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Tuesday december 8, 2015 vol. cxxxix no. 117
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Kennedy ’77 to speak at Baccalaureate By Paul Phillips and Ruby Shao news editors
Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy ’77 will be the speaker for the University’s 269th Baccalaureate Ceremony, the 2016 Class Council announced in an email Monday. “I see this email from the President’s office and I had no idea what it would be, and then when I opened it up and saw that it was this invitation to give the Baccalaureate address, I must say it really did bring tears to my eyes. I was deeply, deeply moved and I want very much to say something that is notewor-
thy for the occasion,” Kennedy said. “It was completely unexpected and I’ve never been more honored.” Class of 2016 class president Justin Ziegler ’16 explained that although the Class of 2016 makes the selection for the Class of 2016 Class Day speaker, for the Baccalaureate speaker the Class of 2016 just makes recommendations, and the president of the University makes the final decision. University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 was not available to comment before press time. See SPEAKER page 2
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Randall Kennedy ’77 will speak at the the Class of 2016’s Baccalaureate Ceremony on May 29.
BEYOND THE BUBBLE
U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S
Tilghman to join Harvard Corporation in January
Mudd launches student activist archive collection
By Zaynab Zaman
senior writer
senior writer
University President Emerita Shirley Tilghman will be joining the Harvard Corporation in January. The Harvard Corporation is the oldest corporate body in the United States, and is also known as the President and Fellows of Harvard College, according to the
corporation homepage. Tilghman will be replacing Harvard advisor James Rothenberg, who unexpectedly passed away in July. Though joining the Harvard Corporation Board is a significant commitment, Tilghman explained that her role at the University will not be altered. She will continue to teach, and will remain a fully committed full
time faculty member for the next few years, she said. Tilghman explained that one reason that she joined the Board is her commitment to public service. She noted that she had greatly benefited during her tenure as University president from the presence of former Ivy League presidents on the Board, such as former Brown president Ruth See TILGHMAN page 3
U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S
By Christina Vosbikian The University Archive is launching a program called Archiving Student Activism at Princeton, University Archivist and Curator of Public Policy Papers Dan Linke said. According to the Mudd Manuscript Library’s Digital Archivist Jarrett Drake, ASAP is meant to collect and preserve individual and organizational records created by the University students who engage in activism both on and off-campus on a broad range of issues and perspectives. The collection will take place in Frist Campus Center between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Thursday, and between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. at Mudd Library on Friday. Students will be able
to drop off their records at these times, Linke said. According to the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections website, archivists will be on site to acquire students’ records directly from any digital devices or paper records. The University Archives assures the confidentiality of records for up to 20 years. Drake explained that the idea for the initiative largely came from expressed student interest in 2014. A student had inquired in Dec. 2014 as to whether or not the Archives were documenting the student protests that had been occurring, such as the die-in. Drake said that this inquiry struck a chord with him and that he had then thought about what the Archive could See ARCHIVES page 3
U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S
Faculty discuss WeSpeak survey results at meeting staff writer
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The Butler Apartments will be demolished after long delays due to construction on the Lakeside Apartments.
U. to demolish Butler apartments graduate housing following delays By Maya Wesby staff writer
The permit for the demolition of Butler Apartments will be granted to the University by the Municipality of Princeton this week, allowing construction to begin, Director of Community and Regional Affairs Kristin Appelget said. She said the exact date of demolition will be determined as
soon as the permit is issued to the University and project managers in the Office of Design and Construction coordinate with their contractor. Graduate students moved out of Butler Apartments once construction for Lakeside Apartments finished in June. “We now have graduate students who are living in modern housing with access to conveniences that they didn’t have in
the Butler tract,” Appelget said. Christine Philippe-Blumauer GS, the former chair of the now-disbanded Butler Committee, which consisted of Butler residents that voiced concerns about the building’s maintenance, said that she will be sad to see the site torn down but believes that the step is necessary. Butler fostered a sense of community and had affordable See BUTLER page 5
The faculty voted in favor of revisions to rules regarding the faculty who are in consensual relationships with students during its meeting on Monday. Dean of the Faculty Deborah Prentice presented revisions to the rules and procedures of faculty in “Rights, Rules, Responsibilities” that pertain to consensual relationships with students. She said the Faculty Advisory Committee on Policy undertook such revisions under the recommendation of the Faculty Student Advisory Committee to clarify policies on sexual misconduct. Prentice also noted changes related to sex discrimination and sexual misconduct “to streamline processes for adjudicating the cases of sexual misconduct.” Both changes were approved by the faculty.
In Opinion
Today on Campus
Columnist Azza Cohen discusses erasing Woodrow Wilson’s name, and columnist Max Grear writes an open letter to the Open Campus Coalition. PAGE 6
4:30 p.m.: Spanish and Portuguese professor Rachel Price and history professor Adrian Lopez Denis will discuss the Cuban Revolution in a panel moderated by Wilson School professor Stanley Katz. 016 Robertson Hall.
English professor Deborah Nord from the Faculty Student Advisory Committee discussed the results of the WeSpeak sexual misconduct survey. Nord noted that when the faculty met last September to vote on new processes for adjudication of sexual misconduct, she was asked to report back the following year with specific concerns and issues to address. She said that the survey results show an increase in the number of reported sexual misconduct cases than previous years, and explained that the new processes and procedures are making people feel more comfortable coming forward. She also noted that as a result of the new procedures, there were more appeals on sexual misconduct cases than usual this year. She highlighted some statistics from the survey, which See FACULTY page 4
WEATHER
By Caroline Lippman
HIGH
49˚
LOW
31˚
Mainly sunny. chance of rain: none
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Tuesday december 8, 2015
Kennedy ’77: independent work at U. honed writing ability, persistence SPEAKER Continued from page 1
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Previous Baccalaureate speakers have included Lisa Jackson GS ’86 in 2015, Chris Lu ’88 in 2014 and Ben Bernanke in 2013. Ziegler explained that the 2016 class council obtained its recommendations by sending out an email out to the Class of 2016 asking for suggestions. They then presented the results to the University by ranking them in order of how many
“I think Baccalaureate is a wonderful event that serves a really important part in our graduation.” Justin Ziegler ’16,
2016 class president
nominations there were per person, highlighting the nominees they thought were particularly suited for the position. “I think Baccalaureate is a wonderful event that serves a really important part in our graduation,” Ziegler said. Kennedy noted that his connection to the University is a very important part of his life. Not only did he receive a bachelor’s degree and serve twice as a University trustee, but he also has siblings, nieces and nephews who have attended the University. He added that he has stayed in close touch with his classmates and teachers.
Kennedy was born in Columbia, S.C., and graduated from the University with a degree in history. He was also a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. After graduation, he served as a clerk for Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Thurgood Marshall, the first African American justice to serve on the Supreme Court. Kennedy currently teaches courses on criminal law, contracts and race relations at Harvard Law. Kennedy noted that even compared to Harvard and Yale, the University is quite special as a research institution that gives undergraduates unparalleled access to the professors. He described the University as a bit smaller and more intimate, praising the formalized ethos in which even the most distinguished professors at the University teach undergraduates. He said the greatest aspect of the University is its human capital. “I am deeply grateful for having had the opportunity to listen to lectures, to talk with people, who over the course of decades have meant a lot to me,” he said. He said he remembers many of his teachers very clearly, and that as an academic, he applies much of what he learned at the University to his daily work. “When I was an undergraduate there, I must say I would go see professors — even the most big-shot professor,” he said. “I didn’t think there was anything weird about it. I wasn’t intimidated by it. It was just there … There’s a particular emphasis on undergraduates having accessibility to all of the riches of the university.” When asked about professional accomplishments that make
him proud, Kennedy said he has been lucky enough to write several books. They include “Race, Crime, and the Law,” which won the Robert F. Kennedy book award in 1980. He also wrote “For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law,” which discusses the benefits of affirmative action. “I especially like it when I’ve written a book that people put to practical use — for somebody to say ‘Thank you for your book, I was having a real problem and your book helped me with my problem,’ ” he said. He said his independent work at the University honed his ability for sustained writing, which
“I was deeply, deeply moved and I want very much to say something that is noteworthy for the occasion.” Randall Kennedy ’77,
involves the writing and rewriting of a substantial work. “I have Princeton to thank for teaching certain skills and inculcating certain habits, one of the most important of which is sheer persistence: sitting down and getting something down, day by day by day, a little bit here, a little bit there, and then one day you turn around and you’ve done it,” he said. The Baccalaureate Ceremony will take place on May 29 in the University Chapel.
Tuesday december 8, 2015
Tilghman’s role at U. will not be altered TILGHMAN Continued from page 1
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Simmons. “I know how valuable it is to have a former University president serving on the Board who can often represent the idiosyncrasies of higher education to other members of the Board,” Tilghman said. Harvard President and senior Board member Drew Faust did not respond to a request for comment. Tilghman added that though there will be many opportunities to be helpful as a Board member, her first role is to listen and learn. She will be paying particular attention to how Harvard and its president are thinking about the future, she said. “Although I have served as an advisor to Harvard for many years in the past in various capacities, it’s very different when you serve as a member of their corporation,” Tilghman explained. The selection process began as a conversation between the current members of the corporation, who then made a recommendation to the separate Board of
The Daily Princetonian
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COMMUNITIES OF LIGHT
Overseers, she said. The Board of Overseers is a larger group of advisors at Harvard, who then must vote on the final recommendation for a new Corporation Board member. Out of the thirteen-member board, only Tilghman and former Wilson School professor Nannerl Keohane are not Harvard alums. When asked if this fact was significant, Tilghman replied that her experience as an Ivy League president likely carried the most weight. Keohane did not respond to a request for comment. In addition, Tilghman said that because she is a scientist she can be helpful regarding one of the major parts of the University’s academic mission. She can contribute not only to affairs concerning the prestigious Harvard Medical School, Tilghman noted, but also regarding the various other science matters on the Cambridge campus. Tilghman does have ties to Harvard University, having recently overseen a comprehensive review of Harvard life sciences. She also was awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard in 2004.
Student interest in 2014 spurred archive creation ARCHIVES Continued from page 1
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and should do to ensure it captures contemporary student experiences at the University. He added that an integral piece for finally being able to move forward with the initiative was the hiring of Assistant University Archivist for Technical Services Alexis Antracoli in July, whose very role is conducive to organizing collections like ASAP. The initiative’s present launch-date, Drake said, is directly related to the timeliness and pertinence of collecting records of student activism in light of recent protests. He explained that once the sit-in was happening and so much content was being produced and distributed around it, the need for a collection of this moment in history as well as others in the University’s past seemed immediate. “At this time last month, I didn’t think we’d be doing a new initiative,” Drake said. “It was that Thursday morning, I remember I met with Alexis and Dan and said ‘We have to do something.’ ” Drake explained that, while paper records need only a light source to be readable, digital files are, in many aspects, much more fragile as constant technological innovation may render certain files unreadable if the technology needed to read them becomes outdated or obsolete. Linke noted that in the 1990s the Archive used to email student organizations asking them to submit their records from the preceding year. “Obviously that wasn’t a very productive way of collecting things. We didn’t have a high yield,” Linke said. He said that the Archive wanted to come up with a better way to collect records of the student experience, especially in today’s digi-
tal age where most students are making digital records like pictures and videos via smartphones or other devices. Linke explained that, beyond the current ASAP initiative, the Archive wants to pursue ideas such as making some kind of website or portal where students can submit records that can be added to the Archive’s collections. “We just feel like we’re at a moment in history, with all that’s happened on campus in the last few weeks, that we need to capture all of this,” Linke said. “Let’s not limit this collection to what has been in the national news, let’s open it to all the groups that are out there. I’m excited to see how this is going to go. I hope we have the problem of too many student groups coming.” Antracoli noted that, in the historical subject files, there is already a file on student demonstrations going back to 1746. According to Linke and Antracoli, the presentation of newly collected records from ASAP will still largely be determined by the nature of the records themselves and is impossible to concretely predict. Antracoli explained that an important decision the Archive will have to make is the name of this collection. Since this collection will be from an array of individuals instead of a single organization, it will likely be grouped by subject instead of becoming a separate collection for a specific organization, he added. “I think this is a real opportunity for students and stories of students who typically don’t appear in an institutional archive to make sure that their voices are included,” Antracoli said. “We want a full picture of this community and of every student in this community and we want them to feel included in this space and to have their stories and their Princeton experiences documented and told for future generations.”
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Students lined Prospect Avenue with candles to commemorate victims of sexual and domestic violence.
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Tuesday december 8, 2015
Faculty approves policy change regarding consensual relationships with students FACULTY Continued from page 1
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shows that one-fifth of the student respondents experienced inappropriate sexual behavior, one in eight experienced inappropriate sexual contacts and one in nine experienced unwanted sexual activity, including rape. Furthermore, the results found that women were three and a half times more likely to experience inappropriate sexual behavior than men, and students who identified as LGBT were twice more likely to experience inappropriate sexual behavior than their heterosexual counterparts. In addition, 70 percent of the students who had been assaulted reported that their assaulter had been using drugs or alcohol, or both. Seventy-five percent of students who had been assaulted had themselves been using drugs or alcohol, Nord noted. “The committee this year is focusing on remedies; we are grateful for any suggestions or recommendations of what actually can be taken
to change the status quo on campus around sexual misconduct,” Nord said. Nord noted the difficulty of addressing the problem of sexual misconduct and emphasized that it is a University-wide effort. She noted
“I think it is something that has to be a matter of urgent concern for faculty, and it’s something that will require a real culture change on the ground.” University President Christopher Eisgruber’83
programs, such as free buses to help students get back to their dorms safely and a newly-initiated bystander program, are currently in place. “I think it is something that has to be a matter of urgent concern for faculty, and it’s something that will re-
quire a real culture change on the ground,” University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 said. He explained that it is a very serious problem affecting a disturbingly large number of our students. “Good work has been done to this point, but none of us should think that work is over,” he added. Dean of the College Jill Dolan proposed curriculum changes in the American Studies, Art and Archaeology, Classics, Evolutionary and Ecological Biology, African American Studies, Classics and East Asian Studies departments. The proposed changes were approved by the faculty. The meeting also included a memorial resolution from history professor William Jordan in recognition of Charles Gillispie, the emeritus Dayton-Stockton Professor of History of Science who died on Oct. 6. Scheide Professor of Music History Scott Burnham also delivered a memorial resolution of professor emeritus of music James Randall who passed away on May 28.
SUNNY HE :: STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The faculty discussed faculty-student relationships and the WeSpeak survey in a meeting in Nassau Hall on Monday afternoon.
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Tuesday december 8, 2015
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Butler apartments demolition process has been in place since summer BUTLER
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rent, she said. “You’d walk around the streets and there would be kids, there would be dogs, there would be a lot of [grad students] that we knew … so it was a nice little suburban place to live in,” noted Alexander Berg GS. In September of 2014, Berg wrote a column in The Daily Princetonian criticizing the administration’s handling of graduate housing. He added, however, that the facilities were in a constant state of disrepair, while Philippe-Blumauer said that the Butler housing had poor insulation and defunct heating systems. Appelget explained that the Butler tract was installed in 1947 as a means of temporary housing for students coming back from military service in World War II, and until the
spring of 2015 it was used for graduate student housing. The demolition process has been in place since this past summer, when utilities such as refrigerators, washers and dryers were donated to area nonprofits, and hazardous materials like asbestos were removed. Appelget said that the demolition of the buildings would last for several weeks, and afterwards grass would be planted to fill in the spots where the apartments once stood. The delay of the opening for Lakeside Apartments caused tension between University administrators and graduate students. There were complaints of living conditions and overcrowding, as those students who were assigned to move into Lakeside had to move into Butler to accommodate the delay. In 2013, graduate students petitioned against the demolition of Butler, citing its affordability and capacity to hold a large number of students. Closing
Butler would then be “imprudent, unnecessary and ignores the needs of graduate students with limited income, with pets or with partners and/or children,” the petition read at the time. Andrew Edwards, a co-sponsor in the petition to keep Butler, did not respond to a request for comment. For now, it is uncertain what will become of the land from Butler Apartments, Appelget said. “There are no immediate plans to redevelop the site … it’s most likely to [become] faculty and staff housing, [and] possibly grad students,” Appelget noted, adding that such a decision will ultimately be made by University trustees. Because Butler Apartments were meant to be temporary, their demolition was inevitable, according to PhilippeBlumauer. However, she added that the complex still holds a great amount of historical sig-
nificance. An open house was held during Reunions so that people could visit the site, according to a 2014 ‘Prince’ article. “There is a nostalgia around Butler,” Philippe-Blumauer said. “It was one of the first places to acknowledge the reality that grad students have families.” Philippe-Blumauer and Berg said that the new site for graduate student housing, Lakeside Apartments, provides students with a positive and community-building environment and has generally been a nice place to live, yet it too comes with problems. “There are still some complaints that people have. A lot of the units seem kind of unfinished,” Berg said. “Some blank spaces on the walls of the kitchen where cabinets were obviously supposed to go but they obviously ran out of time in a rush to finish it.” He added that students have
also been complaining about a lack of hot water. “But, in general, people are really happy with Lakeside,” he said. Philippe-Blumauer pointed out the high difference in rent cost when moving from Butler to Lakeside. While the University provided financial assistance to graduate students with families or those who cannot work, others simply had to cope with the cost. “Going forward, I believe that [students with families or students with disabilities] will always be taken care of, but obviously when the price goes up that much it affects the entire student population,” PhilippeBlumauer said. “I think it’s good to have graduate housing, I think it’s still appalling that it’s that expensive — but Princeton is generally very expensive.” James Poole, manager of Graduate Housing, declined to comment.
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When we erase his name
The Lesser of Two Evils
columnist
A
Azza Cohen is a history major from Highland Park, Ill. She can be reached at accohen@ princeton.edu.
page 6
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }
Azza Cohen
s some Princeton students have called for the changing of the name of the Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs and Wilson college, others have argued that this would be an erasure. They have argued that in changing the name we would forget all the good Woodrow Wilson did, or forget that every legacy (especially his) is complicated. Frankly, I am worried that we would forget him altogether. When we erase his name, students in United States history courses across the nation would read: “After serving as the President of Princeton University as well as the 34th Governor of New Jersey, _____________________ was the 28th President of the United States.” When they have to memorize the names of all the presidents, students would awkwardly pause between Taft and Harding. They would raise their hands and ask, “Wait, who came in between 27 and 29 as President?” Their teachers would be forced to respond, “Honestly, I can’t tell you. I forgot.” Students would never learn about how America entered World War I or the League of Nations. We would never learn about how Wilson’s Sedition Act enabled the jailing of citizens who dissented from American involvement in the war. We would never learn about the Federal Reserve System, or his policies of radically encouraging self-determination in the Philippines, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Students reading about the winners of the Nobel Prize might try to click on the list of Americans who have won it, but the URL to his page on nobelprize.org would be broken. Visitors to his Presidential Library might be confused about the white paint eclipsing his name on the dark blue welcome sign. They might ask, “So which President’s library is this?” The ticket checker wouldn’t know: “I think… maybe it was Thomas Jefferson? But actually I don’t know. It is kind of weird that the sign was just painted over like that.” This type of forgetting would inevitably happen here at Princeton. A senior investigating her history thesis on the formation of the precept system would see whiteout on an old document describing “__________ College.” She might read correspondence between students who informally called their major “Woody Woo.” She would try to find out from her advisor exactly what subject this was. The chair of the history department would furrow his brow and reply, “Students back in 2015 had nicknames for a lot of buildings, and it is my hypothesis that it is a misspelling of the last name of Gordon Wu ’58.” When we say students are calling to ‘erase’ his name, we are missing the point. What we hold here is an opportunity, not to erase someone’s name from the tablet of history, but to complicate it. To affix Wilson’s name within a deeply disturbing spider web of other racists who ran our country, and to boldly say, “We no longer stand for what he stood for.” Students in history courses, from high school classrooms across the nation to the harrowed halls of Robertson, will certainly continue to learn about Woodrow Wilson. Here, we at Princeton have the incredible chance to make a justified statement not about who we remember, but why and how. Wilson took one good look at his new home in the town of Washington, and authorized members of his cabinet to reverse the long-standing policy of integration in the federal civil service. When his policy of segregation was addressed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, he wrote, “The white people of the country as well as I, wish to see colored people progress, and admire the progress they have already made, and want to see them continue along independent lines … The only harm that will come will be if you case them to think it is a humiliation.” When we erase his name, we do not erase Woodrow Wilson. Instead of seeing this gesture as the glass half-empty, why not see the glass half-full? Instead of erasure, this is opportunity. Instead of erasure, this is rewriting. Instead of erasure, this is creation. This is Princeton: we have many alumni who have changed public policy with more inclusive legacies. Queen Noor ’73 or Sonia Sotomayor ’76 would be on my list. History is not a blackboard, but a stone tablet: all the truths of war, nation building, blood, virulence, oppression, succession and love are forever inscribed. No one, especially a white man who was the President of the United States, will be truly erased from history. Changing the name is not an erasure, but a balancing — it is taking away one victory from White Supremacy and adding one to Justice.
Opinion
Tuesday december 8, 2015
Iris Samuels columnist
T
he Black Justice League is demanding to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from campus institutions, and in doing so they are asking for a divisive legacy to be reconsidered. I believe this is a crucial issue — today’s Princeton is an institution that prides itself on bringing together people from all walks of life and all backgrounds. However, I argue that there are more pressing sources of divisiveness than Wilson’s name in the University. Wilson’s woes were relevant to the Princeton of 19021910 when he governed the University. Before we travel more than 100 years back in time, I believe we should be fixing the Princeton we live in today. I am going to say something that some consider an obvious truth, and others blasphemous slander: eating clubs are divisive institutions, and one of the biggest problems in today’s Princeton. Some will be angered by the comparison between Wilson’s bigotry and racism and today’s eating clubs. On paper, the eating clubs provide a welcoming social structure for Princeton’s students. But this is on paper only. Ivy, the first of the eating clubs, was founded in 1879, almost thirty years before Wilson became the University’s president, when the University was still just a country club for rich white boys. Historically, Ivy was a symbol of elitism and segregation. Ivy began admitting women in 1991, 22 years after the University began admitting women, and only after being forced to do so through a lawsuit. Today, Ivy’s bicker system supposedly does not discriminate on the basis of gender or race. Yet, the fees required to be a part of Ivy create a different
kind of division: one of socioeconomic class. But even those who don’t fit in at Ivy might try to fit in at some of the Street’s more inclusive options, namely the non-bicker clubs. However, these too are part of a system of divisiveness. There are those who belong and those who do not, and what makes a person belong is the ability to pay thousands of dollars a year to buy one’s way into the social structure. To those who argue that Wilson’s racism has nothing to do with the eating clubs’ inherent elitism, I say that fighting these divisions is in fact very similar to the Black Justice League’s fight: a struggle for a Princeton experience that is equal for all its students, regardless of race or socioeconomic standing. I believe that just as today we look back at Princeton’s racial and gender-based discrimination as a calamity, the Princeton of the future will look back at the eating clubs and recognize them for the social divisionism that they perpetrate. Instead of dancing around the issue for a few more years, we should be addressing this today. A truly inclusive campus will be one that accepts all students, no matter the color of their skin or the size of their parents’ bank accounts. I do want to recognize that in recent decades Princeton has made significant and wonderful strides towards promoting equality on its campus. However, it has a ways to go, and I think that going forward, we should be addressing the most pressing issues. Without a doubt, creating a substantial alternative to the eating clubs on campus is a far more pressing issue than renaming a few buildings. Iris Samuels is a freshman from Zichron Yakov, Israel. She can be reached at isamuels@princeton. edu.
we’re all in this together Tashi Treadway ’19 ..................................................
vol. cxxxix
Anna Mazarakis ’16 editor-in-chief
Matteo Kruijssen ’16 business manager
139th managing board news editors Paul Phillips ’16 Ruby Shao ’17 opinion editor Benjamin Dinovelli ’16 sports editor Miles Hinson’17 street editor Lin King ’16 photography editors Natalia Chen ’18 Sewheat Haile ’17 video editors Leora Haber ’16 chief copy editors Caroline Congdon ’17 Joyce Lee ’17 design editors Austin Lee’16 Julia Johnstone’16 prox editor Rebekah Shoemake ’17 intersections editor Jarron McAllister ’16 associate news editor Do-Hyeong Myeong ’17 associate opinion editors Jason Choe ’17 Shruthi Deivasigmani’16 associate sports editors Sydney Mandelbaum ’17 Tom Pham ’17 associate street editors Harrison Blackman ’17 Jennifer Shyue ’17 associate photo editors Gabriella Chu ’18 Grace Jeon ’17 associate chief copy editors Chamsi Hssaine ’16 Alexander Schindele-Murayama ’16 editorial board chair Jeffrey Leibenhaut ’16 Cartoons Editor Terry O’Shea ’16
NIGHT STAFF 12.7.15 staff copy editors Noah Hastings ’19 Caroline Lippman ’19 Daphne Mandell 19’ Hannah Waxman ’19 News Caroline Lippman ’19 Shuang Teng ’19
Open Letter to the Open Campus Coalition Max Grear
columnist
B
y now, the dust has already cleared on the widespread backlash against the Black Justice League’s (BJL) sit-in. Now that it’s been a few weeks since the protest, I imagine Yik Yak has probably gone back to poop talk. At the time, the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC) capitalized on this backlash, forming quickly in reaction against the protest and the BJL’s demands and dedicating itself to “protecting diversity of thought and the right of all students to advance their academic and personal convictions in a manner free from intimidation.” But while the worst of the antiBJL storm may be over, it seems that the POCC is here to stay. Given that the POCC met with University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 just last week, it’s worth rebutting the organization’s claims about the BJL’s protest and demands as potential threats to academic freedom at Princeton. The POCC’s opposition to the BJL consists both of more specific disagreements with the BJL’s demands and the more general claim that the tone of the BJL and its supporters during and after the protest has intimidated students and has obstructed constructive dialogue on matters of race. The POCC’s tenuous arguments against the BJL’s demands are worthy of critique (see, for example, Joshua Leifer’s takedown of the case against a new distribution requirement on the history of marginalized peoples). However, the POCC’s claims that students are being “intimidated or bullied into silence” are
particularly egregious. These claims are ironic given that one member, Evan Draim ’16, actually admitted in an interview that the group intended to “give a voice to the silent majority.” This comment leads one to wonder how a small group of students is able to exert enough social pressure to silence a “majority” of the student body. According to the POCC, this social pressure consists largely of accusations of racism leveled by BJL members and sympathizers against critics. I have heard about a couple of troubling experiences from black students who have told me about feeling uncomfortable or even unsafe voicing their issues with the BJL around friends who protested. Despite these isolated instances, however, the POCC’s platform inevitably serves mainly to police the tone of a small group of black students personally affected by structural anti-black racism and prioritize the comfort of non-black students who are afraid of being called the “R-word.” Considering the way the POCC has characterized the BJL’s protest as threatening to constructive dialogue on race, it’s interesting to reflect on the degree to which this protest has sparked conversation throughout the campus community. Just through personal interactions, I noticed that for a brief time, race became a topic of discussion for students who were normally reluctant to comment on issues of race on campus at all. However, I have to agree with the POCC’s suggestion that the sit-in has generated, for the most part, largely negative dialogue within the larger University community — but for entirely different reasons. The negative, unconstructive dia-
logue that emerged after the protest was dominated not by sympathizers for the BJL but by its opponents. This kind of dialogue ranged from a run of dismissive and condescending op-eds from alumni and students, to hateful Yik Yak posts, to oblivious comments like a POCC member’s statement that “I have yet to hear a specific anecdote when Princeton as a [current] institution has acted in a racist manner.” (Just through talking to students of color, these anecdotes aren’t hard to find, but Brittney Winters’ ’09 experience of being repeatedly harassed by Public Safety is just one.) Even the creators of a survey who purportedly aimed to “make statements of fact based on the data” without pushing “any biased opinions” presented the results in implicitly anti-BJL terms. Rather than directly quoting the BJL’s three demands, Daniel Wilson ’18 and Joshua Tam ’18 paraphrased the demands in loaded language: they characterize the BJL’s emphasis for renaming as a “purge” and place the term cultural competency in quotations. Although the BJL does not (and does not claim to) represent the entire black community on campus, the immediate backlash against their protest is indicative of a pattern among our student body, administration and group of alumni, which are largely unresponsive to the concerns of black students. This University community as a whole, and not the BJL itself, is responsible for the failure of our community to address issues of race and racism in a meaningful way. Max Grear is a sophomore from Wakefield, R.I. He can be reached at mgrear@princeton.edu.
The Daily Princetonian
Tuesday december 8, 2015
page 7
Women continue to dominate on the court SQUASH
Continued from page 8
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fashion. The men opened the weekend with a strong victory over Williams, 8-1. Led by three freshmen at the top of the list, Cody Cortes, Clark Doyle and Spencer Anton all won their matches in dominant fashion. Cortes was the only person to drop a game of the three, before clinching the match by a score of 11-2 in the fourth for his first collegiate win. The Tigers as a whole only dropped five total games in the match. Later on Saturday, the men’s team faced third-ranked Saint Lawrence, last year’s College Squash Association finalist. Junior Vivek Dinodia, sophomore Abhimanyu Shah and freshman William Oon accounted for all three Tiger victories in this match at the seven, eight and nine spots, respectively. Senior Michael LeBlanc lost his match in five games after leading 2-1 in games. Every other match, with the exception of Cortes’s match, was lost by a score of 3-1. The women’s team continued its 2015-2016 season domination with two 9-0 victories over Williams and Saint Lawrence. Williams was ranked 12th in the nation while Saint Lawrence was ranked
20th. One of the highlights of the two matches included freshman Samantha Chai winning her first two collegiate matches of the year at the number nine spot against Williams and the number five spot against Saint Lawrence. Chai only lost seven points in the first match. Additionally, freshman Kate Feeley only lost two points in her match against Saint Lawrence at the number six spot. The women did not drop a single game against either of the two teams and have now won 108 of the 112 games that they have played this season. On Sunday, the women’s team did not play while the men faced off against fourth-ranked Rochester. While the top six players were only able to muster two games, the bottom of the ladder once again proved to be a handful. Shah had the lone victory for the Tigers, winning his match 11-2, 11-6, 11-8 at the number eight spot. Dinodia and Oon both lost the first two games of their matches before storming back to tie at two games apiece. They lost their fifth sets 11-8 and 12-10 respectively. Both the women’s and men’s teams do not have any more matches before winter break. When they return, the two teams begin Ivy League play against Dartmouth and Harvard.
JAMES SUN :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
This weekend, the women’s squash team crushed Williams and Saint Lawrence, staying undefeated.
Tigers drop tough game Fencing looks to continue momentum FENCING against Stony Brook, look ahead to next week Continued from page 8
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BBALL
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and would come only as close as 7. On the game, the high scorers for the Tigers were Caruso and freshman guard Devin Cannady, each with 16. Cannady scored 16 off the bench on 4-9 of shooting, including three shots from behind the arc. Also having a decent game for the Tigers was Cook, who had 14 points, 3 boards, 4 assists and two steals in a well-rounded performance. For the Seawolves, however, their success came off the back of Warney, who stuffed
the stat sheet and put up a dominating 26 points on 11-14 shooting, 15 boards, 9 blocks and 5 assists on the game. Rayshawn McGrew also had a huge game in his own right, finishing with 18 points on 8-10 shooting along with 7 rebounds and 2 dimes. With Stony Brook behind them, the Tigers continue their journey on the road as they take on Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pa. on Tuesday night, which can be seen on the Atlantic 10 Video network, before traveling to Nashville, Tenn. to face off against Lipscomb University, which will be televised on ESPN3.com.
com Coaches Poll — while the women finished ranked third nationally. In the year-end tournament, both sides finished fourth in a field of 25. Additionally, Princeton’s teams had turned in very impressive performances in February’s National
Squad Championships: the women took first place in foil and saber as well as third in the épée while the men finished second in épée and saber. Princeton fencers will have some time before their next competition. On Jan. 30 both the men’s and women’s fencing teams will travel to Evanston, Ill. for the Northwestern Duals. While the men’s and women’s
team experienced success in the tournament’s 2015 iteration, both sides fell to highly-ranked Notre Dame teams whom they will face again in 2016. The Ivy League Round-Robin, this year hosted by Cornell, will fall on the following week. The two day event will start on Saturday, Feb. 6 and will be hosted in Ithaca, N.Y.
Sports
Tuesday december 8, 2015
page 8
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } MEN’S BASKETBALL
Tigers fall to Warney, Stony Brook over weekend By Miles Hinson sports editor
After getting off to as strong of a start as they had seen in a long time, the men’s basketball team was dealt its first loss of the season this past Saturday, falling on the road 77-91 to the Stony Brook Seawolves and star forward Jameel Warney, the reigning back-to-back American East Player of the Year. The Tigers (4-1 overall), going 3-0 in their first homestand of the season, came into this weekend with reason to be confident, having dispatched of Stony Brook (4-2) 77-64 in the two teams’ only meeting of the 2014-2015 season. They were evenly matched throughout the opening stages of the first half, with the score at 2017 with just under 10 minutes to go. An 11-3 run in the subsequent 4 minutes, however, allowed the Seawolves to begin to break away. The Tigers’ inability to find the range was an issue throughout the first half (and indeed the entire night). They hit just 34 percent of their field goals through the first 20 minutes, compared to a scorching 73
percent from the Seawolves in the same time span. Despite their difficulties shooting-wise, the Tigers were able to keep the Seawolves on their toes due to the large number of turnovers from the home team. The Seawolves gave it up 9 times in the first compared to the Tigers’ 3 — indeed, a steal and slam by sophomore guard Amir Bell brought the Orange and Black within 5 at 35-30. Three straight buckets by Stony Brook, however, would leave the Tigers down 41-30 entering the locker rooms. In the beginning of the second, however, the Tigers came out roaring. Behind the play of junior guard Stephen Cook, junior guard Spencer Weisz, and junior forward Henry Caruso, the Tigers went on a 9-0 run to bring themselves within 2, at 41-39. The Seawolves, however, behind the strong offensive showing of Warney, responded with a 17-5 run to put themselves on top yet again. With 12 minutes to go, the Tigers would remain down by double digits for all but approximately 3 minutes of the remainder of the game, See BBALL page 7
MIKKEY CLARKE :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The Tigers (4-1) fell to Stony Brook and star forward Jameel Warney over the weekend, their first loss this season.
MEN’S AND WOMEN’S SQUASH
MEN’S AND WOMEN’S FENCING
Mixed success for men’s and women’s squash teams
Men’s and women’s fencing sweep opponents at Sacred Heart
By Chris Grubbs staff writer
The Princeton men’s and women’s squash teams were both active this past weekend as they closed out the year of 2015 with a combined five matches at home. The eighth-ranked men’s team (2-4)
entered the weekend with a 1-2 record, both losses previously having come to teams ranked in the top 10 in the nation. The women’s team (4-0) had played two matches coming into the weekend and still has yet to lose one of the 36 individual matches played this season. The men played two matches
on Saturday, starting with a dominant 8-1 victory over Williams before falling to St. Lawrence later that day. Additionally, the Tigers lost to Rochester the next day. The women (4-0) also played Williams and St. Lawrence on Saturday, winning both matches in quick See SQUASH page 7
FILE PHOTO
The men’s and women’s squash teams came out of the weekend with mixed results, now 2-4 and 4-0, respectively.
Tweet of the Day
By Andrew Steele senior writer
The men and women of Princeton fencing faced four teams this past weekend at Sacred Heart’s Tradition Tournament in Fairfield, Conn. They emerged victorious on all counts, with wins over Sacred Heart, NYU, Vassar and Penn State. This was the second tournament of the season for both the men’s and women’s teams, who had mixed results in the Penn Elite Invitational, with the men’s teams winning two and losing three, whilst the women’s team won four and lost two. Penn State managed to present the most substantial challenge for Princeton men and women. The lady Nittany Lions had a 6-3 edge in the épée while the men took a 6-3 win in the foil. These losses marked the only suffered by the Tigers in a given weapon. Despite the close competition, Princeton topped the State College fencers by scores 15-12 on the men’s side and 16-11 on the women’s. The Tigers’ matches against Vassar constituted the day’s most dominant performance. The men went a perfect 9-0 in both foil and saber bouts, amassing a final advantage of 26-1. Vassar’s women fared hardly better, with the Tigers going 9-0 in the Saber and earning a 24-3 decision. The Tigers also dominated
Stat of the Day
“It is so hard to type on a computer with fake nails 4 teams this is the biggest struggle I mess up almost every This weekend, the fencing team word” dominated, clawing past Sacred hannah winner (@ hannahisawinner), junior goalie, soccer
Heart, NYC, Vassar and Penn State.
against NYU too, with the men’s team winning 19-8, with an especially dominant 8-1 performance in the saber, despite tougher challenges in the épée, where the men’s team edged a 5-4 victory and the foil, which provided a 6-3 result for the team. The women’s team were even more dominant, cruising to a 21-6 victory, including a 9-0 sweep in the saber and 6-3 wins in both the épée and the foil. Hosts Sacred Heart did not fare much better against the Tigers’ clearly superior team, as the men’s team defeated Sacred Heart 19-8 behind dominating performances in the foil and saber events, whilst the women’s team won 20-7 behind comfortable victories in all three events. Although the Tigers still compete at the very top of the collegiate fencing world, they are now somewhat removed from the dominance they achieved as national champions in 2013. While Midwest powerhouses Ohio State and Notre Dame have remained significant obstacles, Ivy League competition has improved such that Penn and Columbia can regularly vie for the conference’s top spot. Before competing in last March’s NCAA Championship, the men had secured an No. 8 national ranking — according to the CollegeFencing360. See FENCING page 7
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