University by Williams, said that in his poems he would zero in on something and keep massaging and looking at it, turning it over, examining it from every possible angle. “He has a very acute way of handling abstractions,” White said. ”He had a very extensive and precise vocabulary.” His writing studied all the details and took nothing for granted, whether it was old age, sickness or love, White noted, adding that he was one of the great love poets. “His poems to Catherine are very remarkable. They’re not just warm and fuzzy; they’re very penetrating and observant, and psychologically very deep,” he said. White noted that with students, Williams was neither condescending nor overly ingratiating. “It wasn’t that he was stern, but he was very matter-of-fact in his approach,” White said. “He was just very direct and simple.”
Live. Laugh. Love. Layout.
Susan Wheeler, director of the Program in Creative Writing, who had known Williams as a faculty member and friend, also said that Williams was very uniquely honest with his students. “He was very, very blunt,” Wheeler said. “He didn’t hide his own vulnerability, and I think he was the first to admit that he could really write a lousy poem, like all of us can. I think he was able to be very blunt without making the student feel like it was a personal failing.” Sandra Bermann, comparative literature professor, co-instructed Williams’ last course, COM 585: Arts of Imitation – Translation in Theory and Practice, with him in spring 2013, an opportunity Bermann said she was very blessed and fortunate to have had. Bermann, who first knew Williams through his poetry, said that over the years she got to know him as both a colleague and a friend. “He was serious, yet he would always reveal a sense of humor,” Bermann said. “He was incredibly honest, yet gentle. That’s not an easy combination.” Williams was someone who was a great poet and a great translator, and he was able to connect those two things in very insightful ways, Bermann remarked. Bermann noted that Williams’ deep engagement with other people and his sense of dialogue with them distinguished him from other poets. Williams wrote fervent poems on morality and war, and addressed a wide range of issues through a personal and unrestricted manner. “From the get-go, really early on, he was writing in the most nuanced way; poems that brought in class distinctions and also about race,” Wheeler said. Williams’ last public appearance was a joint recital with renowned pianist Rich-
ard Goode last spring. He read his poems in conjunction with select works by Ludwig Van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Robert Schumann, among others. The program sought to inspire dialogue between various disciplines and highlight their relationship to music. “Personally for me it’s really sad that we’re not going to have an opportunity to work with him again, because he was a remarkable man and the collaborations that we did were really, really fruitful,” Marna Seltzer, director of the Princeton University Concerts, said. Having grown up playing
“He was serious, yet he would always reveal a sense of humor. He was incredibly honest, yet gentle. That’s not an easy combination.” Sandra Bermann,
comparative literature professor
the piano, Williams was particularly drawn to the piano and wrote several poems inspired by the music for the performance, Seltzer said. In his most recently published collection, “Selected Later Poems,” Williams dedicates a poem about Beethoven he read during that concert to Richard Goode. Seltzer said that neither she nor Goode realized it until seeing the book. “That’s exactly the kind of thing Charlie would do, is just kind of be quietly generous like that but not say anything,” Seltzer said. Up until the very end, he
was impatient about personal concerns or the like, always wishing to directly and immediately engage with friends, strangers, new acquaintances, and students, to discuss art or politics — things that really mattered to him, Wheeler said. “He was incredibly partisan and really passionate about things he felt strongly [about],” Wheeler said. Born and raised in Newark, N.J., Williams attended Bucknell University, where he played basketball, and then graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. He began writing poems when he was 19. Williams was a wonderful man and a passionate person intensely tied to family, N. Jeremy Kasdin, vice dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Williams’ first cousin, said. Catherine Williams said that at home, Williams was a very good cook and responsible for many meals. “He was a wonderful person to live with. He was fun, a very honest person,” she said. With a large build at 6-foot5-inch, Williams was a lean, athletic individual who could be seen striding about, like a young man, White said. “It’s hard to think he’s dead because he always seemed so youthful,” White said. During his time at the University, Williams divided his time between New Jersey and France. “I think that the main influence of living abroad — the main inf luence it had on his writing — was that it made him question almost everything,” White said. Apart from his wife, son and first cousin, Williams is also survived by a daughter, Jessica Williams Burns, sonin-law Michael Burns, a sister, Lynn, a brother Richard, and three grandchildren. “It’s a wonderful life to celebrate,” Bermann said.
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Global governance among problems, says Christensen Career Services to bring LECTURE in law school experts to advise pre-law students Continued from page 1
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Wilson School professor Rory Truex ’07 described Christensen’s view of China as one of optimism, explaining that Christensen’s new book is opposed to the notion that China and the United States are inherently headed toward conf lict. Rory said such a perspective was “very welcome” given recent concerns about China under the leadership of President Xi Jinping. “I see two major challenges; I’m called optimistic,” Christensen said. “But I do see them as very difficult problems.” The two major problems concern security and global governance. According to Christensen, the security question is how to discourage China from destabilizing East Asia. Christensen explained that China can have a destabilizing effect because of its tendency to settle disputes through the use of force. Convincing China to actively contribute to keeping the international system safe will be difficult, Christensen said. Issues of global financial stability, as well as humanitarian concerns or environmental problems such as climate change, cannot be solved by any one country alone. In this context, China plays an important role, as international policies will not be able to move forward
if China obstructs the efforts of other countries, or even if China just sits on the sidelines, Christensen said. For example, it is hard for the international community to pressure a country like Iran or North Korea, for example, using sanctions unless China is on board. He characterized China as a country that is still developing, but with “a post-colonial chip on its shoulder.” “Never before has a developing country been asked to contribute so much,” he added. Christensen cited a 2000 article he co-authored with Richard Betts and noted that if China handles its rise and its region as badly as the United States handled its growth, the world will be in for big trouble. Christensen said that although the Chinese military has been land-based historically, recent developments indicate that China could expand its military reach offshore. Among the country’s new innovations are ballistic missiles of significant capability and diesel electric submarines. However, even these won’t provide China a lead on the States in real politics, Christensen stated. “This is not a new Cold War,” Christensen said, adding that China is not a real enemy, although it presents real challenges. Christensen further noted that the United States must exercise caution in order to
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avoid alienating the very allies it aims to protect, explaining that our allies are dependent on China economically. Drawing from his experience working for the Department of State, Christensen said that it is “unfair” to criticize the Obama administration for increasing tension with China, as compared to the Bush administration. “I’m not saying everything’s going great, but the China that the Obama administration is dealing with is not the same China Bush had to deal with,” Christensen explained. The global governance challenge is of greater significance for the Unites States than the security issue, according to Christensen. While the United States has plenty of experience adopting “diplomacy as a military tool or the military as diplomacy tool” in order to de-escalate problems, it has no experience convincing a nation as influential as China to cooperate, Christensen explained. Luckily for Americans, there are ways to respond to the twin challenges, Christensen said. The United States is not going to determine policies of China, Christensen explained, and all it can do is to create an environment such that China might decide that it is better not to pursue greatness through force. According to Christensen, China is at the heart of a world integrated by trans-
national production and ontime delivery, and is able to inf luence other countries because of this. At the same time, however, China also “has real disincentive to attack all of its neighbors” precisely because of this interdependence, since it needs those countries to provide it with parts. To address the China issue, the United States must adopt a very strong military position as well as a very strong alliance structure. At the same time, these must be coupled with diplomacy that doesn’t try to restrict Chinese growth or attempt to overthrow the existing Chinese regime. “Focus on prescribed changes in behavior, not regime changes,” Christensen said. Christensen concluded his talk by saying that the United States should try to find incentives for China to cooperate to improve its own nation, then link those domestic efforts to international policies. He cited the progress made on the climate change front under the Obama administration as an example of “smart diplomacy,” one that tied China’s need to reduce low-altitude air pollution to a global need to fight global warming. The talk, sponsored by the Wilson School’s China and the World Program and the East Asian studies department, was open to the public and took place at 4:30 p.m. in Robertson Hall.
PRE-LAW Continued from page 1
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to navigate the application process and more.” Graziano will be available for one-on-one advising sessions with students during the week of Oct. 12, the promotional email said. Kubu said priority for these appointments will be given to seniors applying to law school this fall, as well as juniors taking the LSAT exam in February. Jessica Zou ’16, who serves as undergraduate co-chair of the Program of Law and Public Affairs, said that news of Zabsky’s departure and subsequent changes were not made known to her until several weeks ago. Zou had met with Zabsky during her freshman and sophomore years to request feedback on her cover letters for legal internships and general advice on law school preparation. “Lyon just had a lot of insight into the process,” Zou said, describing the way in which Zabsky would tell her about early decision processes of specific schools and help arrange interest meetings with visiting law school admissions deans. Expecting to meet with Zabsky during the fall ap-
plication season, Zou said she was surprised and somewhat disheartened when Career Services informed her of Zabsky’s retirement. “Coming into senior year, I was expecting to get to meet with her as soon as I got back to campus to show her my personal statement and my resume,” she said. “It was jarring … I wish it hadn’t been so sudden with no warning at all.” Due to Zabsky’s absence, Zou has been reaching out to current law students who previously worked with Zabsky, asking them for recommended resources and other students who have additional insights. “It might be different for me, [because] I have met with Lyon in the past, she has told me things about applying to law school, and I am probably in a better place because of those conversations than I would have if I had just been expecting to meet with her this semester and I had not met with her before at all,” Zou noted. Kubu said the University will continue to strengthen its law school advising network. “Princeton has very good relationships with law school deans and admissions officers, and we will continue growing those relationships,” she said.
Instances of reported rape increased from 6 to 8 REPORT Continued from page 1
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and fondling as “the touching of the private parts of another person for the purpose of sexual gratification, without the consent of the victim.” The report also distinguishes between sexual assault as a second degree crime and aggravated sexual assault as a first degree crime. There was one instance of arson reported and zero instances of criminal homicide, incest, sodomy or dating violence. The report also contains the number of arrests and judicial referrals, split into three categories: liquor law violations, drug abuse violations and il-
legal weapons possession. Each of these categories is further divided into arrests and judicial referrals. A judicial referral refers to a student who was taken through the University’s judicial process but not necessarily arrested, while an arrest involves a student being taken into custody under specific charges. The number of judicial referrals for liquor law violations jumped from 28 in 2012 and 36 in 2013 to 129 in 2014, while the number of arrests for liquor law violations jumped from two in 2013 to 12 in 2014. “The liquor law violations are counted by individuals not by incidents,” Mbugua explained. “There were several incidents this year where large numbers
of students were referred to the judicial proccess at one time from single incidents.” The report notes that referrals to the deans are counted by persons and do not necessarily reflect the number of incidents. There were 12 drug abuse violation arrests in 2013 and 18 in 2014, while the number of judicial referrals for such violations stayed similar, only jumping from 27 to 28. There were no arrests for illegal weapons possession in 2014. The University reported six fires in 2014, with no injuries or deaths and only minor property damage. Five fires happened in undergraduate buildings and one in graduate buildings. All fires were reported as “unintentional” except for one
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which involved lighting a cardboard box on fire. In contrast, 2013 and 2012 each saw four fires. Items such as candles, incense and flammable or combustible liquids are banned from University residence halls, and smoking is prohibited in all residential buildings and outdoor spaces within 25 feet of said buildings. The report noted that the new Lakeside Graduate Housing Complex includes fire suppression systems, fire detection systems and fire extinguishers. The report added that fire safety training offerings will be added on Blackboard this coming year, and Fire Safety and Fire Extinguisher training are now being offered multiple times a semester.
Dear Princeton: Stop Lecturing the Poor on Poverty
Y
ou may have seen the signs already. From Frist Campus Center to the basement of Little Hall, the campus conservatives associated with a national group called Turning Point USA have put up signs that tout “The greatest social program is a JOB!” I write to offer a different perspective on poverty, social programs and employment. The signs, and the larger conservative ideology embedded in them, misunderstand poverty and the bona fide need to have social programs designed to help the poor. I challenge students to have a real conversation about poverty in America — a conversation, I hope, that is informed by social science data and not by stereotypes, racial privilege and simple slogans. To begin, most poor people have jobs. This past summer, sociologists and social scientists at Cornell, Louisiana State University and Brigham Young University conducted a comprehensive study on America’s working poor. The findings were unambiguous. “The majority of the United States’ poor aren’t sitting on street corners,” one of the authors noted. “They’re employed at low-paying jobs, struggling to support themselves and a family.” The data used in this study have been confirmed by a variety of sources, ranging from the U.S. Census Bureau to multiple economists at Harvard. And further research from the Economic Policy Institute has found that a considerable portion of poor people who currently don’t work are eligible to work but simply cannot find jobs. To argue “the greatest social program is a JOB!” completely misses the point. If we are serious about raising people out of poverty and providing all Americans with a basic, decent standard of living, we need to do more than expand access to employment. A full-time minimum wage worker in the United States who makes $7.25 per hour will have an annual income of $15,080; the poverty threshold for a family of four is $22,283, as reported in 2012. If jobs are not enough, then what is the solution? Programs that actually help the poor escape poverty. They include common sense policies like raising the minimum wage, expanding access to childcare, extending the earned income tax credit, and ensuring all Americans have access to affordable healthcare. Recent research indicates that raising the minimum wage alone to $10.10 would lift nearly 5 million Americans out of poverty. The conservative sign is also problematic in its conception of social programs. America’s welfare system best serves the affluent, not the poor. Our biggest “social programs” are the myriad of tax breaks and subsidies designed to enrich the rich, not aid marginalized communities. For instance, according to The New York Times, state and local governments provide $80 billion each year directly to companies. On the federal level, it’s a similarly sad story. The libertarian Cato Institute contends, “Corporate welfare in the federal budget costs taxpayers almost $100 billion a year.” In comparison, last year, the federal government only spent $17.35 billion on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the program most Americans think of as “welfare.” Through direct subsidies and tax deductions, we dole out taxpayer money to oil companies, Wall Street banks, yacht owners and wealthy Americans who buy multiple vacation homes. We even subsidize the fast food employers who pay their employees poverty wages. Yet conservatives all too often view programs to expand affordable housing for low-income communities and increase access to healthcare as undesirable (and undeserved) social welfare programs. This discussion, of course, is larger than a sign. President Ronald Reagan is credited with coining the phrase, “the greatest social program is a job,” and the statement has influenced the conservatives who followed and their policies. Earlier this year, the leading Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, wrote on Twitter, “The best social program, by far, is a JOB!” Like many other conservatives, Reagan and Trump used these seven words to justify a larger agenda that overlooks the challenges of the working poor and seeks to limit the safety net. The sign, in essence, represents the flaws in how this nation views, discusses, and addresses poverty. It’s easy for campus conservatives to lecture the poor from the rarefied halls of the University on how they need to get jobs, stop being lazy and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It’s harder to actually look at the data and make an effort to understand the actual issues at play. I encourage those who believe poverty would be cured only if the poor had jobs to look at the facts and consider the real world outside the Orange Bubble. It may be hard to fit that message on a sign, but it would be the right thing to do. Duncan Hosie is a Wilson School major from San Francisco, Calif. He can be reached at dhosie@ princeton.edu. This draft was edited by Destiny Crockett, an English major from St. Louis, Mo. She can be reached at datc@princeton.edu.
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Textbooks should be free Colter Smith columnist
Duncan Hosie
guest contributor
Opinion
Thursday october 1, 2015
T
his semester I have spent $319.42 on textbooks. The single most expensive of these cost me $129.47, and that’s after Labyrinth Books’ “student discount.” This has always struck me as one of the most ludicrous parts of life at the University and at colleges in general. Even after paying tuition, we still have to pay an exorbitant additional sum just to be able to take our classes. But it doesn’t have to be like this. The current system of textbook usage at this school works something along the lines of the following: We enroll in classes, and those classes’ professors tell us what books we need to buy for them. The professors often do not have an incentive to try to limit the books we need to purchase, because they are not the ones bearing the cost. In fact, on some occasions they authored the book they teach from and receive royalties every time a copy is purchased, and I can imagine that that puts some of our professors in an awfully tempting situation. Next, we all crowd our way into Labyrinth to buy these books at an exorbitant price because we really have no other option. There is Amazon, but its prices aren’t always much better and it presents the additional challenges of delivery times and a lack of returns. We hold on to these books for a mere three or four months, after which we sell them back to Labyrinth at just 25 percent of the original sale price. All Labyrinth has to do is store them in a basement over the summer or Intersession. Then the next wave of students comes in, and
Labyrinth can sell to them at full price those very same books we just sold back for next to nothing. And thus the cycle continues. Of course, there is student-to-student textbook exchange. This, however, does a poor job of connecting sellers and buyers and rarely works to its full potential. For example, this semester I tried to buy every single one of my books from the textbook exchange Facebook group and could not get a single one. One reason for this is that everyone wants to buy at the beginning of the semester and sell at the end, creating a vast imbalance in the peak seasons of supply and demand. Another is that professors often mandate that their students buy the latest editions of textbooks even though there is usually little material difference between them. Finally, there simply isn’t the infrastructure in place at the moment for a robust and efficient textbook exchange market for students at the University. In short, Labyrinth makes a killing off of this whole scheme at the expense of every student at this University, and the University loses nothing in the process and so has no reason to intervene. But nonetheless it could, and in doing so change this University forever. Here’s how. Eventually, I envision the University having a store of all the textbooks that classes use consistently. Every student who enrolls for a class is loaned all the necessary textbooks for that class for free. The students must return them at the end of the semester. Any failures to return textbooks or textbooks returned in a damaged condition will result in a fine. Implementing this plan all at once, however, could be costly. Instead, what I propose is that the
vol. cxxxix
University implement this strategy class by class, starting with the biggest classes and slowly expanding to every class with consistent textbooks. Additionally, to help ease its burdens, the University could buy these books used from students. Thus, while the initial cost for the plan may be moderate, it can be spread out among many years. Additionally, once the program is in place, upkeep costs will be significantly lower than buying new books perennially. If we want an example for this system, we need look no farther than our own iClickers. I would like to stress that this isn’t simply a plan to shift the burden of paying for textbooks from the students to the University. Rather, this plan would cause far less money to be spent on textbooks in total. In the current system, we all pay a large amount for the textbooks Labyrinth sells, as well as a decent amount for all those textbooks that end up being forgotten in someone’s attic rather than recycled into the system and thus need to be replaced by brand new books. This plan cuts out both of those costs. As a result, even if the University needed to raise our tuition in order to make this happen, it would still be by an amount far less than what we currently pay for textbooks. Our current textbook system is ludicrous and causes us to lose hundreds every year unnecessarily. The University needs to use its power as an organizing force to create change on this issue for the benefit of us all, and to do otherwise is simply irresponsible. Colter Smith is a computer science major from Bronxville, N.Y. He can be reached at crsmith@princeton.edu.
Building Over History nathan phan ’19
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Anna Mazarakis ’16 editor-in-chief
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BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 vice presidents John G. Horan ’74 Thomas E. Weber ’89 secretary Betsy J. Minkin ’77 treasurer Michael E. Seger ’71 Craig Bloom ’88 Gregory L. Diskant ’70 Richard P. Dzina, Jr. ’85 William R. Elfers ’71 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 John G. Horan ’74 Joshua Katz Kathleen Kiely ’77 Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Jerry Raymond ’73 Annalyn Swan ’73 Douglas Widmann ’90
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A logic error by the socially liberal: Rachel Dolezal Newby Parton columnist
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ne woman, two reporters and a slow news week was the right mix to turn the scandal surrounding Rachel Dolezal, former president of the Spokane, Wash., NAACP, into a national media sensation. You don’t want to hear about her again, and listen, I don’t want to be talking about her three months after we all abandoned her story for newer and shinier outrages. But this column isn’t about Dolezal. I don’t care if she is sincere or a fraud, an activist or a power-seeker. What I care about is the way the media responded. Here’s the SparkNotes version of the uproar. Dolezal, 37, was born in Lincoln County, Mont. to white parents. Later in life, she began to call herself black — and with the help of some bronzing agent and a new hairdo, she looked the part. She moved to Spokane, where she rose to prominence in her community for her civil rights activism. She would hold a number of positions, including the office of president in the Spokane branch of the NAACP. But journalists Jeff Selle and Maureen Dolan of the Coeur d’Alene Press tracked down Dolezal’s parents, who told the reporters that Rachel was white. Her cover was blown, and news outlets across the country ate her for breakfast. Four days later she resigned. And how could she not? Conservatives and liberals alike were against her.
A segment from The Daily Show captured the prevailing attitude. “This woman took this lie very far,” Stewart said of Dolezal. Correspondent Jordan Klepper, who is white, pretended to be black in scathing parody. Finally, correspondent Jessica Williams, who is black, came on the set and delivered the money quotes. “You can’t just appropriate persecution just because it’s cool,” said Williams. “If team black didn’t pick you, you can’t just suit up and run on the field. There’s no walkons. We need allies, not replacements,” she added. A similar message boomed from every news station and all four corners of the newspaper: There is no such thing as “transracial.” Rachel Dolezal was a fraud. And yet, Dolezal still identifies as black. “It’s not a costume,” she told Vanity Fair in an interview. “From my earliest memories I have awareness and connection with the black experience, and that’s never left me. It’s not something that I can put on and take off anymore. Like I said, I’ve had my years of confusion and wondering who I really [was] and why and how do I live my life and make sense of it all, but I’m not confused about that any longer. I think the world might be — but I’m not.” This, of course, is exactly what transgender people say about gender. And we largely believe them. Just two weeks before The Daily Show slammed Dolezal, it extolled Caitlyn Jenner’s bravery for publicly transitioning to a woman.
I have tried hard to understand just what it is that makes the transgendered person a hero but leaves the transracial person a villain. I talked to a friend who identifies as gender-neutral and who opposes Rachel Dolezal, but my friend could not give a satisfactory answer. Neither can the transgender opinion writers. They balk at the mere idea of a comparison. Meredith Talusan, a Guardian contributor and transgender woman, writes that this comparison is an attempt “to discredit and shame trans women.” According to Talusan, the difference lies in agency. Identifying as another race is an active choice, she says, whereas identifying as another gender is involuntary. Maybe so. Dolezal, surely, could have lived out her life as a white person. But then, Jenner could have lived out her life as a man. She would have still felt like a woman on the inside, I imagine. But who can say that Dolezal could help but feel black? She had four black siblings by adoption. She attended a historically black university where she made black friends. She married a black man and gave birth to a black son. Talusan, like many before her, would have you believe that Dolezal became black for political reasons. I don’t buy that. For one, there are no race requirements for the office she held — the Spokane NAACP had a white woman serving as president in the 1990s. Moreover, Dolezal spent her time doing real civil rights work once she was in office.
But why are we questioning Dolezal in the first place? The transgender community would attack anyone who questioned Caitlyn Jenner. Why would someone who gained celebrity status as a male athlete — someone who spent 65 years as a man — suddenly become a woman? Could it have been a ploy to get back in the spotlight? Those sympathetic to Jenner would say that these questions are insulting and ignorant because they refute Jenner’s experience and her identity. Talusan’s refutation of Dolezal’s identity would be equally ignorant by the same logic. But there was never any logic to the media’s reaction in the first place. The same liberals who support transgender rights — and transgender people themselves — deny Dolezal with the same logic that the socially conservative use to deny the transgender community. I am not writing to make a value judgment on Dolezal’s character. Neither am I writing to tell you to support transracial rights or to oppose transgender rights. I am only offering that the opinion put forth by many socially liberal people in the media is irrational. For if you accept the argument that no one can be transracial, then you must also accept the argument that no one can be transgender. It is, after all, the same argument. Newby Parton is a sophomore from McMinnville, Tenn. He can be reached at newby@princeton.edu.
Thursday october 1, 2015
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Thursday october 1, 2015
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Football powers into Ivy League play by Vincent Po :: Contributing Photographer The football team (2-0) has had an incredible start to the season, clawing past Lafayette and Lehigh in the first two games to score 92 points total, the most in the first two games since 1950. The Tigers have won the last four meetings against Columbia and will be looking to keep up their momentum when they play Columbia this Friday as they start their chase for the Ivy League title.
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THE DIRT ON
PAGES DESIGNED BY LIN KING :: STREET EDITOR
MUDD This week, Street Editor LIN KING takes you behind the scenes of the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library.
W
hen thinking of “historical Princeton,” it is often images of Nassau Hall and Blair Arch that come to mind — it is, certainly, not the brick-tiled, rectangular building lodged between the Engineering Quadrangle and the Friend Center that represents campus for most people. Yet within this unassuming exterior stands the Mudd Library, responsible for housing just about all of the University’s illustrious history. The Mudd Library was established in 1976 as the first building designed under Princeton’s energy conservation program. As part of Firestone Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections department, Mudd contains two lines of collections: the University archives and public policy papers from the 20th century. According to Sara Logue, assistant University archivist for public services, the library now has over 400 archives collections, including Princeton
COUTESY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
memorabilia, Board of Trustees minutes, Office of the President papers, historical photographs, all senior theses and all graduate dissertations. “A lot of times people like to do research on famous alum — [the thesis of] Ted Cruz [’92] is very popular right now,” Logue said. In addition, Mudd also houses student files for all alumni. While these files are unavailable for 75 years after the student’s graduation, due to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, they are open for request and viewing afterward. This makes the library a popular source for researchers both within and without the University looking into an individual’s history, as well as those researching their personal family history. “A lot of genealogical research is done using the student files,” Logue said. “It’s really like a treasure trove for people. If you think about it, your application is in there, and they’re great for just getting a sense of what [people] were like as a teenager, com-
ing into college.” She added that the library has about 2,000 patrons a year and over 3,000 email requests for files and photograph duplications. In recent years, one of Mudd Library’s most frequently received requests has been calls by recent graduates to see their own student files, including their applications and the Office of Admission’s comments. According to Yankia Ned ’17, a student employee at the library who worked as an assistant archivist there this past summer, there were approximately 20 requests per week over the vacation. Another sect of Mudd’s frequent visitors are seniors, who often make the trek there to view the theses of their predecessors for reference. “A lot of seniors come in in order to get an idea of what their advisers have advised on before and to see what the expectations are of a thesis,” Logue explained. “We’re doing more work to expand our libguides offerings — they’re ba-
sically guides that librarians make online that can lead you to more niche topics for research, so we made one for the senior theses,” Logue added. All libguides are available at libguides.princeton.edu. In addition, Mudd recently also hosted its first senior thesis open house to COUTESY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES teach seniors how to access This floppy disk containing Toni Morrison’s personal typed the theses in copy of “Beloved” was recently digitized at Mudd Library. the collections. Being renowned for its collection who looked into primary sources of of senior theses also has its pitfalls, the eating clubs’ histories, as well according to Special Collections as- as a novelist who spent time in the sistant April Armstrong ’14. “People archives to research Princeton as the who do come here and know what we backdrop for her book. For students, are, they know us as the senior thesis requests to see materials can be made library, and while we do have all the online after registering once on the theses, there’s a lot more here.” Princeton University Libraries webAnd there is, indeed, much, much site. more. Ned, when she first began “It seems limiting, but it’s for the working at the library, was shocked protection of materials,” Logue said. by its sheer size. “It’s a very unassum- “We have things from 1746 and earing building, but it’s actually four lier, and we want the things from f loors,” she said. “There are three today to still be available hundreds floors full of closed stacks, and it’s of years into the future, so that’s why expansive. It’s anything you could we take such care.” ever want to learn about Princeton.” In the meantime, the library has For instance, over the summer, been working toward digitizing its Ned was asked to scan some corre- materials to be made available onspondence between President Wood- line. Currently, all Board of Trustees row Wilson, Class of 1879, and his minutes are available online; they wife, which she discovered to be love serve as useful overviews of the Uniletters, complete with pet names. versity’s activities and concerns at Meanwhile, one of her fellow student any given point in its history. employees worked on digitizing the “While we are making great strides John Foster Dulles in trying to get things digitized, papers. there are a lot of materials here — we “Closed stacks” have over 40,000 linear feet of matemeans that the li- rials,” Logue explained. brary’s materials The library also collects some are available to be “born-digital” materials, such as viewed in-house, all of University President Emerita in Mudd’s read- Shirley Tilghman’s emails during her ing room. Since term, which will be made public folthis is the case, lowing the time period dictated by many researchers FERPA law. Mudd Digital Archivist physically come Jarrett Drake also worked on extractto Princeton just ing files from professor emerita Toni to use the library’s Morrison’s f loppy discs, including resources. Logue a typed copy of “Beloved,” when her recalled projects papers were brought into Firestone. such as a researcher writing on dinCONTINUED ON S3 ing in universities
The Daily Princetonian
Thursday october 1, 2015
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CEZANNE AND THE MODERN INSIDE THE EXHIBIT CATHERINE WANG Contributor
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hen October arrives, the seemingly nondescript brick and glass building lying next to Prospect Garden will begin hosting exhibitions of works from the twisting paths of the Chinese Silk Road and 1,000 year-old illuminated manuscripts from the Persian Empire. But before we make the trip into the ancient past, the “Cézanne and the Modern” exhibition takes us on the beginnings of a journey into the modern art world, showing the works of the man who Picasso and Matisse called “the father of us all.” “Cézanne and the Modern: Masterpieces of European Art from the Pearlman Collection,” is an exhibition currently showing at the University Art Museum. It opened on Sept. 19 and will run until Jan. 3, 2016. According to museum Director
James Steward, the initial concept for this exhibition was “to make the [Pearlman] collection better known and to share it with four different museums in four separate countries … Work on the project began almost seven years ago, so it’s been a long time coming.” This exhibition serves more as a homecoming of sorts, as the collection has technically resided with the Art Museum since its original collector, Henry Pearlman, donated his collection to the University. For the past 18 months, the exhibition has been on the road, traveling to the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Oxford in England, the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence, France (Paul Cézanne’s hometown), the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Ga., and finally the Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada.
COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM
Vincent van Gogh’s “Tarascon Stagecoach” (1888) from the collection.
The return of this exhibition brings a unique experience for all the Art Museum visitors. Many of these pieces are so fragile that they spend much of their time in the dark for preservation. After January, “some of the collection will go back into storage, because the Cézanne watercolors for example, are so sensitive that they can only be exhibited once every ten years,” Steward explained. According to Steward, Pearlman was initially interested in exploring painter Chaïm Soutine’s artistic origins. That line of inquiry led him toward Cézanne, who himself had taken inspiration from fellow French painters Edgar Degas and Gustave Courbet. “There is kind of a threegeneration narrative in the exhibition that talks about the rise of the avant garde from the 1850s to the 1920s,” Stewart said. Cézanne, a French artist who lived in the time period during which avant garde was rising in prominence, is most notable for serving as the bridge between the popular 19th century Impressionist movement and the 20th century post-Impressionist explorative movement that would evolve into Cubism. His works serve as the centerpiece here. Landscapes and still lifes dominate, and all of Cézanne’s pieces retain the stylistic qualities of Impressionism featuring loose, small strokes combined with vibrant, pure colors layered on top of one another. The watercolor sketches, which are
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mostly composed of sheer pastel yellows and purples coloring paper on which pencil lines remain visible, are the highlights of the exhibition; examples of those on display include “House in Provence” and “Mont Sainte-Victoire.” As Steward said, “This is probably the best single collection of watercolors by Paul Cézanne under one roof anywhere.” When walking around the exhibition, however, it does not seem so much like “Cézanne and the Modern,” simply because while there are many Cézanne pieces in the exhibition, his works do not overpower the works of the other artists also represented. All of the works seem to balance out one another with their similarities and differences, flowing like a conversation between equals. This feeling the exhibition provokes is quite fitting, as the familiar names appearing on the walls alongside Cézanne’s are those of his contemporaries, such as Degas, Manet and Van Gogh, who are all wellknown names in the modern art world. In fact, two of the pieces which Steward cited as the most striking to him were pieces made by other artists, the Van Gogh painting of a stagecoach and the stone head by Modigliani. The painting “was the only time in [Van Gogh’s] whole career that he ever explored that subject matter, and it’s shockingly fresh as a work of art,” Steward said. As for the stone head by Modigliani, he added, “it’s towards the end of the exhibition, but it’s
COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM
Paul Cézanne’s “Mont Sainte-Victoire” (1904-06), one of the exhibition’s centerpieces and the image shown in its promotional poster.
very mysterious and it appears almost ancient and modern at the same time … It doesn’t reveal its meaning easily.” With the depth of consideration and technique put into all of these pieces, it is easy to walk around the exhibition and simply stand and breathe in the pieces. This Cézanne exhibition is the biggest exhibition in the fall, and some University students may have seen glimpses of it if they went to the Nassau Street Sampler earlier in September. Choosing to open the exhibition on the first weekend after classes started was a purposeful decision that the
museum staff made. “One of my hopes for this Cézanne exhibition, is that because so many people do love Cézanne and this generation of artists … it will become a lure for visitors who maybe don’t know this museum already to discover this museum for the first time and hopefully, while they’re here, to discover the whole range of what we collect,” said Steward. “I hope it brings more tourists [and] students, and that it will help people realize that Princeton has, over the centuries, built one of the great art collections in the world.”
The Daily Princetonian
Thursday october 1, 2015
UNFAMILIAR STREET
Route S21 in San Diego County HARRISON BLACKMAN Assistant Street Editor
HARRISON BLACKMAN :: ASSISTANT STREET EDITOR
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, designed by architect Louis Kahn.
‘Unfamiliar Street’ is a new column series in which we take you around the world and introduce you to a cool STREET far from the well-trod gravel of Prospect Avenue. s summer faded and the sup e r-bl o o d-m o o n emerged to haunt our dreams, we yearned for summer days, those times for lazy driving through surfobsessed towns, places where the distinction between waves and zen converge into one. Just imagine that kind of lifestyle, and then juxtapose it with the high-end, upper-crust flavor of Princeton and Lawrenceville, N.J., and then you’ll get something altogether unexpected but nonetheless enticing, idyllic, like the island of the preppy lotus. It all can be found along the roads that make up County Route S21 in San Diego County, Calif., where I ended up cruising for a couple days this past summer. The 25-mile S21 starts in San Diego around the I-5 and connects the coastal communities of La Jolla, Del Mar, Solana Beach, Encinitas, Carlsbad (the home of Legoland, thank you very much!) and Camp Pendleton. The road changes names, from Genesee Avenue, to Torrey Pines Road, to Camino Del Mar, and is even known by the legendary “Coast Highway 101” tag at points, but its magic does not change — in California the beaches are revered, but the road is worshipped. La Jolla stands out as a grand, high-end suburban metropolis among the coastal communities served by the S21. Stories differ on the origin of the name, either referring to the local caves or, better for marketing, “the jewel.” La Jolla is equipped with outdoor escalators, pricey retailers and cliffside bars reminiscent of the epic cliffside bars of the Greek island of Santorini. Off S21 in this stretch you
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CONTINUED FROM S1: INSIDE MUDD MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY To better share its many resources with the Princeton community, particularly the students, Mudd has made efforts to expand its online presence via social media. The library not only has two WordPress blogs but also Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr accounts. Armstrong, who is responsible for pioneering and managing much of the social media content, explained that each platform has a slightly different audience. The library blog is more traditional, with more in-depth written pieces, while the Reel Mudd blog has audiovisual materials, including a video of American Hall of Fame basketball player and former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley ’65 playing basketball while at Princeton. Meanwhile, Twitter is generally used for sharing with other libraries and special collections archives across the world, Facebook for connecting with alumni and Tumblr for current and prospective students. Armstrong runs various regular series on the different platforms: “This Week in Princeton,” with four things that occurred that week in the past; “Menu Mondays,” records of old menus from the University; “Tiger Tuesdays,” with pictures of tigers on campus throughout time; blog posts by staff and students on Wednesdays; and “Throwback Thursdays,” with a photograph or piece of memorabilia from the collections. Most recently, Mudd hosted the “#Princethen” campaign
COUTESY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
on Twitter in September, asking students and locals to tweet pictures of the current campus, which Armstrong would then match with an old image of the same site for comparison. The campaign was inspired by a similar one done at the University of Missouri last year. “I was hoping that by doing the campaign, we would get people to know more about the campus, but also get to know us,” Armstrong explained. “I just think that the history of a place is important to know. What was it like before? Who was here? Why did this get this way?” “One of the frustrating things about working at a place with so much material is, we have people who come through the doors and say, ‘What is this place?’ Part of it
is because we are nestled here in the sciences … although we were here first!” Armstrong said. In spite of its low-key status and the relatively long trek from central campus, Mudd Library does offer answers for just about any question one can ask about Princeton’s past. “I think it’s an underused resource for sure,” Ned said. “We go to such an old institution and … it’s good to actually go into the history and see everything behind it. So much research and knowledge can be gained from it — and not just the quote-unquote serious stuff; it can be fun things, like old P-rades and Pre-rades, a bunch of scrap books.” “Anything you want to know about Princeton is there. Everything is so old, it’s amazing,” she added.
HARRISON BLACKMAN :: ASSISTANT STREET EDITOR
Carlsbad’s section of Route S21 features a main shopping thoroughfare.
can visit the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, one of the premier oceanographic research stations in the world, UC San Diego’s main campus and the famous Torrey Pines Golf Course, a mainstay stop of the PGA Tour. There’s also the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, a laboratory built in 1960 by legendary architect Louis Kahn. The Institute’s main courtyard resembles a classical temple built on a cliff, overlooking the sea — truly a modern temple dedicated to science and medicine. Further north on the S21 you’ll find the charming restaurants and surf shops of the San Diego coast, all lining up with alluring proximity to the Pacific and its beaches. Del Mar boasts a horse racetrack among its attractions (ref lective of the wealth and “sport-of-kings” mentality of the area), while Encinitas is known for its waves and solid surfing. It’s to the north, on the last section of S21 before it reconnects to the I-5, where I spent the most of my time, in the city of Carlsbad. A jogging path on the seawall that follows the S21
allows Carlsbad dwellers a picturesque fitness experience. I witnessed many an RV of high school cross country runners camping on the cliffs and running like fury in the mornings, training, no doubt, for a competitive season. Moreover, excellent dining and shopping abound in Carlsbad — from stylish boardshops and independent bookstores to alarmingly good sushi, Tex-Mex, breakfast food and the like, Carlsbad is for all intents and purposes Princeton on the water, sans college and homework. Mild weather and clear days abound. I think the S21 is Nassau Street’s distant, lengthier relative. Whereas Nassau first existed in colonial days as the “King’s Highway” to connect New York and Philly with a little religious college in the middle, S21 was established in 1968 to connect the seaside communities. A picturesque road on the other end of this great big continent of ours, County Route S21 is a street where dreams are made and waves come crashing in like small reminders of how beautiful this world can be.
COUTESY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
Yankia Ned ’17, who works at Mudd Library, was the first participant of its twitter campaign #Princethen.
ASK THE SEXPERT This week, we discuss safe sex. Dear Sexpert, I just met someone and I feel like we really click. We’ve been hooking up for the past couple of weeks, and even though our relationship is relatively new, I really like the person. We haven’t “done it” yet, but I think we will soon. The person’s a lot more experienced than I am and says that using the pill is enough for safe sex. I just want to make sure that I don’t get anything. What should I do?
— Apprehensive Dear Apprehensive,
COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA
Del Mar, Calif., is home to Torrey Pines State Reserve, a state-protected park just north of La Jolla.
It’s great to hear that you’re conscious of your own sexual health and concerned, not only about the risk of pregnancy, but also the risk of sexually transmitted infections. There are many types of contraception available — but remember, not all reduce the risk of STIs. Birth control pills, shots, patches, intrauterine devices and a few others can be used only to prevent pregnancy and do not protect against STIs. The only methods of contraception that also protect against STIs are abstinence and condoms. Because some STIs some-
times have no symptoms, it’s hard to know how many students have an STI, but even at Princeton, there have been cases of almost every STI diagnosed. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the most common STIs for Americans ages 1524 are genital warts (human papillomavirus), chlamydia, trichomoniasis, gonorrhea and herpes, so it’s always a good thing to be proactive and safe! The most effective method to 100 percent prevent contracting an STI is abstinence. If you choose to engage in sexual activity, barrier methods like the external (male) and internal (female) condom are the only types of contraception that reduce the risk of both STIs and pregnancies — that is, if they are used properly. These barrier methods can be used for both penetrative and oral sex. That being said, communicating with your partner is also crucial, since anything regarding your sexual health is a two-way street. Talk to your partner about your feelings about sex and using contraception methods that prevent STIs (and pregnancy, if you are in a heterosexual relationship). If you take part in a monogamous relationship, and you both have tested negative for STIs, a barrier method is not as necessary for STI
prevention. You can get tested for STIs at Sexual Health and Wellness on the 1st f loor of McCosh Health Center. HIV testing is free and gonorrhea/ chlamydia testing is $14. On campus, you can get condoms free of charge from your residential college adviser, the LGBT Center, peer health advisers, and from University Health Services’ front desk. Consult with your personal doctor or a professional clinician at SHAW to figure out which method of contraception works for you! More information about sexual health and contraception can be found atbedsider.org or sexetc.org.
— The Sexpert
Information on STI prevention and birth control methods: http://bedsider.org/en/methods Helpful Q&A and information resource center for all things sex- and relationship-related: http://sexetc. org/sex-ed/info-center/stories/ Interested in Sexual Health? The Sexpert is always looking for members of the community to join the team of sexual health educators who, along with fact-checking from University health professionals, help write these columns. Email sexpert@ dailyprincetonian.com for more information and questions about sexual health. Don’t be shy!
The Daily Princetonian
Thursday october 1, 2015
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“No Experience Required”
STREET’S
Auditioning for Raks Odalisque DANIELLE TAYLOR Staff Writer
T
he last time I was in a formal dance studio was before I turned 13. It was my 10th and final year of dance lessons when I inevitably shifted into the musical world, playing bassoon in the pit orchestra with dancers onstage. Still, I like to think that I have a basic knowledge of dance. However, as I walked into the dance studio of Dillon Gymnasium, I reminded myself that belly dancing is very different from ballet. I had decided to audition for Raks Odalisque, the University’s only belly dancing troupe. I knew I was in the right place when I spotted some girls wearing gray tank tops saying “Shimmies.” After all the girls auditioning signed in, the Raks girls went around, starting with president Angela Wang ’16, and introduced themselves. I was delighted to see that all the girls in Raks had different shapes and body types, replacing the original idea of a belly dancer I had in my head. Wang is a former associate news editor for The Daily Princetonian. Next, it was finally time to learn the choreography for the audition. While artistic director Michelle Park ’16 taught the choreo step-by-step, other Raks girls walked around to assist us if we had any questions with the details of the individual movements. When first watching Park perform the choreo, I couldn’t help thinking: “How did she move her hips like that?” “Are they not connected to the rest of her body?” “Oh, THAT looks amazing,” and finally, “Hey,
she’s winding!” Now, although I have not had any experience belly dancing, because I am of Caribbean blood, I have had many experiences doing the Dutty Wine, or “winding.” From winding, I vaguely knew how to isolate my hips from other parts of my body, so somehow, I found all the moves taught at the audition understandable. Even when I did not know how to do a move at first, it was exciting to figure it out and see my body twist in new, cool ways in the mirror. After learning the choreography, those auditioning were given some time to go over the routine before performing it in groups of five. I loved this part of the audition because we got to bond over our inexperience with belly dancing through the process of learning the dance. We had practiced for a couple of minutes before it was time for us to audition in our groups. Mercifully, we got to
perform the dance twice in a row, and only the second time was recorded. I had a blast watching myself in the mirror, dancing and winding to the music. Belly dancing allows your body to move with the music, following the rhythm and the melodies exactly, while still allowing for some degree of artistic interpretation. Moreover, the different forms of belly dancing, including Egyptian and Turkish, have different styles that emphasize lyricism and accentuated, sharp movements, respectively. In this way, you can learn more about Egyp-
tian and Turkish cultures through belly dancing. All in all, I had an amazing time auditioning for Raks Odalisque. Although I didn’t get into the troupe, I loved every minute of the audition, and will definitely be back next year after taking belly dancing classes. This was an amazing and enjoyable time not only because of the welcoming nature of the girls, but also because there is truly no experience needed to audition and have a good time; the only things necessary are a willingness to smile, move your body and have fun.
Associate Street Editor
COURTESY OF PIAZZA.COM
A screenshot of the welcome page of Piazza, the least photogenic website of all time.
slightly delayed — while everyone else is still doing “Hello world.” (As you can see, if there’s one thing I took away from my mercifully short experience with COS 126, it’s knowing when to smile grimly and ask, “N-body?”) 2. The “average response time” counter, which also tells you who answered what student question most recently, is a good way to keep tabs on when your instructors were last active on their computers — and by extension, when they last checked their emails and didn’t respond to that email you sent them. It’s the classroom equivalent of getting definitive proof that the person you messaged five days ago — who hasn’t viewed your message on Facebook but has posted multiple statuses and commented on even more photos — is ignoring you. 3. Not content to keep within just the arena of the classroom message board, Piazza has now made inroads into the industry of getting jobs for college students. They’ve clearly got a good read on the types of students who use their original product, because they post a lot of opportunities for tech roles. Which I’m sure is very helpful for the students who aren’t already getting their fill of of-
fers from the recruiters who descend on campus every fall to plug their companies at career fairs and info sessions. Did you say you’re only in this class because you need a QR, and you want to ultimately work in something other than tech (or i-banking)? Uh, sorry — Piazza Careers can’t help you there. 4. Real talk: Sometimes it’s nice to be able to post really, really, really dumb questions — and then select “Anonymous to everyone” from the dropdown list next to “Show my name as” and know that no one will ever know it was you who posted it. It’s the classroom equivalent of Yik Yak. Basically Piazza is the classroom equivalent of every form of social media ever. (We double dog dare you to post the poop emoji at spaced-out intervals throughout the day.) All in all, Piazza is a fine piece of technology. Next step: Getting humanities departments to adopt it. And then conduct seminars on it. Then, how much you’re able to contribute in class won’t be limited by how much you can get in before that kid who likes to interrupt people cuts you off, but rather by how fast you’re able to type. Which seems much more egalitarian. Technology: the great equalizer — are we right?
HEADLINERS AND HEADSHAKERS headlines you didn’t read this week DAILY PRINCETONIAN STAFF
President of South Africa Jacob Zu ma touts democracy in exclusive eating club 170 students offered sorority membership following rush, former U. President Tilghman plots her next move Neither News Nor Notes: Among top 20 schools, U. ranks first in war, first in peace and first in return on investment
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Assignment is due tomorrow.
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No P/D/F.
“Stars for Stoners” is not actually for stoners.
You’re not a future leader in “Physics for Future Leaders.” Class starts at 8:30 a.m.
Class ends at 10:20 p.m.
There are better ECs out there.
CAMPUS PICKS
JENNIFER SHYUE
I
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Your classroom crush dropped.
N-Body.
IN DEFENSE OF PIAZZA are onto something. Piazza is a piece of … greatness. Here are just a few reasons we think it’s brilliant. 1. Want to know how far ahead of you your classmates are on the homework? Poke around the student questions on Piazza, and you will likely find out where at least one student is in their problem set/ exercises/assignment for the week. That is, you will find out that they started when you were still feverishly working on last week’s homework. Conversely, if you’d like to send your classmates into a cold sweat, all you have to do is casually post about how your planets are orbiting beautifully, but the only problem is the sound is
Reasons to still drop classes
You can just take five classes next semester instead.
COURTESY OF RAKS ODALISQUE
f, like me, you got through half of your Princeton career without ever posting to Piazza, I would hazard a guess that, like me, you are a humanities major who has been steadfastly ignoring her QR requirement. (It would be nice if the two seconds I was in COS 126 were enough to make that requirement go away, but alas, that’s not how Princeton rolls.) And you know what? Despite the fact that I start craving thin-crust every time a Piazza-generated email lands in my inbox (which is almost as often as I get emails from my college listserv), I think the professors of all these quantitative reasoning courses
TOP TEN
BUDGET, PLANS USG SENATE REVIEWS FALL TO SCREEN “EX MACHINA” FINITELY AT GARDEN THEATRE INDE 150 students attend mass led by Pope Francis in Philadelphia, increases Princetonian tourism to Philly 150-fold
Neuroscience curriculum expresses concerns over neuroscience concentrators
LECTURE THE MULTISPECIES SALON PRESENTS: “SUBURBAN FORAGING: ACORN MUSH” Guyot 100 Acorn collecting at 10 a.m., lunch discussion at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday
Acorns are, believe it or not, embedded in cultural memory. This Thursday, join the Princeton Environmental Institute for an event that explores the culinary possibility of the acorn and its associations with the oppression of a people. The Pomo American Indians of Northern California consumed acorn mush, a dish that evokes “memories of massacres, forced marches, and internment.” The Multispecies Salon opens with an acorn gathering activity at 10 a.m., followed by a lunch discussion at 12:30 p.m., at which acorn mush will be sampled.
FILM PROF PICKS: “BOMBAY VELVET” Princeton Garden Theatre Thursday, 7:30 p.m.
The free student movies at Princeton’s Garden Theatre have generally skewed more popular blockbusters than foreign historical dramas. That’s about to change. For the inaugural Prof Picks (as in “picked by a professor”) film, history professor Gyan Prakash chose “Bombay Velvet,” an Indian period crime drama adapted from his book “Mumbai Fables.” The showing will be preceded by remarks from Prakash and director Anurag Kashyap.
EVENT PRINCETON EID UL ADHA BANQUET + BENEFIT FOR REFUGEES 2015 Fields Center Thursday, 7:30 p.m.
Who doesn’t love eating yummy food while also making small contributions toward making the world a better place? Eid ul Adha, also known as the Feast of Sacrifice, is the second-most important celebration for Muslims around the world, and the Muslim Students Association and MASJID will be commemorating the holiday with a banquet complete with poetry, art, henna and a photo booth. The suggested donation of $10 will benefit victims of the global refugee crisis.
READING: EMERGING WRITERS READING WITH SOPHIE MCMANUS Labyrinth Bookstore Friday, 6 p.m.
In 10 years, you’ll be able to say that you knew these writers before they hit it big: Emerging Writers is an annual series at Labyrinth featuring readings by established authors and the Princeton seniors selected every year to write creative writing theses. This year’s series is launching with Sophie McManus, first-time author of novel “The Unfortunates,” and creative writing certificate students Katharine Boyer ’16, Marta Cabral ’16, Isabel Henderson ’16 and Takim Williams ’16.