December 13, 2017

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Wednesday december 13, 2017 vol. CXLI no. 118

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Glee Club conductor nominated for Grammy

By Isabel Ting contributor

In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, Gabriel Crouch, Director of Choral Activities in the University Department of Music, reflected on what music means to him as a teacher at the University and principal singer of the Tenebrae Choir.

The choir’s album, “Music of the Spheres: Part Songs of the British Isles,” has been nominated for a Grammy award in the category of “Best Choral Performance.”

“I don’t get too excited about awards because I’ve experienced things in my life that made me feel like I’ve done something valuable and worthwhile, but nobody noticed, and then there are things that I’ve felt embarrassed about, but other people get excited for,” Crouch said.

Crouch joked that he owed it to himself to say this, since this is what he told himself when he hadn’t been nominated for other works. While he appreciates the nomination, he noted, it does not change his perception of whether he has created good work or not.

The Tenebrae Choir is a London-based professional vocal ensemble founded and directed by Nigel Short, and its repertoire covers works from the 16th to the 21st cen-

tury. Crouch has been involved with Tenebrae Choir since its establishment in 2001.

“Every day I sing with Tenebrae is an honor,” said Crouch. “This nomination doesn’t change that at all, and I couldn’t be prouder to be a part of the choir.”

He explained that he enjoyed just being a performer in Tenebrae Choir, rather than having to worry about the logistics and administrative details.

“I should confess that I’m only a small cog in this very

big wheel,” said Crouch. “It isn’t my project or baby. I’m just contributing something small with some singing with 17 or 18 other people as well. I’m just a participant, and I get to be involved in this really great musicmaking.”

More than once, Crouch humbly confessed that while he is happy to be interviewed about the nomination, he is also “slightly embarrassed,” since he only “turns up to sing and try [his] best.”

Crouch’s favorite memSee GRAMMY page 5

While the University has been embroiled in outrage and controversy over Title IX cases in the German department and pertaining to electrical engineering professor Sergio Verdú, it seems that the Orange Bubble has had further incidents of sexual harassment in other departments.

In a spreadsheet circulated on various social media platforms by The Professor Is In, an academic advising website for higher education, over 1,600 entries cite sexu-

U. architect offers plans for future campus expansion contributor

COURTESY OF ANDREW WILKINSON

Gabriel Crouch, Director of Choral Activities in the Music Department, was nominated for a Grammy award for his work in the Tenebrae Choir.

U. appears in sexual harassment online crowdsourcing survey Ssnior writer and contributor

HANNAH WANG :: CONTRIBUTOR

Architect Ron McCoy presented plans for expanding the U. campus during the Princeton Council meeting on Monday.

By Hannah Wang

ON CAMPUS

By Sarah Hirschfield and Linh Nguyen

U . A F FA I R S

al harassment incidents on college campuses across the nation. The spreadsheet has only existed since the beginning of December. As of Dec. 12, six entries discuss incidents that are said to have taken place at the University, and several other posts mention incidents that involved University professors during travels off-campus.

Anonymous victims who contributed accounts of their sexual harassment and assault did so through an online survey. Participants were able to contribute as much or as little information as they were willing to provide.

The document divides the survey responses into 14 different sections, including when and where the incidents took place, the relationships between the victims and the perpetrators, and resultant effects on the victims’ mental health, personal lives, and professional lives.

Karen Kelsky, a former tenured professor at the University of Oregon and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the founder of The Professor Is In, created the document “to identify patterns of harassment and harm in higher ed See SURVEY page 4

At the Princeton Council meeting on Monday, Dec. 11, the University presented an ambitious expansion plan that would allow for the development of residential colleges, new engineering and environmental science buildings, and a new lake campus over the next 30 years.

University Architect Ron McCoy led the presentation of the plan, which proposes the construction of several facilities in the central and eastern campuses, in addition to the development of a lake campus to the south of Lake Carnegie. McCoy described the plan as “a mission-centered vision” that will guide the University in making land use decisions that most effectively further its objectives as an educational institution.

In order to accommodate the planned expansion of the undergraduate student body, the University intends to build at least one residential college on an open site south of the Poe and Pardee Fields and west of the Roberts Stadium. The

Dean’s Date funding raises concern over USG budget

By Linh Nguyen

USG voting system shows vulnerability

contributor

associate news editor

In the winter 2017 Undergraduate Student Government election, the voting ballot appears to be open to more than just undergraduate students. Rather, a detail on the voting website, Helios Voting, shows that the ballot is open to “any CAS user.”

“CAS” refers to the Central Authentication Service that allows web applications to authenticate users. At the University, any person with a valid

netID can be authenticated, which includes undergraduate students, as well as faculty, administrators, and graduate students.

Jeff Lestz, a graduate student in the Theory Department at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, was able to access the ballot when he found the link to the ballot while scrolling through his Facebook feed.

“On the page, it said something like that anyone with a CAS account or log-in was eligible for the election, which seemed

kind of odd to me because you’d think only undergrads can vote on undergrad stuff,” Lestz said.

Lestz noted that he was successful in voting for the unopposed social chair candidate Tania Bore ’20.

However, he said that he wasn’t deemed eligible to vote in the class-specific elections.

USG president Myesha Jemison ’18 clarified that, after checking with the host of the website, USG could not restrict the voting to only undergraduSee VOTING page 5

See COUNCIL page 2

ON CAMPUS

ON CAMPUS

By Kristin Qian

diagonal walk that runs from Mathey College to the McCosh Health Center will be extended to the Poe and Pardee Fields, so that the new residential college or colleges will be more connected to the rest of the campus.

The planned increase in the size of the undergraduate student body has also compelled the University to expand the Dillon Gym onto the Dillon Court. Additionally, the University hopes to relocate the academic faculty in Guyot Hall and the health services in the McCosh Health Center to other buildings so as to create a larger Frist/Guyot/ McCosh “node” for social life.

McCoy identified the enlargement and improvement of spaces for the study of engineering and environmental sciences as another major priority for the University. To that end, multiple engineering departments are to be relocated to newly constructed facilities along the north side of Ivy Lane, freeing up the Friend Center, the Computer Science Building, and

Dean’s Date is typically filled with deadlines, giveaways, food, and entertainment — a costly event that was already allocated a hefty $14,000 in funding last year.

This year, the Undergraduate Student Government has approved an additional $25,000 to host a concert during the Dean’s Date celebration.

On Sunday, Dec. 10, USG held its last meeting of the calendar year. Social Committee Chair Lavinia Liang ’18 presented a petition requesting increased funding for Dean’s Date celebrations.

After a seven-minute discussion, the majority of USG voted in favor of the addi-

In Opinion

Today on Campus

Connor Pfeiffer argues against the Honor Code referenda, whileJustin Ziegler offers an example of the honor system gone wrong. PAGE 6

5 p.m.: Select students from fall courses in creative writing will read from their work as part of the Althea Ward Clark W’21 Reading Series in the Chancellor Green Rotunda.

tional funding and approved the request.

This semester, Dean’s Date will take place on Tuesday, Jan. 16. In addition to the usual celebration that occurs in McCosh Courtyard from 5-7 p.m., USG will now plan to host an “up-and-coming pop DJ” in Dillon Gym from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. of that night.

In the official petition, Liang credited the 2013 Dean’s Date celebration, which included a concert, as inspiration for this year’s celebration’s logistics. She described the plan as an effort to “decrease high-risk drinking and provide a fun and safe alternative for students to celebrate their night.”

The petition estimates the See BUDGET page 3

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The Daily Princetonian

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Wednesday december 13, 2017

U. plans to transform land south of Lake Carnegie into lake campus COUNCIL Continued from page 1

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the Engineering Quad for other uses. A second social “node” has also been incorporated into the design of the buildings, providing a space on the eastern campus for students, staff, and faculty to come together and foster a better sense of community.

The University currently owns over 210 acres of land south of Lake Carnegie and east of Washington Road, which it plans to turn into a lake campus that will

function as a “mixed-use” extension of the existing campus. Envisioned amenities include athletic offices, administrative facilities, housing for up to 500 graduate students, parking lots, and congregational innovation spaces. There may even be the construction of retail outlets or a hotel.

To access the lake campus, a pedestrian bridge will be built over Lake Carnegie and the Delaware and Raritan Canal, which will then connect to the preexisting path known as Tiger Lane via the Lake Campus Walk. In keeping with the

University’s dual goals of promoting sustainability and mobility, the intersection of Lake Campus Walk and Tiger Lane will become the Tiger Lane Crossing, a focal point for public transportation like Tiger Transit to connect the lake campus with other parts of the University campus. Tiger Lane Crossing will contain additional amenities, such as outdoor social spaces and stores, to turn it into a third social “node” for the Princeton community.

McCoy noted that five main principles have guided the campus plan-

ning process since it commenced in July 2014: these principles, as outlined in the published expansion plan, include providing an integrated environment for teaching, living, learning, and research; enhancing the campus’s distinctive sense of place; fostering a welcoming and supportive setting that encourages interaction and exchange; creating a climate that encourages thoughtful approaches to sustainability; and serving communities that extend beyond the campus.

These five principles

translate to the University’s five main goals for maintaining and renewing the central campus, enabling expansion of the undergraduate student body, expanding and enhancing engineering and environmental studies, cultivating community, and constructing a lake campus.

The meeting took place at the Princeton Municipal Government on Witherspoon Street at 7 p.m on Monday. The entire expansion plan is available online in the form of a 166-pagelong document.

Wednesday december 13, 2017

The Daily Princetonian

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Dean’s Date concert to push celebration budget over $44,000 BUDGET

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amended total cost of the Dean’s Date celebration to be $43,275.

“We’re only spending what we have left over,” she explained, referring to the USG surplus funds from previous years.

“Dean’s Date is a great place to spend this money to benefit as many students as possible,” Liang said. “[The Social Committee] wanted to show people and let people know that there are other ways to have fun and other things that USG provides beyond Lawnparties in terms of arts and entertainment.”

Although the petition passed, USG members who opposed it expressed concern regarding the celebration’s cost efficiency and opportunity costs.

“One of the biggest problems that I have with this event is that we are also hearing that we don’t have enough money to bring someone big to our Lawnparties,” said U-Councilor Samuel Vilchez Santiago ’19.

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“But here we are spending about $44,000 on an event that we’re not even sure is going to have a lot of turnout.”

Vilchez Santiago noted that because Dean’s Date occurs at the end of reading period, students have finals beginning the next day, Jan. 17. He also pointed out that even if students do not immediately take finals, Dean’s Date is still “a big night out.”

“We should be spending USG revenue on something that will actually impact as many students as possible,” said Vilchez Santiago. “Is this an event that could do so? Potentially, but it’s something that we’re not simply sure of, and we’re basically taking a bet on this type of event.”

U-Councilor Diego Negron-Reichard ’18, who voted for the additional funding, admitted that other budgeting plans may have been possible, but praised Liang for coming up with a practical and well-received plan.

“USG has a big problem in that it has available resources, and it is not spending these resources,”

Negron-Reichard said. “Perhaps there are better ways to spend $25,000, but the Senate has been unable to produce any new project to match Lavinia’s request.” He added that there is a “certain political appetite to bring out big projects,” which has been a long-standing “problem within USG.” Negron-Reichard also emphasized that the budget “does not waste any money,” as any unused funds are to be “immediately deposited back into the USG general funds.”

Treasurer Alison Shim ’19 confirmed that the increased funding was not detrimental to USG’s annual budget.

“Obviously, the $25,000 allocation would decrease the surplus we have historically experienced,” said Shim.

“However, the money we allocate at the start of the school year is the budget for the fall and spring semester so whatever is not spent in this semester is what I start with in allocating the spring semester.”

Vilchez Santiago also noted a mathematical error in

the petition’s funding breakdown. Although Liang estimated the total funding to equal $44,000, Vilchez Santiago pointed out that in the funding breakdown given by the meeting notes, “if you actually add up the numbers, it’s $57,000.” According to the petition, $54,000 would come from USG, and an additional $3,000 would be funded by the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students’ Alcohol Initiative Committee.

Liang defended her committee’s choice to increase Dean’s Date celebration funding.

“It’s been a big initiative for my committee this year,” Liang said. “We believe that it would be a more holistic and continuous experience for students, especially the night after papers and night before finals.”

Class senator Soraya Morales Nunez ’18 abstained from voting. She emphasized the need for caution in planning Dean’s Date celebrations.

“The budget proposed for the Celebration this year was based off a 2013 Dean’s Date

operation budget,” wrote Morales Nunez in an email.

“Given that there is no precedent for such an event on Dean’s Date during my time at Princeton, and given the amount that was requested, I was wary of how successful the event would be in terms of student turnout.” Morales Nunez also stated that she believes that Liang “has done a fantastic job as Social Committee Chair” and she “will make this upcoming Dean’s Date a fun one for everyone.”

In response to concern from Senate members who opposed the petition due to lack of precedent, Liang added, “I don’t believe that this is sufficient reasoning against running this event. In fact, trying new things really embodies the open-minded ideals that I’ve found USG to embody.”

U-Councilor Chairs Pooja Patel ’18 and Miranda Rosen ’18 and U-Councilor Ethan Marcus ’18 did not respond to request for comment by the time of publication. Class of 2018 Senator Eli Schechner ’18 declined to comment.

The Daily Princetonian

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Wednesday december 13, 2017

The Professor Is In survey reveals patterns of sexual harassment SURVEY

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settings — college, university, academic research labs, research institutions, scholarly conferences and the like, targeting people who have or are seeking advanced degrees such as PhD., MA, MFA, Ed.D, J.D., and so on.”

On the survey, Kelsky emphasized that her goal was “to allow victims to know they are not alone, and to raise awareness about this scourge in academic settings.” According to In-

side Higher Ed, Kelsky also stressed that “you cannot solve a problem if you can’t see it” and that “this survey aims to make the problem visible to all.”

A doctoral candidate in the University’s history department wrote that she experienced “extreme sexual harassment” and “unwanted touching at a professional conference” from a senior professor from another university. As a result, she changed disciplines, deciding to go into public history and refusing to be associated with the University anymore

“purely because of the gender imbalance.”

A graduate student in sociology at the University reported “inappropriate touching, jokes of a sexual nature, explicit or offensive comments about women” from a fellow student, who was suspended for a year as a result. The entry noted that the individual still finished his Ph.D a year early despite the suspension and now has a tenure-track job. The victim, on the other hand, left campus and worked remotely, according to the survey.

“I lost faith in academia. I

do not trust universities to look out for our best interest,” reads the entry. “I feel like I did everything right (reporting, waiting for the process) and it didn’t matter … I don’t trust anyone to be safe. I don’t want academia any more.”

A different entry from a graduate student in sociology at the University noted that her professor was helpful until she mentioned she had a boyfriend, at which point “his tone changed entirely.” She also mentioned that male advisors only invited male students for din-

ner or drinks.

A full professor wrote that another full professor kissed her on the mouth as she was leaving a University dinner celebration for the publication of his memoir. The incident was not reported.

The document also cites two incidents that took place at other institutions involving a University professor who came onto a second year graduate student at a George Washington University workshop, and a University graduate student who stalked an undergraduate at UT Austin.

The Daily Princetonian

Wednesday december 13, 2017

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Crouch: We love music because of compulsion, not for credit GRAMMY Continued from page 1

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ory with Tenebrae Choir is the 2005 performance of “Path of Miracles,” a piece

by Joby Talbot that is based on the most enduring route of Catholic pilgrimage, the great pilgrimage to Santiago.

“It was a tough undertaking to bring the piece to life,” explained Crouch.

“It felt like we were part of something that was really meaningful, in terms of the choral world, and it’s something we’re all very proud of.”

Because Tenebrae Choir is based in London, Crouch is only involved with the choir when he visits Britain during the summer or during a couple of weeks during the winter. The Tenebrae Choir only rehearses before upcoming concerts, sometimes for just six hours before a concert.

Crouch therefore spends the majority of his time leading choral activities at the University, where he has taught for the last seven years. The choral program he oversees has three full choirs, as well as vocal consorts, and he is responsible for “helping the talented

singers and [their] personal singing careers.”

Currently, Crouch conducts Glee Club for six hours a week, runs Chamber Choir for three hours a week, and runs a series of small vocal consorts as well. He also teaches conducting, chamber music, and an opera performance course, a total of six hours of teaching each week.

His most memorable moment at the University thus far has been the Glee Club’s 2015 performance of “Mass in B Minor” by J.S. Bach.

Crouch recounts the performance of the piece as “really intense” and one that he will

“always remember.”

“This performance affected me so much, not because of how lucky I was to check this off my bucket list, but because I got to be with all the students in the Glee Club on that rehearsal journey,” he said.

Crouch describes working with the University’s choral program as a “very unusual privilege,” since most choral teachers who are in similar positions as he is work with singers who want to become professionals. Instead, Crouch works mostly with students who are not focused on careers as musicians but rather on hav-

ing a “nourishing, fulfilling experience.” Consequently, Crouch feels the urge to “find something beautiful in every rehearsal and every concert.”

“The rehearsal process becomes the most important part of my musical life here,” said Crouch. “Even though it is important that we perfect our music, I think the learning process of building art is the most important. This is a special moment because we are amateurs; we love [music] because of compulsion, not because of career or [desire for] credit.”

Students find discrepancy in Helios Voting system VOTING

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ate students. They could, however, restrict voting to a certain class year in the case of class elections.

USG does have a way to monitor votes to filter any voting discrepancies, Jemison noted. After the election, ballots will be checked with the record of currently enrolled un-

dergraduate students.

“Once we see [a] discrepancy, that [ballot] would probably be rendered invalid,” Jemison said.

University students vote through Helios Voting, an online voting system that prides itself on offering “verifiable online elections.”

Chief Elections Manager Laura Hausman ’20 did not respond to request for comment.

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Wednesday december 13, 2017

Opinion

page 6

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

Current Honor Committee practices: Disregarding principles, policy, and precedent Justin Ziegler

guest contributor

Note: The Honor Committee case described below is a true case. The student in question granted the author permission to share this story.

That student’s name and identifying details have been changed or omitted to protect the privacy of the individual.

T

he lecture hall is full of students, hunched over and scribbling away on their exams. There is no professor or proctor to be seen — an illustration of the Honor Code and the Princeton student body’s commitment to academic honesty. A student stands up and walks out of the room, holding her examination. She does not return.

When the Honor Committee later conducts an investigation, the student, Mary, is found guilty and suspended from the University for violating the Honor Code. The Honor Committee sentences her to a twoyear suspension, with censure, to highlight the severity of the offense on Mary’s transcript. If Mary intended to gain an unfair advantage over her classmates, and considering it was her second offense, I would consider this a fair punishment.

But Mary did not intend to gain an unfair advantage. And that did not prevent the two-year suspension.

The Honor Code, established in 1893, has been integral to Princeton as an agreement between students and faculty to uphold academic integrity. I’ve always felt a twinge of pride that at Princeton, this seemingly bizarre honor system actually worked: no proctor looked over my shoulder, and fellow students were proud of their own work.

As an undergraduate, I served for three years on the Honor Committee. As a senior, I noticed a worrisome trend: Our implementation of the honor system was increasingly unjust. The number of students found “responsible” for misunderstandings, rather than deliberate attempts to gain an unfair advantage, was increasing. These consequences were no slap on the wrist; the standard punishment is suspension for a year with a transcript permanently branded with the scarlet letter of academic dishonesty.

Mary has a history of anxiety attacks. During the Princeton examination in question, Mary suffered a wave of shaking, sweating, chest tightening, and intense nausea — identical to an episode she had suffered in high school. She quickly grabbed her things and left to vomit. In the bathroom, she realized that she had taken the exam with her, but in her mental state, she was fearful of returning the exam to the lecture hall. Well after the exam had concluded, but under fear of

expulsion, she voluntarily alerted the professor that she had left with the examination.

I was so perturbed by Mary’s case my senior year that I launched a referendum to reform the honor system, in spite of the impending deadline of my senior thesis. The details of how Mary’s case unfolds illustrates the Honor Committee’s muchneeded reforms.

Mary did not benefit from taking the exam with her, and she did not intend to, either.

Without the context of the anxiety attack, leaving the lecture hall with her exam appeared to be an attempt to gain an unfair advantage, violating the Honor Code. However, the evidence about the state of Mary’s mental health — collected from students, a preceptor, and a medical professional — made it clear that her behavior was irrational with no premeditated intent.

However, the Honor Committee does not incorporate intent or mental health in its deliberations, so that did not matter.

How can a fair judicial (or quasi-judicial) system dismiss intent? The Honor Constitution states that an Honor Code violation represents “any attempt to gain an unfair advantage in regard to an examination.” How do you attempt without intent?

How can a fair judicial system dismiss a student’s mental health when it affects their culpability? I found this nonsensical, and when I raised these questions to older committee members and administrators, I was told that “students aren’t trusted to determine intent or mental health” and “that’s how we’ve been doing it since 1893.”

Several months after the case, I read old Honor Committee case summaries from the 1980s and 1990s and found that those committees took into account mental health and intent into their deliberations. When did this stop?

The committee in Mary’s case was falsely led to believe that it could not adjudicate on the issue of intent and could not incorporate the student’s mental health. This led to a substantial injustice: Mary receiving a punishment that did not match the offense. She should have been given help.

The injustice of Mary’s case is even more egregious when you consider that there were multiple instances of procedural unfairness surrounding the hearing.

First: A week before the case began, the Honor Committee Chair had approached the head of the Honor Committee Peer Representatives (students trained to defend accused students in the hearing room) and informed him that this “case was open and shut.”

Second: Moments before the case began, the assembled Honor Committee was reminded

by two members that we were not able to incorporate mental health into our deliberations.

This was strange, as only the chair is allowed to have any information about a case before the onset. It later became clear that at least one additional member of the committee had been briefed about the case prior to our meeting, in clear violation of Honor Committee practices.

Third: In a blatant violation of the “student-run” aspect of the Honor Committee, a dean stopped by to give her thoughts during our hearing of the case and to give the committee “case precedent,” summaries of previous cases intended to guide sentencing severity during our deliberation. To my knowledge, this has never happened before, nor should it ever happen again.

The dean only provided examples of cases resulting in expulsion, along with one in which the penalty was reduced to two years with censure. We were reminded again that we could not factor in mental health into our decision.

After questioning the Dean, I learned that these were not Honor Committee cases, but previous Committee on Discipline cases (the former is concerned with exams, tests and quizzes; the latter is concerned with all other academic work). The dean attributed this to a lack of Honor Committee case history.

I later found out from student members of the Committee on Discipline that the dean had left out cases resulting in much less severe penalties. The previous Honor Committee case history that I reviewed actually included a history of much less severe penalties that were given under similar circumstances.

Fourth: We continued to deliberate after the dean left. A majority found that there were extenuating circumstances that necessitated a reduction in the severity of the penalty for the student. The Honor Committee Chair then declared that case precedent indicated there was only one penalty that we could give that was not expulsion: a two-year suspension with censure. I voted for the penalty, as it was the only way to avoid Mary’s expulsion. Honor Committee precedent reviewed after the case showed that the chair was incorrect in his assumption. Committees, after finding extenuating circumstances, are free to give any punishment deemed fit, including the typical punishment in extenuating circumstances cases: academic probation.

In the aftermath of Mary’s case, after learning that many of the problems we faced on the Honor Committee were shared by the Committee on Discipline, I spent days holed up in Little Hall, where I drafted a referendum that proposed direct changes to the Honor

Code and to Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities. I learned that many statements presented as fact about the Honor Committee were not consistent with the committee’s history.

Interestingly, this lack of knowledge about Honor Committee history became clear yesterday, when nine former Honor Committee Chairs used a legacy argument to argue that the standard penalty of a one-year suspension should not be reduced, as that penalty was part of the original student-faculty bond in 1893. The original penalty was much more lenient: “[students] could either confess and apologize to their professors, accepting a zero on the examination in question, and request new examinations, or they would be expelled from the college.”

Two years later, the standard penalty became expulsion for non-freshmen; since then, it has changed at least four times.

While we should be proud of our honor system’s history, we must continue to make improvements until we get it right.

I was convinced to abandon my referendum in exchange for an assurance that the University would carefully weigh the recommendations I proposed. That was two years ago.

In the meantime, current undergraduates and former Honor Committee members Micah Herskind ’19 and Ling Ritter ’19 have made it clear that the Honor Committee continues to fail to arbiter justice.

There is currently a University committee tasked with reform, but its composition leads me to believe that reform will not be considered seriously. While I have immense respect for the current Honor Committee Chair, she is fervently opposed to reform, and is therefore an improper selection by the University to co-chair the reform committee. In order for the reform committee to be legitimate, the committee must be composed of members open to reform, conduct a transparent process whereby members of the University community are solicited for their experiences, and make their final report public.

Do not mistake the Committee’s behavior in the past few years as being emblematic of the Honor Code’s history. Hundreds of cases from past decades show that students themselves are the best suited to investigate, understand, and empathize with fellow students. While I prefer reform of the practice and not necessarily of the code, we cannot sit idly by as these committees proceed unchecked. This is why I urge you to vote yes for the proposed Honor Code referenda.

The author, Justin Ziegler ‘16, can be reached at jrbziegler@gmail. com.

vol. cxli

Sarah Sakha ’18

editor-in-chief

Matthew McKinlay ’18 business manager

BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88 secretary Betsy L. Minkin ’77 treasurer Douglas J. Widmann ’90 Kathleen Crown William R. Elfers ’71 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 John Horan ’74 Joshua Katz Kathleen Kiely ’77 Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 Lisa Belkin ‘82 Francesca Barber trustees emeriti Gregory L. Diskant ’70 Jerry Raymond ’73 Michael E. Seger ’71 Annalyn Swan ’73

141ST MANAGING BOARD managing editors Samuel Garfinkle ’19 Grace Rehaut ’18 Christina Vosbikian ’18 head news editor Marcia Brown ’19 associate news editors Kristin Qian ’18 head opinion editor Nicholas Wu ’18 associate opinion editors Samuel Parsons ’19 Emily Erdos ’19 head sports editor David Xin ’19 associate sports editors Christopher Murphy ’20 Claire Coughlin ’19 head street editor Jianing Zhao ’20 associate street editors Lyric Perot ’20 Danielle Hoffman ’20 web editor Sarah Bowen ’20 head copy editors Isabel Hsu ’19 Omkar Shende ’18 associate copy editors Caroline Lippman ’19 Megan Laubach ’18 head design editors Samantha Goerger ’20 Quinn Donohue ’20 cartoons editor Tashi Treadway ’19

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

L

ast Thursday evening, the prominent Francophone novelist Patrice Nganang was arrested as he was about to board a f light leaving Cameroon. Initially charged with “insulting” the president, Nganang has been a vocal and visible critic of the oppressive and brutal tactics that Paul Biya’s regime is using against Cameroonian citizens in the Englishspeaking western part of the country. Nganang had just finished an extended visit to the area and had written a piece highly critical of Biya for a French newspaper. Since being arrested, he has been held in a detention center in

Release Patrice Nganang the capital, Yaoundé, awaiting a hearing.

Nganang was ostensibly arrested for a Facebook post.

That is an obvious abuse of state power, but that the Biya regime would use that as a pretext is even more chilling. The Biya regime is sensitive to international press coverage and has tolerated a certain amount of dissent in the press before. But, policing Facebook accounts is more than an attack on free press: It actively suppresses individual rights. You might not be a journalist, but you can now be held accountable for your late-night thoughts and casual retweets on so-

cial media.

Events like this implicate all of us, and not in just a general ethical way. Nganang, who teaches at SUNY Stony Brook but who lives just outside Princeton in Hopewell, is scheduled to be a Visiting Professor in the Humanities Council in the spring, teaching a course on the Black Metropolis for the French and Italian Department. Unless he is freed before then, he will become the second member of the University community in prison for doing academic research. History graduate student Xiyue Wang was imprisoned in Iran in 2016 while doing research for his

dissertation on 19th- and early-20th-century local governments.

Nganang’s arrest is not a provocation just to academic freedom. At a moment when journalists are routinely accused of peddling “fake” news or told that it is “inappropriate” or insulting to question members of the administration, freedom of the press has become a global issue. Unlike some regimes, Biya’s may be susceptible to embarrassment. It values a veneer of legitimacy, and the scrutiny of members of leading universities around the world will chip away at that veneer. Nganang’s ar-

rest has been condemned by individuals and groups around the world: in newspapers in France, England, and Germany; by organizations like PEN and the African Literature Association; and by thousands of individuals. Wendy Belcher, Nick Nesbitt, Simon Gikandi, Robert Harvey of SUNY Stony Brook, and I invite you to join a petition already signed by hundreds of academics in several countries urging Biya and the Cameroonian regime to release Nganang.

D. Vance Smith, Professor in the Department of English

Opinion

Wednesday december 13, 2017

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{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

Reject USG’s irresponsible change to standard penalty Connor Pfeiffer

guest contributor

T

he USG pitchforks are out, and this time there is a new target: Princeton’s 124-yearold honor system. Princeton students are being asked by a USG sub-committee to vote yes on four referenda, including a reduction in the severity of punishment for cheating on a Princeton exam to disciplinary probation, a change that would fundamentally alter Princeton’s honor system.

This proposal is both bad policy and a result of a biased and highly imprudent process. As the longest-tenured member of the USG Academics Committee, I have seen how USG can positively inf luence University policy from calendar reform to departmental requirements. This referendum, however, represents the exact opposite: a hasty attempt by certain members of USG to change an important policy without consulting faculty and administrators or considering the consequences. This is the wrong way to pursue reform. I think most students can agree that changes are needed to our Honor System.

But disciplinary probation is

simply too lenient of a penalty for cheating during an inclass exam, and we need faculty and administrator support so that more options for reform, like a one-semester suspension as standard penalty, can be on the table. I urge students to vote no on the first referendum and instead support a more responsible process for reform already taking place this spring.

Attempting to alter the Honor System in such a consequential way without buyin from faculty and administrators is both imprudent and potentially dangerous because it creates a disparity in penalties between the Honor Committee and the Committee on Discipline, and it reduces the prospect of better reforms. As a piece I co-authored explained, making a unilateral change without also changing the penalty used by the Committee on Discipline for cases not involving in-class exams creates an unfair system in which, for instance, plagiarism on a paper can result in a one-year suspension, whereas cheating on an exam results in probation.

An op-ed on Monday Dec. 11 responded to this point

by arguing, “if [the penalty] must be adjusted, let the administration respond. Let them change the CoD standards.” This is naïve and ignores the core feature of the Honor System: it is a contract between the faculty and students. As someone who has sat on two different faculty committees over the past three years, I can tell you that the faculty will not react well to the student body dictating that they should support a more lenient penalty for cheating. Nor should they! It takes time to change important policy because so many stakeholders are involved, and the faculty will not be rushed into correcting an unnecessary problem created by the student body.

Additionally, ignoring the faculty in this process has an even more pernicious impact for students: It reduces the chance of other reforms to the whole system. The student body and USG will have much less credibility to lobby the faculty for reforms like a one-semester penalty after adopting a unilateral reduction to the standard penalty on the Honor Committee without considering the disparity it would create

with the Committee on Discipline. This also damages the prospect for reforms to the Committee on Discipline, a source of many student frustrations based on conversations I have had this week.

Putting aside the process of reform, changing the standard penalty to probation effectively guts the punishment for cheating on exams at Princeton. If the first referendum receives three quarters of the vote this week, the new standard penalty will be “disciplinary probation and a recommendation to fail the examination on which the violation occurred.” Probation does not show up on your transcript, making it meaningless unless you commit an additional offense or apply for an opportunity that asks for your permanent record.

While some Princeton opportunities ask for a permanent record, most jobs and other outside opportunities do not. Additionally, the referendum changes the Honor Committee’s recommendation, where students still receive credit for a semester, from failing the course to failing just the exam in

question. This means a student could still pass a course in which they violated the Honor Code if this referendum passes.

Having a strong, studentrun system for enforcing cheating on exams is a point of pride for me as a Princeton student, and I cannot support a proposal to reduce the severity of the penalty for violating our shared Honor Code in such a dramatic way.

While a one-year suspension may be too harsh, probation is too lenient. If students want another option to be possible for the Honor Committee and Committee on Discipline, like a onesemester suspension, then we need faculty support to change the University’s current rules. The Task Force convening this spring has the potential to do just that, but passing the first referendum will only damage these efforts.

Connor Pfeiffer, a senior in the history department from San Antonio, Texas, is a member of the USG Academics Committee and The Daily Princetonian Editorial Board.

He can be reached at connorp@ princeton.edu.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

I

Princeton needs a union, it doesn’t need PGSU

recently decided to disaffiliate with Princeton Graduate Students United. The decision came after being told by representatives of the union that I was creating an “unsafe” organizing space. I was shocked by the accusation since, well, I don’t go to the union’s meetings, take part in their committees, or do much to regularly support their cause.

In a short meeting, I was informed that an unnamed member of the union had accused me of an unnamed offense and that a determination was made by an unnamed committee to ban me from the union meetings — meetings I don’t actually attend. There was no opportunity to confront my accuser, state my side of the story, or resolve the matter.

The situation signaled quite clearly that between the University administration and PGSU, the University administration remains the more preferable option for graduate students.

This is not to say Princeton is a perfect place for graduate students. Indeed, we students have a range of issues that need improvement, from establishing clear expectations for the progress of work, ensuring students have effective

grievances procedures for dealing with faculty, and establishing protocol for students in the event they face an emergency. What’s troubling about PGSU is that as an organization, it has made zero attempts to show precisely how this might be done. It instead operates an ad hoc system with no constitution, no process for dealing with interpersonal issues between union members, and no process of accountability for decisions made in haste or that prejudice one member against another. It is, in essence, as bad as the administration, though in my own personal experience, actually far worse. Here at Princeton, the Graduate School handles interpersonal issues between students. When students have a problem with another student, they have a variety of procedures they can follow; these range from mediation of a dispute, to a formal complaint system in which a formal investigation is launched and a determination is made as to whether an accused student violated University policy. It’s not a perfect system, but it attempts to strike a balance between due process and fairness to both sides. PGSU has no such system.

It was ironically a conservative judge, Laurence Silberman, who pointed in out in my labor law class at Georgetown that a union’s strength was not in its ability to get workers better pay and benefits, but in its ability to ensure workers were protected from dismissal by establishing a fair and transparent grievance system. In the year that PGSU has been around, it has made no such attempt to articulate what that system might look like, and while talking big about fairness, procedure, and organization, it has ultimately failed to embody those values in their organizational practice. This is a bad sign for students, not only because it shows how unprepared PGSU is for the task of representing ALL students in a fair manner, but because of how it misrepresents the value of a union.

Instead PGSU has become a homegrown “Moveon. org,” with its organizing strategy revolving around the drafting of petitions and open letters that “call the university out” on its problems. The strategy has not been effective at improving working conditions for graduate students, nor has it been successful at galvanizing broad-based

support among the graduate student community — particularly among well-established graduate student groups. In light of the prospect that the now Republican-controlled National Labor Relations Board will overturn the Obama-era rule deeming graduate students workers, PGSU naively believes it can win a labor contract similar to the one achieved by students at New York University. But that contract isn’t so great. A quick read-through will reveal that NYU students still get a worse deal than Princeton students on issues of pay, childcare, and healthcare benefits. The one benefit that the contract establishes is that students are now subject to “for cause” rather than “at will” dismissal — something our very own PGSU doesn’t believe in as a matter of practice and principle.

At the moment the University is barred from making direct improvements on the working conditions of graduate students, since doing so would violate the National Labor Relations Act and subject Princeton University to an “unfair labor practice.” In essence, we students remain in a limbo, with PGSU holding us hostage until a con-

tract is signed — a contract that will likely never happen and may worsen rather than improve conditions, especially if PGSU is at the negotiation table. PGSU’s members’ lack of experience, combined with their sloppy organizing tactics, puts the future of graduate students at Princeton in jeopardy. Yet, by refusing to affiliate with PGSU and revoking any affiliation you may have given them, you can take a step in the right direction. PGSU dissolving can provide the space to start over, to build from the ground up an organization founded on principles of fairness and transparency. This means starting with a constitution and set of guiding principles before affiliating with an outside labor union. It means building coalitions with established student groups rather than “going it alone” and failing. I believe in the promises of a graduate student union, but I no longer believe in PGSU, and nor should you.

Brandon Hunter is a third year graduate student in anthropology from Washington, D.C. He can be reached at bh11@princeton. edu.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Clarifying the historical record on the Honor Committee

T

o the Editor,

I write to share clarification and historical context in response to the letter by former Honor Committee chairs that was published on Monday, Dec. 11​.​T ​ he authors declare​that for violations of the honor system​ , “in 1893, Princeton students settled on a consequence — one-year suspension​...”​​​ In fact, for the majority of the Honor System’s existence, the standard penalty for Honor Code violations was expulsion. A one-year suspension was not a​ listed penalty in the Constitution of the Honor System until

1974​. ​A s indicated by the e​ ditor’s note ​to the former chairs’ letter​, w​hen undergraduates ​f irst​ adopted the Constitution in 1895,​the recommended penalty for sophomores, juniors, and seniors was expulsion​ ,​ while ​the recommended penalty for ​f irst-year students ​was suspension​. ​B​y​ 1904, the ​standard ​penalty ​for all students was expulsion​.​ In 1921, undergraduates amended the Constitution to allow for “leniency in exceptional cases of violation of the Honor System​​” — suspension for at least one semester, but

only after a unanimous vote of the Honor Committee at two separate meetings​. Nevertheless, the standard penalty remained expulsion.

Only in 1974 was the Constitution amended to explicitly allow the Honor Committee “a direct choice between permanent expulsion and one-year suspension​.​​​” Finally, ​i n 1980, the​standard penalty students faced changed to “suspension for one year​.​” Zhan Okuda-Lim ’15, Former U-Council Chair and U-Councilor​

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Opinion

Wednesday december 13, 2017

page 8

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Responsible Reform: Response to WWS graduate students Comments from Honor Committee Leadership Part II LETTER TO THE EDITOR

D

ear Editor,

I am writing in response to a letter published in yesterday’s paper by a group of graduate students at the Woodrow Wilson School.

As someone who has spent an entire career committed to issues of diversity — particularly in the field of economics and the labor market more generally — I wholeheartedly agree that diversity is an incredibly important issue.

This is true not only in our school, but in all realms of life. Indeed, as policy leaders of tomorrow, the Wilson

School graduate students will be on the front lines of ensuring that the policy arena represents people of all backgrounds and ideologies.

Since becoming dean in 2012, I have worked to improve how the school approaches issues of inclusion and representation. I am committed to continuing this work with our students to identify areas where the school can improve and implement needed reforms.

I do so, however, with the understanding that none of these issues are easy and that they require thought-

ful discussion with our faculty, staff, and among the students themselves.

But while the work is hard, the payoff is worth it to ensure that our school is a place where a diverse group of people want to come together to study and where the education we provide prepares students to develop policies that consider all members of society.

Sincerely,

Cecilia Elena Rouse, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Some thoughts on Honor Code reform Omid Abrishamchian and George Kevrekidis guest contributors

A

s Peer Representatives, our role during Honor Committee hearings is to advocate for students accused of violating the Honor Code.

But these mammoth productions of seven Honor Committee members, two investigators, the student in question, professors, preceptors, and a couple character witnesses begin outside that room, about a week before the hearing.

Our job really starts then, once the Honor Committee Chair and two investigators determine a hearing is warranted after reviewing evidence and speaking with the student in question, also known as the SIQ. From that moment, Peer Representatives are defense attorneys, peer counselors, advisers, and ombuds, all at once.

We help students through all sides of an Honor Committee investigation, from gathering evidence and representing the SIQ at hearing to supporting them in whatever ways — large and small — that are necessary during the investigation period.

Honor Committee hearings are not pleasant for anyone.

For SIQs, the specter of being punished is daunting in itself; however, if we as Peer Representatives do our jobs correctly, the SIQ can go into the hearing with confidence that their story is heard fully and fairly. In many ways, we are a live check on the power of the system, ensuring that the Honor Committee follows the Honor Code Constitution down to the last comma and that students are given a fair shake. Our perspective in this process emphasizes the need for a change in how punish-

ment is assigned.

We write to express our support for the first referendum, which lowers the punishments at each level of violation. In our experience, violations of the Honor Code fall under three buckets: writing overtime on exams, infractions that violate course policy due to lack of proper attention (like accidentally bringing in a calculator), and more intentional infractions (like looking up answers). Today, the standard punishment for writing overtime is disciplinary probation, while the punishment for the latter two situations is a oneyear suspension. We believe that in the middle case — cases of error due to lack of sufficient diligence — a one-year suspension is too excessive a punishment.

We would like to be clear, however, that this solution is far from ideal. The referendum would establish a baseline punishment that would apply to all first-time offenders equally. Punishments, like their associated violations, belong on a spectrum. With this reform, students who write 45 seconds overtime will be punished the same as students who deliberately violate course policy; we do not think this is reasonable. However, despite its flaws, we think this reform is a necessary one, as the good done by appropriately rescaling the punishment of those who made an unfortunate error more than outweighs our qualms with the proposal. We want to live in a community where we assign to students the most charitable interpretation of events when bringing down the heavy, blunt hammer of the Honor Committee.

The opposition highlights the disparity between the punishments assigned by the Committee on Discipline and

the Honor Committee, arguing that a change in only one brings about legal challenges to the University. We hope that this first referendum serves as the catalyst for change across the disciplinary regime at Princeton. This is not an academic issue; the future paths of many of our classmates are fundamentally impacted by the decisions made in this reform. We cannot afford to let perfect be the enemy of good enough, especially when good enough may inspire change in other parts of the system.

As a fundamentally impactful part of student life here at Princeton, changes to the Honor Code Constitution require careful thought. There are many more improvements we can think of, specifically dealing with how mental health issues are handled, how appeals are structured, how punishments are gradated, and how to involve the Peer Representative earlier in the process. We hope to bring up these issues in the upcoming Task Force on Honor Committee Review, and we are glad the student body has taken a keen interest in the various clauses of the Honor Code Constitution.

Even within the Peer Representative pool, we disagree on how these proposals should be implemented, and we encourage everyone to consider all sides of these proposals carefully.

Part of our jobs as Peer Representatives is to ensure people understand their rights before they have to exercise them, so we encourage students to contact us with any questions.

Signed personally, Omid Abrishamchian, Chair of the Princeton Peer Representatives George Kevrekidis, Peer Representative

Carolyn Liziewski and Elizabeth Haile guest contributors

D

ec. 12 began the voting period for the four referenda on the Honor Code Constitution. The first referendum calls for a degradation of standard penalty for violations of the Honor Code on in-class examinations from a oneyear suspension to disciplinary probation until graduation. We would like to provide some additional information and raise a number of questions that students should consider as they think about how they will vote on this referendum.

Discipline at the University is delegated to the faculty. The faculty in turn grants students the right to self-adjudicate violations of academic integrity on in-class examinations. Violations of academic integrity are dealt with by two bodies, the Faculty-Student Committee on Discipline, which adjudicates all other violations of academic integrity, and the Honor Committee. While the two bodies are separate, there exists a parallelism between them. It would not be fair to have radically different penalties for almost identical violations across these two committees. If a student copies code from GitHub on a COS 126 assignment, and another student copies code from GitHub on an in-class programming exam, their penalties should ref lect the fundamental similarity of their actions. Under this reform, the student who copies code on the inclass programming exam would be on disciplinary probation until graduation, and the student who copies code on the assignment would be suspended for a year. So, if this reform passes, we must then ask if we can encourage the faculty and the Committee On Discipline to accept a modified standard penalty across the board.

Inviting the faculty and administration to be involved in a discussion about standard penalty is fundamentally different

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than approaching the faculty with a changed Constitution and asking them to accept the change and lower penalty across the board.

Furthermore, in the current paradigm, Honor Committee penalty is gradated. In 2012, the Honor Committee, in conjunction with the Undergraduate Student Government and the student body, modified standard penalty for writing overtime on in-class examinations to disciplinary probation until graduation. The impetus behind this change was the idea that a student who writes one minute overtime on an in-class examination where the expectation is that students drop their pencils at the time call should receive a lesser penalty than the student who leaves the classroom and searches for answers in the bathroom.

There is a distinction between a temporal advantage gained and a substantive one. Under this new reform, this gradation would not exist; instead, a system of standard leniency would be instituted.

We think the question of standard penalty should be discussed. We believe that there are ways to distinguish among different types of violations in order to create a fairer gradated system of penalty.

These, among others, are the kinds of questions that a task force in the spring with representatives from all relevant parties can ask and evaluate.

We encourage students to read materials presented from both the proposition and opposition parties and think critically about these issues. The magnitude of the changes that these referenda would bring about are significant. We encourage you to discuss these issues with your friends, peers, and professors, and reach out to us with questions, thoughts, and concerns.

Sincerely, Carolyn Liziewski ‘18, Honor Committee Chair Elizabeth Haile ‘19, Honor Committee Clerk

Wednesday december 13, 2017

The Daily Princetonian

page 9

Wawa United to form second team called D’Angelo’s United WAWA

Continued from page 10

cer as a group?

MT: Well, we can keep this answer short and sweet: we’re out having a good time.There’s certainly a large sense of community, a large sense of friendship, and a lot of love between the brothers of Wawa United. We all see it as our premiere social group and our premiere friend group on campus.

JH: Another great thing about it is that there really is no sense of social hierarchy between different grades.

We’ve got seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshmen all on the team. Though it’s mainly sophomore-dominated right now, we are trying to get more members from all grades, especially freshmen. And you know it touched my heart when one of the freshmen came up to me and said, “This is my strongest group of friends on campus.” It touched me because I can’t imagine last year as a freshman saying that a group of upperclassmen was my strongest friend group on campus. So I think that’s representative of the loving and welcoming community we have.

MT: We’re all very fortunate to be a member of Wawa.

JH: You’re welcome to join if you’d like to!

DP: It sounds awesome — you know I would love to. I cannot kick a ball to save my life but I’d love to get out there with you guys.

It sounds like a really good time.

MT: You know, you definitely look like you got the

fit for a good goalie.

DP: So for any other person on campus thinking about joining, whether they’re a freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior, what do they have to do to go about that?

JD: You honestly just got to slide into the DMs. Just go on our Instagram and message us there.

CG: Reach out to our membership chair, Tom Salama ’20. Feel free to contact him at anytime, he’s available 24/7 to talk to you.

The man lives and breathes Wawa.

MT: Yeah we are ramping up our social media and our social presence, so we have an Instagram, Facebook, and we are in the process of making a LinkedIn. We’re in the process of building up our website and like Coby said Tom said, we will certainly answer you and we’ll get you out for one of our training sessions.

JH: We actually had a 32-year-old pharmaceutical consultant from Long Island named Sandeep come to a training session just a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, the birth of his child prevented him from continuing playing with us, but again, I think that’s symbolic of how welcoming of a community we are.

A group of college kids, some of us U.S. citizens, some of us not, from all different backgrounds who share a common passion and love being around each other.

MT: One thing though — if you are considering joining, keep in mind that our interest level is building up

fast, so make sure you reach out to us sooner if you want to be part.

JH: But don’t worry about the total number of people; we are in the process of making a second team — D’Angelo’s United — that will help make sure everyone, regardless of skill level, has a spot to play.

JD: We got that name idea after some really good food we had there just a few days ago.

CG: I had a tuna melt, with some really thick bread, melted cheese, tuna with mayo, lettuce, tomato, and onion as well. It was great.

JH: Going back to the number of players, we actually had seven substitutes for the last game, which is remarkable considering we started the season unsure if we could field enough players for a team. And we could have had more substitutes,

to be honest — some people chose not to play that game.

So I think next year if we have enough interest from the freshmen and others during the spring season, we will try and make a B team so that way everyone who wants to play soccer and doesn’t make club soccer has a chance to do so at Princeton.

DP: This has been great so far. Any last things you want to add before we sign off?

JD: So Timo and I are from New Jersey, and there are times when you go [to Princeton] that you forget you’re in NJ just because you never have a chance to get off campus. I think that with Wawa — where you just get in a car and go somewhere to play some soccer — it takes us back to something much more local. It’s nice to get a break and go places and meet guys

COURTESY OF JONNY HOPCROFT

Princeton’s newest sports team combines fire and flavor in their custom design, created by sophomore Jonny Hopcroft.

who aren’t Ivy League students or college students; it’s really nice to break the bubble.

CG: The thing I appreciate about Wawa the most is that rarely at Princeton do you have the chance to do something just for fun.

And it’s very cool that there are a lot of people who are actually willing to commit to spending most of their Sunday doing something just because it is fun. You can’t put Wawa on your resume — JH: I actually do.

CG: — it’s just for the fun and love of the game.

JH: That’s one thing I want to emphasize, you know, some clubs people join maybe just for the social benefits. That’s not the case here; the only social benefit is the great people you get to meet. As Jan said earlier, it’s great vibes all the time.

COURTESY OF JONNY HOPCROFT

Sophomore Matthijs Dijkgraaf poses in Frist Campus Center with his Wawa United kit.

Balanced Breakfast annie zou ’20

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Wednesday december 13, 2017

Sports

page 10

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } SOCCER

On Tap: Meet Wawa United, Princeton’s newest group for sport and good vibes

By Chris Murphy associate sports editor

Princeton’s newest soccer team is venturing out beyond the Orange Bubble and breaking the mold of traditional sports teams on campus. And, it’s taking the University by storm with a 400 percent membership increase since its inception in September. With weekend trips across New Jersey, German ‘90s-inspired uniforms, and a membership that prides itself on community before contest, we had to hear more about what Wawa United FC is all about. The Daily Princetonian sat down with president, captain, and founder Jonny Hopcroft ’20, travel chair Coby Goldberg ’20, vice presidential candidate Jan Domingo ’20, and Matt Timo ’20 — who asked for his position to remain undisclosed — to talk more about the club’s origins, story, and “vibes”...

The Daily Princetonian: Ok, first question. Gotta ask before we go any further — so your name is Wawa United. Now where did you get that name from and what inspired it?

Coby Goldberg: Well I think it is funny because we didn’t actually come up with the name ourselves.

We got it from the store Wawa. You know, they have a branch here on campus.

Great food, great times there — you know we all actually have specific orders at Wawa now. Mine is this panini with tomato, chipotle pesto, lettuce, on bread with two cheeses. Jonny likes his with one cheese.

You know, there are more than 80 locations across New Jersey, and so we actually named it in homage to a place where we eat food.

DP: Are you formally sponsored by Wawa?

Matt Timo: Yeah, Xerxes Libsch ’20 [the team’s Wawa Outreach Chair] is actually in talks with Wawa right now, trying to get [us] officially recognized.

Jan Domingo: It’s a process, you know?

DP: Ok, before we get into all of that, tell me how Wawa United came to be.

Jonny, you were the founder, so tell me how you came up with this idea and how you put it all together.

Jonny Hopcroft: So this idea started coming together last September when I was rejected from club soccer. Now I’m not a very good soccer player — and neither are many of the members of Wawa United — yet we still had a passion for playing soccer. So it was around March when an intramural team formerly known as Glimpse FC (named after our friend Ryan Gruss ’18 and his startup) lost the Campus Rec Open A Indoor Soccer Championship Semifinal. So we told ourselves — well, I said to Ben Clarke ’20 at the time — that we should try to set up a soccer team like they have back home (in England).

For a while we forgot about it. Then, over the summer

when I had no job, I would spend several hours a day constructing Wawa United.

DP: Go through that process with me. What exactly was involved in “constructing” Wawa United?

JH: So it involved finding a league to join, finding teams to play, finding referees, getting the kits together, finding members to join. Initially it was only about seven of us [and] now I think we’re up to 35 active members in the group chat.

The growth’s been pretty exponential. What else did it involve...

CG: It involved a lot of heart. Especially with getting people to commit to playing and who were willing to basically pay a fee to enter the team because you needed to pay for league dues, kits, and all that. So you had those initial people that were very committed to joining the team with Jonny and then it was about finding other people willing to commit to joining this random thing on Sundays. It is hard sometimes finding people to commit.

JH: You know, the hardest part was ... getting through Princeton athletics.

JD: Yeah, so on that note, it took a long time dealing with the administration, trying to get a field and funding, which we got neither of. And that’s kind of the thing, we had to take it upon ourselves to find a pitch that we could play on.

That was a huge deal which certainly took a lot of time in the creation process.

CM: So now that you are all settled after dealing with athletics — which for many club teams can be a challenge sometimes — where do you guys play and practice? And for practice are there set times, or

Tweet of the Day “Celebration Idea: Everyone eats delicious hoagies!”

Wawa (@Wawa)

do you just kind of use the field when no one else is using it?

JH: So for practices we’ll usually just climb onto Roberts Stadium; it’s a nice stadium and everyone knows where it is. But for matches, we actually rent a field about 20 minutes away in Belle Mead.

It’s called Mill Pond Soccer Complex Field Number 6, in case anyone is interested and wants to come watch a game. It’s a beautiful field and we’re very attached to it now. And you know it’s great that we found that field and for so cheap because there was a moment in the second week of September when we weren’t allowed to use the open fields on campus and were going to have to forfeit our entire season. But fortunately we were able to make a deal with the Montgomery Town Council to rent Mill Pond Soccer Complex Field Number 6.

CG: To clarify, the reason why they didn’t want to have the field on campus was because they didn’t want adults coming onto campus. There was never a chance they were going to let us play there because they were non-collegiate games.

DP: So essentially you play in a men’s league?

JH: Yeah, so we play in a “beer league” as it’s called here, I think.

DP: Did you say “B league”?

JH: No, beer league.

CG: It’s essentially the B league of the beer league.

It’s actually the B League South.

MT: It’s officially recognized as the Garden State Soccer League B South Division.

DP: And the teams that

you play — are they mostly from the area? Are they from all over New Jersey?

MT: We face a wide range of teams and a wide range of talent. A wide range of backgrounds.

JH: Yeah we face a wide range of talent and age as well. We’ve played 50 year olds and 30 year olds, pretty wide range.

MT: I once saw an 8-yearold on the pitch.

JH: So yeah, for example, over fall break we had a game at the Jersey Shore.

So, as a team we all went to Seaside Heights and spent two nights before the game.

Unfortunately we had to forfeit that game because one of our players (Ben Clarke) pulled his groin the night before. But that trip kind of represents the geographic diversity that we’ll play during the season.

DP: So you’ve talked a bit about the various teams you play, and you mentioned the various skill levels of players coming to play for Wawa United. Talk to me a little about how that growth has been as a team. I’m sure most of your players came in with some soccer experience but not much, so from the time you started the team until now, how has that player transformation been?

MT: Yeah, so one thing you have to realize first is that’s it’s a brotherhood before a competitive team.

And that’s one thing that everyone on the team loves so much about it.

JD: So it started out with Jonny, who has friends, and him choosing those friends that he thought would enjoy playing soccer for fun.

He wanted them to have a passion for soccer and of course good vibes. And it turned out to be a really

nice team. Basically, we put that above soccer-playing abilities. You basically just have to have a passion for it and have fun, you know, be a fun person to be around and have a good time with it.

MT: Large emphasis on the idea of community here at Wawa United, you know how well you get along with the team before how well you can kick the ball into the net.

CG: But definitely most of the people on it are people that wish they can play some kind of competitive soccer more regularly.

MT: We are definitely looking to try to find the optimal balance between friendship and athletic ability.

JH: I think the great thing about it is that each year, there are tens and tens of people who do not play club soccer or are rejected from it. About 80-100 people try out each year and only about 20 make it, so that leaves 60 people looking to find a way to play soccer. And those people really find a home in Wawa.

CG: Also, though, it isn’t just people interested in club soccer. Actually, Jonny is the only one at this table who tried out for club soccer.

MT: We are actually going to try to have a charity game with club soccer at one point — it hasn’t been scheduled yet — to see how we actually do against those guys.

DP: So I do want to talk about the idea of community a little bit. Talk to me a bit about what you do off the pitch together. You talked about a trip to Seaside. What else are you doing when not playing socSee WAWA page 9

COURTESY OF JONNY HOPCROFT

Wawa United poses for a team photo at their home pitch — Mill Pond Soccer Complex Field Number 6.

Stat of the Day

1-201-707-9998 To get further information on joining Wawa United, reach out to Tom Salama ’20 using the number above.

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