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Thursday October 10, 2019 vol. cxliii no. 86
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ON CAMPUS
New Frist art exhibit works to spark conversation around feminism By Omar Farah Contributor
ANS NAWAZ / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN The new exhibit is on the A floor of Frist Campus Center.
According to Chen, the design process relied heavily on consultations with students and faculty to discern their experiences surrounding feminism and gender identity. Isometric Studio worked with Women*s Center Director Amada Sandoval and Program Coordinator Anna Phung to compile the final list of photos from the Mudd Library.
BEYOND THE BUBBLE
U. professor Peter Jaffé discovers microbe capable of decomnaminating water supply
By Sam Kagan and Rachel Sturley Contributors
University professor Peter Jaffé recently published a paper that could represent a breakthrough against a major public health crisis. Jaffé, the William L. Knapp ’47 Professor of Civil Engineering, and his colleague Shan Huang, an associate research scholar, recently published a paper on the capacity of a particular microorganism to break down PFAS, a contaminant that has polluted the global water supply for decades. Already looking to the future, Jaffé is currently in conversation with the University of Maryland and industry partners to discuss potential groundwater cleanup projects and consider the implications of his findings on domestic wastewater treatment. Commonly referred to as “PFAS”, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are a group of man-made chemicals commonly used to manufacture cookware, pizza boxes, and stain repellents, among other products. “PFAS are the pollutants of concern today,” Jaffé said. “All of these per- and poly-
In Opinion
fluorinated compounds were produced since the ’40s, we just didn’t pay attention to them. They are everywhere in groundwater … over 95 percent of the US population have traces in their blood serum.” According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, exposure to PFAS through their presence in groundwater and living organisms is commonly linked with increased cholesterol levels, various birth defects, effects on the immune system, and cancer. “This thing is toxic,” Huang said. “It’s not good for humans; it’s not good for your body.” On Sept. 18, Jaffé and Huang published an article in Environmental Science & Technology, entitled “Defluorination of Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctane Sulfonate (PFOS) by Acidimicrobium sp. Strain A6.” The paper detailed the the researchers’ crucial finding, that introducing a relatively common microbe could begin to remove PFAS from an environment. “I … went to a conference and it was a bit of a bombSee MICROBE page 2
Senior columnist Liam O’Connor explores geographic disparities among Ivy League athletic recruits, while columnist Julia Chaffers and contributing columnist Kate Lee defend the importance of affirmative action in college admissions. PAGE 4
According to Phung, within the context of the 50th anniversary of the first class of women at the University, the installation should invite a focused gaze on the future of women on campus. “It is important to think about how we celebrate and honor all of the women who have made an impact, but also think about what this piece means for the next fif-
ty years,” they said. “How do we continue to push, and really open up the definitions of feminism, womanhood, and gender in general?” The designers said they wanted to emphasize the importance of diversity in their creation. “We wanted to celebrate 50 years of undergraduate women at Princeton — both to acknowledge the struggle
STUDENT LIFE
for specific kinds of equity and to gesture towards ways in which the contributions of women and gender nonbinary people have made a significant and often unrecognized impact on Princeton’s history and identity,” Chen said. The installation will have a closing ceremony hosted by the Women*s Center next semester. ON CAMPUS
Superheroes on the couch By Sandeep Mangat Contributor
TIGERBOOK
Tigerbook profile of Chris Murphy ’20, the Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Princetonian.
Photos return to Tigerbook By Shamma Pepper Fox Contributor
As of Tuesday, Oct. 8, profile photos are again available on Tigerbook after they were absent for a brief period beginning on Sept. 30. Tigerbook, the online directory of University students, was created by Hansen Qian ’16, Ivo Crnkovic-Rubsamen ’15, and Rohan Sharma ’14 for their capstone project in COS 333: Advanced Programming Techniques. Tigerbook displays students’ names, email addresses, concentrations, residential colleges, and, in some cases, campus mailing addresses or phone numbers. As of Sept. 6, the University “restricted directory information about students” and prevented Tigerbook from hosting
information on students’ dorm rooms, roommates, and hometowns. The return of student photos to Tigerbook resulted from the temporary aggregation of student photos by developer George Kopf and is reflective of changes in student privacy policy. Dr. Jérémie Lumbroso, the faculty member supervising the Tigerbook development team, explained that Tigerbook repackages information provided by the University. This student information was originally hosted by Roxen, a nowdefunct “Wordpress-like platform.” Kopf’s temporary measures now allow students to see photos on Tigerbook, even as the Office of Information Technology transitions from Roxen to a new data See TIGERBOOK page 3
Today on Campus 12:30 p.m.: Mindfulness Meditation with Dean Matt Weiner. A light lunch is provided. 104 Dodge Hall
To University of Oregon English professor Ben Saunders, superheroes are more than mere entertainment on a Marvel movie night. Rather, he argues, they can shed light on the deeper psychology of love, loss, and life. On Wednesday, Saunders, Slovenian journalist and film critic Jela Kreč ,ič and professor, author, and new-age philosopher Slavoj Žižek convened at Betts Auditorium to discuss superheroes, film, and their relation to human nature at a panel entitled “Superheroes on the Couch.” Sponsored by the Department of English, the two-hour panel discussion began with Saunders’ analysis of the relationship between Superman and Batman. Saunders argued that though their duality is apparent, the two still constitute one entity. While Superman stands as the morally and physically superior hero, Batman serves as Superman’s “Jungian shadow,” a projection of the despicable aspects of human nature. Thus, according to Saunders, Batman is not See SUPERHERO page 3
WEATHER
Last fall, the University’s Women*s Center commissioned an art installation to adorn the popular Frist A Level dining area. On Sept. 27, during a Women*s Center event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the University’s first class of women, the design was debuted to the public. Integrated into the architecture of Frist’s A Level, the installation juxtaposes modern supergraphics with archival photos to comment on the history and future of women at the University. It works to highlight historic alumnae and female faculty and includes a timeline of notable dates for women’s rights on campus. The exhibit highlights notable alumnae and University faculty, such as Michelle Obama ’85, Elena Kagan ’81, the University’s first female president, Shirley Tilghman, and the first African-American female undergraduate student, Vera Marcus ’72. The design is a product of Brooklyn-based design firm Isometric Studio, founded by two alumni, Andy Chen ’09 and Waqas Jawaid ’10. Chen and Jawaid spent six months developing the piece into its current form.
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The Daily Princetonian
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Thursday October 10, 2019
Jaffé: Discovery defies common wisdom MICROBE Continued from page 1
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shell,” Jaffé said. “All speakers in front of me said ‘they are forever chemicals, they don’t degrade … ’ and I sort of said ‘well, we can degrade them.’” Though Jaffé and Huang are not the first to devise a means of degrading PFAS, the two are pioneers in their powerful use of a microorganism and its ability to target the most difficult of contaminants. Other means often involve costly chemical processes. “Chemical degradation is very quick but it’s costly,” Huang said. “Also PFAS [are] everywhere, that’s the problem. When it’s … in the groundwater, in soil, it’s very difficult to degrade by chemical ways. Think about dumping some chemicals in the soil, groundwater … that’s not possible. But microorganisms are everywhere. It’s more practical.” Considered a top prior-
ity by research organizations and governmental bodies alike, Jaffé and Huang’s work received funding from the Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, and the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment, among others. “It’s just fascinating; it’s one of the most important discoveries in our field this century,” said Catherine Peters, Professor and Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “There is no Nobel Prize in my field, but if there was, this is like that.” The process of discovery began with Jaffé’s work in local wetlands on a way to lessen harmful ammonium buildup in soil. In 2018, he succeeded in isolating the bacterium, Acidimicrobiaceae sp. strain A6, that plays the critical role in the wetland ecosystem. This was only a stepping stone in a series of increasingly substantial discoveries about the capability of the A6 microbe. After noticing
unexpected sequences in the microbe’s genome, Jaffé wondered how it might interact with PFAS. “Given the interest in PFAS, we said, ‘let’s try,’” Jaffé said. To his surprise, the tests showed fluoride being produced, a clear sign that the bacterium had decomposed the PFAS. “That was pretty cool,” Jaffé said. “Actually, scary cool — it went against common wisdom.” Though the A6 microbe only broke down 60 percent of contaminants in the current tests, Jaffé is confident in his ability to optimize the experiment to fully degrade the PFAS in a sample. “This is such an important scientific discovery, it’s like a door has opened and light is shining into a room,” Peters said. “You can’t walk across this big room yet, it’ll take years, but you can now look ahead and see the light shining and imagine all the engineering applications.”
DAVID KELLY CROW / PRINCETON ENGINEERING Peter Jaffé and Shan Huang.
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The Daily Princetonian
Thursday October 10, 2019
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Photo removal due to Superheroes offer lessons on life, loss SUPERHERO hosting site change TIGERBOOK Continued from page 1
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hosting system. “This change was part of broader, much-needed, and amazing work undertaken by OIT, under the direction of George Kopf,” Lumbroso previously wrote in an email statement to The Daily Princetonian. Lumbroso explained that Kopf’s work is making “student data more secure” by creating a dedicated, streamlined way to access or take down student information.
By hosting the photos on University systems, developers can update student data without delay. Hosting photos on a third-party platform like Roxen slowed the process of removing student photos from the University’s official database, Roxen, and Tigerbook. Lumbroso explained that this change is essential to adhering to FERPA, federal student privacy regulations that mandate students have the ability to request immediate removal of their data from University servers.
level crime,” rather than cluded that we “need addressing its underlying more toxically masculine Continued from page 1 causes. She argued that women,” drawing laughSuperman’s opposite but doing so helps him cope ter from the crowd. rather his extension, with their absence and Žižek also offered a parwith the former embody- thus represents an essen- ticularly controversial ing the latter’s dark side. tially human response. comment, which faced Saunders further arŽižek focused on the resistance from memgued that Batman’s entire relationship between bers of the audience. He identity is founded in the Batman and the Joker, ar- said that Black Panther’s repression of his parents’ guing that the two are “Wakanda and black wisdeaths. Both Batman and very similar in essence, dom is bulls—t,” claimthe Joker are “respond- but that the Joker has ing the film did not reping in an absurd way to developed to accept his resent a fair dialogue of the gross injustice of evil. He stated that it is African-American emlife.” Since confronting important for us to learn powerment. those evils is distressing, from the Joker and accept During the subsequent Saunders said, we resort our vices, extending this q u e s t i o n - a n d - a n s w e r to a Freudian cycle of re- claim to Greta Thunberg, session, a visibly upset pression and projection. “my ethical hero,” who is heckler interrupted the Kreč ič continued the dis- unapologetically outspo- three panelists, saying cussion by claiming that ken. that the discussion had Batman represses the loss He stated that Thun- been “very one-sided.” of his parents by spend- berg defines a new age The panel concluded iming his life fighting “low- of femininity and con- mediately thereafter.
News. Opinions. Sports. Every day.
SANDEEP MANGAT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN University of Oregon English professor Ben Saunders, Slovenian professor and film critic Jela Krecic, and author and new-age philosopher Slavoj Žižek in Betts Auditorium.
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Thursday October 10, 2019
Opinion
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Why affirmative action still matters Julia Chaffers Columnist
On Oct. 1, a judge ruled in support of Harvard’s admissions practices, which considers the racial identities of applicants, rejecting the claim that considering race leads to discrimination against AsianAmerican applicants. The judge thus supported Harvard’s use of race in its holistic review of applicants, affirming the importance of race-conscious admissions — as opposed to raceneutral processes — to achieve a diverse student body. The ruling marks a significant moment for affirmative action, having survived its latest challenge. It also provides an important opportunity to consider why affirmative action still matters. The judge found no evidence that Harvard systematically discriminates against AsianAmerican students, who are admitted at the same rate as other applicants and make up about one-fifth of the admitted class, though they comprise just six percent of the American population. Though there is of course continued work to be done to combat implicit biases of all kinds in admissions processes, there was no widespread bias against Asian-American applicants that would justify taking apart the very good work that affirmative action does. Race-conscious admissions remains necessary because of the embedded inequalities in the admissions process. Amidst the lawsuit, a Duke University study found that 43 percent of white admits at Harvard are athletes, legacies, on the dean’s interest list (relatives of donors), or the children of faculty and staff (ALDC). Had they been treated as white non-
ALDCs, three-quarters of these admits would have been rejected. This means that nearly half of white admits received preferential treatment in the admissions process. By contrast, less than 16 percent of AfricanAmerican, Asian-American, or Hispanic admits are ALDCs. This is the inequality that parents exploited in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal exposed last spring. As I described in my column on the subject, the orchestrator of the scheme used the “side door” of college admissions — preferences for recruited athletes — to get students into elite schools such as Yale and Stanford by posing as soccer, rowing, and water polo recruits. While this practice is clearly an abuse of the system, it reveals how parents view the college admissions process as one that can be circumvented using wealth, whether by donating directly to schools or by attaining the skills and resume that schools favor. Looking at athletic recruits at Harvard, Derek Thompson of The Atlantic found that families of these athletes were twice as likely to earn more than $500,000 instead of less than $80,000, compared to the families of non-recruits, and are twice as likely to be white versus all non-ALDC admits. Ivy League teams are also often more likely to have a higher ratio of white people than the rest of the class, as many recruited sports at Harvard — lacrosse, rowing, tennis, volleyball, squash, etc. — require equipment and training that closes the door to many low-income non-white children. For just one example, of the 700 Ivy League rowers and lacrosse players in the 2017-18 school year, less than 30 were black. These statistics show that, like legacy and dean’s list applicants, the process of recruitment favors wealthy white students at the exclusion of other students. ALDC preferences become, in Thompson’s words,
“affirmative action for white affluence.” Schools have a number of reasons for giving preferences for ALDCs, among them incentivizing donations, maintaining positive relationships with alumni, and enriching the campus community. But in a world where these preferences largely go to wealthy white students, it makes sense that consideration of racial identity and the benefits that diversity brings to campuses should be taken into account as well. It is important to note that affirmative action is not merely about giving students of color access to these schools for its own sake. As Harvard argued in court, diversity enhances the university experience for all students. The most impactful learning in college comes from interacting with peers and learning from people with differing experiences, both inside and outside the classroom. The more the university looks like the world, the more equipped students will be to navigate and succeed once they leave. This is what affirmative action achieves. The world is already an uneven playing field, and ALDC preferences only increase the disparity between wealthy white applicants and students of other backgrounds. Affirmative action seeks to even the playing field so that applicants from a range of experiences have a chance to contribute to elite universities. If you buy the argument that playing squash, coming from a wealthy donor’s family, or having parents who attended the school qualifies as a compelling contribution to a campus community, then there’s no way to argue that coming from the opposite background shouldn’t be valued to the same extent. If you disagree with ALDC treatment as unfairly reproducing privilege, affirmative action corrects for that by emphasizing the importance of diversity. If you think all preferential
treatment on the basis of identity is wrong, and want raceneutral admissions, then you have to find a way to either justify or eliminate the preferences schools like Harvard already give and how these advantages implicitly favor certain backgrounds over others. The judge affirmed this in her ruling, stating that the alternative methods proposed by the plaintiffs would actually lead to a decline in qualified black and Hispanic students. For Harvard to “achieve a diverse student body while still maintaining its standards for academic excellence,” it needs race-conscious admissions. It is not enough to state that race does not define people, and thus should not be considered in admissions, without recognizing the work race and racism does to define people’s lives every day. As the judge stated in the conclusion to her ruling, it is the diversity that affirmative action provides that “will move us, one day, to the point where we see that race is a fact, but not the defining fact and not the fact that tells us what is important, but we are not yet. Until we are, race conscious admissions programs that survive strict scrutiny will have an important place in society and help ensure that colleges and universities can offer a diverse atmosphere that fosters learning, improves scholarship, and encourages mutual respect and understanding.” The ruling in favor of Harvard is important not just for that school, but as a broader restatement of the importance of affirmative action and diversity, for students as well as the campus communities they make their home. Julia Chaffers is a sophomore from Wellesley, Mass. She can be reached at chaffers@princeton. edu.
The protection of affirmative action isn’t enough Kate Lee
Contributing Columnist
Earlier this week, Federal Judge Allison D. Burroughs ruled that Harvard did not discriminate against AsianAmerican students in its admissions process. She upheld the use of affirmative action at Harvard and other academic institutions in working towards a more diverse student body. In many ways, it was a victory. A great moment of relief. At least for the time being, it seems that the accessibility of minority students to elite colleges has been protected. However, even as the case may advance in the legal system, the discussion about admissions should not end at affirmative action. Viewing the issue only in terms of affirmative action allows universities to cover up larger financial and experiential discrepancies in the student population. The current conversation ignores the fact that at the end of the day, students who are white, and more importantly, extremely affluent, still have an indisputable advantage in being admitted. Take Princeton. We rarely talk about how even though 61 percent of Princeton undergraduates receive financial aid, that means the other 39 percent come from families that can afford to pay upwards of $70,000 a year for
college. We do not discuss how the median family income of Princeton students is over $180,000, nearly triple the median American household income, or that 72 percent of the student body comes from the economic top 20 percent. Only 61 percent of Princeton’s Class of 2023 come from public schools, compared to the national figure of 92 percent. The numbers are striking, but the greatest inequalities cannot be expressed through statistics. Often the politics of admission aren’t discussed; elite private high schools have special college counselors or faculty that have direct connections to Princeton and will “put in a good word.” Programs such as the Creative Arts and Humanities Symposium often invite high school seniors from a list of select schools, keeping the events largely unpublicized. In the name of maintaining historical relationships with prestigious high schools, the process of admissions covertly gives advantages to students from those schools. These resources are all intertwined in ensuring that many of these elite institutions still remain largely inaccessible to marginalized people. They perpetuate cycles of exclusion; those same students pass on legacy advantages, retain power through large donations, and may even join the faculty and
administration. By solely praising affirmative action, schools market themselves as open and inclusive. In reality, they are unwilling to confront their biased admission processes. The lack of awareness about and the discomfort in discussing these realities make it easy to pin the whole issue — or solution — on affirmative action. Surely the practice is a significant component, but it must be addressed within the context of socioeconomic inequity. Others may argue that it is not the responsibility of Princeton, Harvard, and other universities to equalize the socioeconomic discrepancies of our world. However, it is important to recognize that these institutions don’t exist in a vacuum; they should try their best with the power they hold. But this is not their best. They cannot continue to bury and ignore the distorted reality of wealth and opportunity at these institutions. Princeton’s motto is “in the service of humanity.” The current system brings up the question of what part of humanity we are truly serving — how do we address harmful cycles of poverty, incarceration, and disenfranchisement with an inaccurate representation of the real people that grapple with these issues? How do we begin to change reality when we are so disconnected from
it? It begins with the institutions right now. It begins with awareness, with a brutal honesty in recognizing the situation. It begins not with lofty intellectual calls for equality, but active, focused efforts to recruit and advertise Princeton to all applicants, not just those fortunate enough to receive special benefits. The majority of faculty and students that come from greater privilege must realize their position and sense the urgency of this issue. They should not fear coming under attack; instead, they should do their part in these academic communities to point out these problems and solve them. We need to have transparent discussions about how admissions need to open up — how they need to actively and consciously seek to change the student body more than ever. The Harvard ruling was a step in the right direction, but it shouldn’t end there. This is a test of these universities’ futures: will Princeton be a passive promoter of an exclusive education? Or will it play a crucial role in opening doors for marginalized voices? We must continue to advocate and fight for the latter. Only then will Princeton’s incredible education truly be “in the service of humanity.” Kate Lee is a first-year from Austin, Texas. She can be reached at k.lee@princeton.edu.
vol. cxliii
editor-in-chief
Chris Murphy ’20 business manager
Taylor Jean-Jacques’20 BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88 secretary Betsy L. Minkin ’77 treasurer Douglas J. Widmann ’90 trustees Francesca Barber David Baumgarten ’06 Kathleen Crown Gabriel Debenedetti ’12 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 Michael Grabell ’03 John Horan ’74 Joshua Katz Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 Kavita Saini ’09 Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 Abigail Williams ’14 trustees emeriti Gregory L. Diskant ’70 William R. Elfers ’71 Kathleen Kiely ’77 Jerry Raymond ’73 Michael E. Seger ’71 Annalyn Swan ’73 trustees ex officio Chris Murphy ’20 Taylor Jean-Jacques’20
143RD MANAGING BOARD managing editors Samuel Aftel ’20 Ariel Chen ’20 Jon Ort ’21 head news editors Benjamin Ball ’21 Ivy Truong ’21 associate news editors Linh Nguyen ’21 Claire Silberman ’22 Katja Stroke-Adolphe ’20 head opinion editor Cy Watsky ’21 associate opinion editors Rachel Kennedy ’21 Ethan Li ’22 head sports editor Jack Graham ’20 associate sports editors Tom Salotti ’21 Alissa Selover ’21 features editor Samantha Shapiro ’21 head prospect editor Dora Zhao ’21 associate prospect editor Noa Wollstein ’21 chief copy editors Lydia Choi ’21 Elizabeth Parker ’21 associate copy editors Jade Olurin ’21 Christian Flores ’21 head design editor Charlotte Adamo ’21 associate design editor Harsimran Makkad ’22 cartoon editors Zaza Asatiani ’21 Jonathan Zhi ’21 head video editor Sarah Warman Hirschfield ’20 associate video editor Mark Dodici ’22 digital operations manager Sarah Bowen ’20
NIGHT STAFF copy Neil Brahmbhatt ’23 Allison Chou ’23 Isabel Rodrigues ’23 Catherine Yu ’21 design Imaan Khasru ’23 Jaimee Simwinga ’23 Juliana Wojtenko ’23
Opinion
Thursday October 10, 2019
page 5
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Ivy League athletics are the new “Moneyball” Liam O’Connor
Senior Columnist
Athletes from rich towns are siphoned into elite colleges The fraudulent college admissions scheme that the FBI uncovered this past spring shocked the nation. Parents who were bankers, celebrities, and lawyers got their children into top colleges — including Yale — by buying slots on coaches’ recruitment lists. But the scandal raised larger questions about the role of athletics in higher education and who benefits from them. “Sports recruiting is the real college admissions scam,” Slate declared. I dug into the online 2019 team rosters for all eight Ivy League universities to see who’s playing for them and where they came from. The vast majority were likely recruited. The Daily Princetonian previously reported, “recruits dominate the rosters of the other 33 varsity Princeton teams [besides rowing], which typically include one to two walk-ons.” My results show that sports pump hundreds of students from America’s richest towns and private “feeder schools” into elite colleges. Cities The homes of the Ivy League’s more than 7,000 athletes were clustered around the suburbs of major cities. They mostly lived in the Interstate 95 Corridor, which extends from Washington, D.C. to Boston. Other hotspots included Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. One in 10 American players lived in a hometown featured on Bloomberg’s 2018 list of “100 Richest Places.” Connecticut’s Gold Coast had the highest concentration of athletes of any area in the U.S. One hundred and ninetyfive came from lower Fairfield County, a third of whom were Greenwich residents alone. Rowing was the most popular sport there, followed by squash. Not to be outdone too easily, Boston and the North Shore’s 15 richest suburbs sent 185 athletes, with Wellesley, Massachusetts — whose median household income is $176,852 — as the leading contributor. Northern Virginia provided 117 athletes. McLean and Alexandria — two of the state’s wealthiest towns — were tied for having the most in this region. Maryland’s affluent D.C. suburbs also slam-dunked students into athletics. Bethesda sent 29; Potomac, 16; and Chevy Chase, 15. Ninety-three athletes resided in Westchester County, New York, which contains 10 towns featured on the Bloomberg list, all of which had average household incomes above $196,000. Philadelphia’s Main Line sent another 87, and Chicago’s North Shore suburbs sent 59. The top 10 towns in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, California, were home to 60 and 53 athletes, respectively. Orange County’s highest 10 income towns also sent 53. Rich suburbs gave the Ivy League a disproportionately large share of its athletes, but cities still reigned in some cases. New York City was home to 151 players; Los Angeles, 64; and Houston, 49. Only two athletes lived in either North Dakota or West Virginia, and four athletes in either Wyoming or Mississippi. London, United Kingdom, was the most popular foreign city for finding athletes. It sent
75, almost half of whom were rowers. At 46, Toronto, Canada, was the next most popular place abroad. High Schools Team rosters also showed that private high schools funneled dozens of athletes into the Ivy League. The Noble and Greenough School (annual cost: $58,100 for boarding students) had 50 alumni as varsity athletes. Deerfield Academy ($60,680) came in second with 36 students; Phillips Exeter Academy ($55,402), third, with 32; and the Lawrenceville School ($66,360), fourth, with 30. Noble and Greenough’s Communication Office didn’t respond to my request for comment. One out of every seven British athletes attended Eton College ($51,324) or St. Paul’s School ($47,378), of whom the majority were rowers. Greenwich High School topped the public school list with 32 athletes. Newport Beach’s Corona del Mar High School and the Chicago North Shore’s New Trier High School tied for second at 21. Other notable top public schools whose contributions occupy the high teens include Princeton High School, Weston High School, Darien High School, and Manhasset High School.
tennis, and men’s heavyweight rowing were clustered in the northeast, around northern New Jersey or New York. Fencing was split between the coasts. Women’s soccer, women’s softball, and women’s volleyball were the sole sports based in the southern states, though men’s football also had a strong southern contingent. Polo players were concentrated in the northeast. Not a single skier came from the South or the Great Plains. Canadians composed a third of hockey players. Columbia had more western athletes than any of the other Ivy League universities, as its center was near Jacobsburg, Ohio. Yale and Princeton were not far behind it, straddling Marianna, Pennsylvania. Penn’s teams were the most eastern, and Brown was the most northern. Still, the centers showed that athletes predominantly came from the east coast, specifically New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. “There’s no other conference in Division I that has broadbased sports sponsorship as a commitment to the benefits that sports provide studentathletes and the campus,” Harris said. The Big Picture
athletes enjoy enormous admissions advantages. “I was constantly peeved by athletic admissions. I thought they brought down the quality of the applicant pool,” a former Dartmouth admissions officer told Business Insider. Bowen and Levin also found that the majority are admitted with SAT scores below those of nonathletes. About a fifth of the seats in each incoming class go to recruited athletes. Most of them don’t play high profile revenuegenerating sports like football or basketball. They play the “country club sports” of polo, sailing, squash, rowing, and fencing, among others. Many of these sports are limited in their regional extent. Athletes disproportionately come from private high schools — usually in the northeast. The high schools with the most Ivy League athletes are the same schools that send the most students to Harvard and Princeton as featured on PolarisList, except for those with academic admissions tests like Stuyvesant and Thomas Jefferson High Schools. The Crimson’s survey revealed that nearly half of recruits in the Class of 2022 came from families earning more than $250,000 per year. Less than 13 percent of their fami-
LIAM O’CONNOR AND GOOGLE MAPS 2019 concentration of Ivy League varsity athletes across the United States.
At least 11 private high schools had 20 or more seniors who became athletes, versus just three public schools. “It’s frankly not surprising to me that our students are going to come from the Northeast and come from places with good high schools,” Ivy League Executive Director Robin Harris said in a phone interview. She emphasized that private high schools are providing financial aid and diversifying their student bodies. According to her, it’s difficult to make assumptions about why some students go to certain schools. “Our coaches can recruit. But it is each individual school’s admissions office that determines whether or not a recruited prospective student-athlete will be admitted,” Harris said. She declined to comment when asked about 2018 Harvard court filings showing that recruited athletes with relatively low academic credentials were 1,000 percent more likely to be admitted than non-athletes. Thomas Espenshade and Sarah Levin Taubman — coauthors of major studies involving athletics in admissions — respectively declined to answer and did not respond to my requests for comment. Regional Trends Not all sports are played across the entire country. Some are confined to particular regions. I calculated median centers of population to track these trends. Women’s golf, men’s volleyball, and water polo for both genders were the most western sports. They were each centered in Los Angeles. Men’s squash, men’s hockey, men’s
A lot of research has dug into Ivy League athletics over the past twenty years, so I’ll put my findings in context. Nationally, families spend thousands of dollars for their children to specialize at specific sports at an ever-younger age with the expectation that they’ll be college athletes, NCAA research shows. Ivy League schools offer over 30 sports for men and women, which is often more than what’s available at “powerhouse” schools. College Factual reported that the University of Alabama had 640 student-athletes in 22 sports. Last spring, Princeton had 920 in 37. The Harvard Crimson found that Harvard spends $1 million per year on recruitment expenses alone. Athletes still have to submit the same Common Application forms as everyone else, but coaches can give them advice, as occurs in Cambridge. Final contenders make it onto lists that coaches submit to the admissions office. Daniel Golden wrote in The Price of Admission that mediocre athletes often get on their lists, pleasing wealthy parents who then donate money for new facilities. Former Dean of Admissions Janet Rapelye denied that Princeton gives preferences to athletics when asked by an applicant in a New York Times blog. “We do not emphasize one activity over the other; athletics as well as artistic endeavors are equally regarded,” she said. Yet two comprehensive admissions studies — co-authored by Professor Espenshade and former president William Bowen GS ’58 — proved that
lies have annual paychecks under $81,000. NCAA data say that 65 percent of athletes are white, a higher proportion than many of their student bodies. In college, Bowen and Levin found that athletes lagged in their studies behind what their high school academic scores predicted, and this underperformance continued into the off-season when physical exhaustion was not an issue. Walk-ons and nonathletes didn’t suffer from the same poor scores. Despite this dismal record, colleges pour more money into athletics than any other extracurricular activity. At Princeton, the athletics department received $32.3 million last year. That’s $12.1 million more than the average academic department if they evenly split their funds. An athletic divide pervades social life. Two-thirds of the Tigers’ athletes are in three eating clubs out of eleven total. They are more likely to be in Bicker clubs than non-athletes, and specific teams feed into socially prestigious clubs. The Harvard Crimson and the Yale Daily News reported that Wall Street firms recruit dozens of athletes into high paying jobs through their networks of alumni who were athletes themselves. Presumably, a number of their children in the future will want to play sports at their parent’s alma mater or somewhere similar. The cycle repeats itself. Analysis How many more studies, scandals, and investigations does the Ivy League need be-
fore it realizes that it has a problem? Athletic recruitment is building an eastern aristocracy. America’s upper echelons are using recruitment to secure their status for the next generation. Most elite college students worked hard to get their places, including athletes. But some students’ applications reach the acceptance pile more quickly and more often than others for the simple fact that a coach says they play a sport well. It’s true that athletes’ geographic backgrounds closely match those of Princeton overall. Therefore, an athletic director could argue that my findings aren’t a problem because athletes are representative of student bodies. The difference, though, is that coaches actively seek out students in recruitment. They’re basically doling out golden tickets of acceptance to the wealthiest families, whereas the rest of admissions — ignoring its own flaws for a moment — is at the mercy of varying regional application rates. Athletics is one reason why upper crust schools like Exeter and Nobles have so many students who go to elite colleges. The Ivy League is by definition an athletic conference. But it can’t forget that its colleges are eight of the best institutions of higher education that train the world’s ruling class. Athletes should continue to be a part of the Ivy League. Recruitment should not. Reform must come from the top down. A president sits at the helm of a university’s machinery and knows enough key players to build momentum behind his or her campaign. Action from a single school would result in utter failure, as its teams would perennially lose to rivals. Success is only possible if the Ivy Presidents act together. They must be willing to stand up to the ensuing tsunami of backlash from alumni, coaches, parents, and students. Let’s not wait for another scandal. The time for change is now. Methods I’ve written several columns critical of varsity athletics in recent months. I don’t single them out due to a grudge against athletes. Rather, it’s simply the group with the most available public data. If legacies and development admits were posted online, I’d write about them too. I acquired varsity rosters from colleges’ athletics websites and mapped hometowns in Google Fusion Tables. The statistics that I mention ignore international students unless otherwise stated. Individual sports’ median centers of population are calculated only from Princeton’s rosters to sidestep the universities’ reporting differences. For example, the Tigers have lightweight and heavyweight rowing. Brown simply lists “rowing.” Princeton’s trends hold across the league. Water polo is still a western sport, and skiing isn’t becoming southern any time soon. I ignored cross country because its roster highly overlapped with track, causing a pattern affected by two-sport athletes. Other sport-specific statistics refer to the whole Ivy League. Bowen and Levin found that a lot of athletes drop varsity sports after their underclassmen years. Numbers for individual schools are likely higher than reported because my data doesn’t count those who quit. Although Smidge the Dog, a Labrador golden retriever, is listed as a “veteran” of Dartmouth’s equestrian team — and has her own varsity profile page — I didn’t count her as an athlete.
Thursday October 10, 2019
Sports
page 6
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } MEN’S SOCCER
Rookies handle the scoring as Princeton men’s soccer beats Delaware 3–0 By Sreesha Ghosh Contributor
In its latest match this season, Princeton men’s soccer (6–3, 0–1 Ivy League) defeated Delaware (2–4–3) by a score of 3–0. The game marked two significant milestones: first-year forward Spencer Fleurant’s first career two-goal game and first-year forward Daniel Diaz Bonilla’s first career goal. Delaware’s Timo Hummrich had the first shot of the game five minutes into play but was denied by a skillful save from junior goalie Jack Roberts. An early goal by Diaz Bonilla, assisted by junior midfielder Frankie DeRosa, gave Princeton an early lead at nineteen minutes, a much-needed “cushion” in the words of head coach Jim Barlow ’91. Delaware continued to fight back ferociously. At halftime, the Fightin’ Blue Hens were outshooting Princeton 5–3, but Roberts prevented any equalizers with three separate saves. Princeton began to pick up its pace in the second half, outshooting the Blue Hens 11–2. Sophomore forward Truman Gelnovatch shot twice in the same minute, with his second bouncing off the post, but neither came to fruition. The next half hour saw a sustained attack, with several dogged attempts by the Tigers to finish the game off to no avail.
They finally secured their second (and third) breakthrough at the 79-minute mark. After having his previous shot blocked by Delaware’s goalie Nick DeShong, Fleurant put the game away with two goals scored less than four minutes apart. He was assisted by sophomore midfielder Ryan Clare on the first and by Gelnovatch on the second. All in all, Princeton outshot the Blue Hens 14–7, but also outfouled them 14–12. Four yellow cards were awarded, two to each team. Princeton made 15 substitutions, whereas Delaware made none. The win saw the Tigers rise to a 6–3 record for the season. Despite the win, Barlow believes the Tigers can do better. “The overall mentality today wasn’t great. We were frustrated that we were giving some balls away and that our passing game wasn’t as sharp as it usually was. As a group, I don’t think we dealt with it in a positive way by getting after it, working harder, and winning more balls back.” That said, the second half saw significant improvement, with stellar performances from Bonilla and Roberts. The team will face off against Brown in Providence this Saturday in its second Ivy League game of the season. After dropping the Ivy opener to Dartmouth, it will be a must-win to get back into the Ivy League race.
JACK GRAHAM / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Cole Morokhovich defends for Princeton against Delaware.
M E N ’ S W AT E R P O L O
Men’s water polo takes two of three in first weekend of NWPC play By Rachel Posner Contributor
The first weekend of the Northeast Water Polo Conference was a whirlwind for the No. 18 Princeton men’s water polo team (8–9, 2–1 NWPC): a loss against Harvard, a win against Brown, and finally a win against MIT after an exciting overtime. Princeton came into the weekend with two players having earned accolades. Last week, sophomore attacker Keller Maloney received Northeast Water Polo Conference Offensive Player of the Week, and first-year attacker Yurian Quinones received
NWPC Rookie of the Week. That certainly didn’t stop these two players from working to improve in their games this weekend. “[It] shouldn’t really change the way that you play,” said Maloney. “They should be more of a sign that we’re pushing in the right direction.” Quinones added that two players “don’t make the difference for a game. It’s more of a team effort.” Princeton started the week with a tough opponent, No. 12 Harvard. The Tigers put up a good fight, with three solid quarters and strong offensive plays. Sophomore utility Mitchell Cooper and first-
year attacker Pierce Maloney scored the first two goals of the game, but Harvard took the lead after scoring three goals in little over a minute. Both teams fought hard to tie the score at six by the end of the first half. The second half was brutal for the Tigers. Once again, Harvard scored three goals in a row to take a 9–7 lead by the end of the third quarter, and they made their last shot with 58 seconds to go, securing a three-goal win. The Tigers ultimately lost to Harvard 12–9, but according to Maloney, “the game was closer than the score appeared.” “We’re a system-based pro-
BEVERLY SCHAEFER / GOPRINCETONTIGERS Keller Maloney scored the go-ahead goal in overtime against MIT.
Tweet of the Day
“NONE SHALL PASS. After posting her 30th career clean sheet on Saturday, @PrincetonWSoc senior Natalie Grossi is now the all-time shutouts leader in Ivy soccer men’s or women’s history the Ivy League (@ IvyLeague), Soccer
gram and Harvard plays a little bit more freely, so at this point in the season they’re definitely ahead of where we are,” head coach Dustin Litvak said. “We have a lot of younger players, so it just takes us a little bit more time to build the chemistry.” The loss gave the Tigers determination going into Sunday’s games, a doubleheader against Brown and MIT. As Maloney pointed out, “no one on the team likes to lose,” and they made sure it didn’t happen again on the weekend. Against Brown, the Tigers started the game out strong, scoring the first three goals and last four goals of the first half and going into the intermission with a 9–4 lead. For most of the third quarter, the Tigers maintained their five goal lead. Brown wasn’t able to score at all in the last four minutes of the game, as firstyear goalie Antonio Knez led a strong defense throughout the game. Princeton finished with a 12–9 win, and Maloney, Quinones, and Litvak agreed it was the best game the team had played all season. The Tigers used their momentum going into their second game of the day against MIT. The game wasn’t looking so promising at first for the Tigers, as MIT was leading 5–3 by the end of the first half. MIT held their lead into the fourth quarter, with a score of 7–4. However, in the last quarter Princeton quickly caught up. With 1:41 to go, the Tigers scored to make it a one point game, and with 34 seconds left, junior utility Alec Mendelsohn scored to tie up the game. MIT tried to fit in a goal before the buzzer, but Knez blocked it.
With the momentum in the team’s favor heading into overtime, Maloney claims there wasn’t “a guy on the team who thought we were going to lose at that point.” He was right. Maloney scored with 2:35 left and Cooper scored again with 41 seconds remaining, to give Princeton a two goal lead going into the second half of overtime. MIT got in a goal with 1:55 left, but the Tigers defense held them off for the rest of the game, as the Tigers won by a score of 9–8. Maloney credited this win to the team’s depth, with two to three strong lines that could keep substituting in with renewed energy until the end. Litvak was proud of his team’s resilience, even if he admitted they didn’t necessarily “deserve” it and were “fortunate to have a chance to still be in the game.” Looking ahead, the whole team is working towards the same goal: consistency. They want to improve their 6-on-5 and 5-on-6 plays, and Litvak claims their “biggest issue is trying to stay engaged on the defensive end.” The Tigers will have a challenging Saturday next weekend playing against Iona College and No. 17 St. Francis College in particularly difficult pools. But after a two-win weekend, Litvak is confident the team is headed in the right direction. “Ultimately, I think we have the pieces,” Litvak said. “We really like the athletes we have and what they’re doing in practice, but we just have to be more consistent in the way we play and the way we train ... We’re in a good place heading into the second half of the season.”
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Princeton men’s soccer outshout Delaware 11-2 in the second half of Tuesday’s game.