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Wednesday march 13, 2013 vol. cxxxvii no. 27
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U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S
Professors share experiences with Coursera
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By Lydia Lim
@princetonian
staff writer
Announcement The Daily Princetonian is publishing on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule during midterms week. Publication will resume on Friday.
In Opinion Antonia Hyman and Kosaluchi Mmegwa discuss the Honor Code, and Amada Sandoval discusses sexual assault. PAGE 10
The Archives
March 13, 1990 Senior Colin Lancaster ’90 seriously injures his leg after being dragged approximately 25 yards by a University proctor’s car.
On the Blog The opinion editors dialogue on the scheduling of midterms.
News & Notes Whitman ’77 supports same-sex marriage
meg whitman ‘77, the donor who was Whitman College’s namesake, became one of dozens of prominent Republicans who signed a legal brief in support of legalizing same-sex marriage in California last month. The document has been submitted to the Supreme Court in support of a suit challenging Proposition 8, a 2008 amendment to the California constitution outlawing same-sex marriage. The announcement represents a shift from Whitman’s earlier position. Whitman supported Proposition 8 in 2008 and continued to oppose same-sex marriage during her 2010 candidacy as the Republican nominee for governor of California. Whitman explained to The Los Angeles Times that her views on samesex marriage had changed after “careful review and reflection,” and that her revised view had been profoundly impacted by the facts and arguments presented throughout the legal process of the current court challenge. Whitman earned an economics degree with honors from the University. She rose to national prominence as president and chief executive officer of the online auction site eBay, a position she held from 1998 to 2007. She is currently the president and chief executive officer of information technology company HewlettPackard. While working at eBay, Whitman donated $30 million to the University to establish the residential college that bears her name.
news copy 3.13 for luke.indd 1
DANIELA COSIO :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Students finish papers and prepare for midterms in the Whitman College library Tuesday evening. STUDENT LIFE
Over 900 sign petition By Sohee Kim
Senior writer
An online petition seeking a new “Sexual Experiences Survey” has gathered over 900 signatures in the past two days. Director of the Princeton University Survey Research Center Edward Freeland said Tuesday that a potential new internal survey would not be necessary because the University is currently participating in a national study by the American College Health Association that will survey about 50 percent of University undergraduates on topics that include sexual assault. The annual National College Health Assessment has “tracked changes in health issues and trends”
since the year 2000 according to the ACHA’s website. Many of the questions on the survey concern sexual assault and harassment. “One of the benefits of that [survey] is that you get access to what your institution [looks] like relative to all the other institutions that are participating in the survey, even relative to the group of universities that is most like your institution,” Freeland said. An email sent to students last month on behalf of the ACHA noted that the survey contained “questions regarding behaviors such as illegal substance use, sexual behavior and mental health.” The University has participated in the survey for at least the past four
years. The results of these surveys, that include both males and females, showed that “1 in 8 students reported experiencing sexual assault, dating violence or stalking in a 12-month period,” according to University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua. It remains unclear whether the University will release this year’s Princeton-specific results once they become available. Citing RCA training conducted in September 2012 and the playbill of “The Way You Move” that was distributed to all freshmen during the first week of the fall semester, Mbugua said the figure was already shared with students. “The University actively seeks to See PROPOSITION page 3
Five University professors who taught online courses through the new online platform Coursera last fall discussed their experiences at the Council of the Princeton University Community meeting on Monday. Among these experiences were difficulties bringing University students and online students together, confronting active forum participation but single-digit exam completion rates, working around the limiting factors of an online interface to explain difficult concepts, designing computer-graded drills and experimenting with flipped lectures. Princeton was one of the original partners of Coursera, a for-profit online learning platform launched last April that has partnered with 62 universities around the world so far. “The sheer scale [of participation on Coursera] was astounding,” history professor Jeremy Adelman said. Adelman, who taught HIS 201: A History of the World since 1300 through Coursera while teaching the class to University students last fall, said his lectures have received 1 million views, 800,000 downloads and 400,000 posts on the class online forum. However, he explained he had difficulty bringing University students and students from the rest of the world into conversation with each other to show varying perspectives on a single issue, even though this had been one of his primary motivations in teaching the class through Coursera. Even though there were heated discussions on the online forum, participation by University students was “not as intense as we would have liked,” Adelman said. In the future, he said he plans to integrate discussion further into the classroom by, for example, making participation in the online forums a class requirement for University students. Adelman, who is also the director of the Council for International Teaching and Research, hosted a global precept during the fall that engaged Princeton students with Coursera students through a Google hangout that was also broadcasted through Coursera. Sociology professor Mitchell Duneier, who taught Introduction to Sociology through Coursera over the summer, and computer science senior lecturer Kevin Wayne, who taught COS 226: Algorithms both through Coursera and at the University this fall, deSee PLATFORM page 4
U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S
LOCAL NEWS
Honor Committee plans to hold focus groups
Town Board of Health to consider ordinance banning smoking on public property
By Anna Mazarakis
By Ella Cheng
staff writer
The Honor Committee will host a series of focus groups this spring to discuss the current disciplinary policy for students caught working over time during examinations, Honor Committee chair Antonia Hyman ’13 announced in an oped published Wednesday in The Daily Princetonian. The announcement followed an email sent Monday by the Committee to the student body reminding them of their collective responsibilities under the Honor Code. “Please pay attention to and abide by your professors’ policies about when examinations are finished,” the email read. “Working past time to gain points is unfair to classmates who stop when time is called.” Though Hyman did not reveal the number of students who have been accused or penalized for working over time, citing
student privacy, she said in an interview that the Committee made the decision in response to a noticeable trend on campus. “When I wrote the article, really I was addressing a larger trend which I think is appropriate to bring up,” she said. “Over the last three to four years, the committee has seen an increase in the number of reports that have to do with writing over time.” Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Victoria Jueds, who serves as the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students’ liaison to the Honor Committee, said she had not been involved in the decision to host focus groups and thus was unable to comment on the matter. Hyman explained that, unlike looking at a neighbor’s test, taking a few extra moments at the end of an exam is an unfair advantage that is not as easy to judge. “Time cases are very sensitive in general, and that’s what I was trying to allude at in the article,” Hyman said. “So we See RULES page 2
staff writer
The Princeton Board of Health will vote on a proposed ordinance to ban smoking within 35 feet of all municipally owned property, public parks and outdoor pools on March 19. If the ordinance is approved by a majority vote of the nine-member Board, first-time violators would be punished with a $250 fine. Princeton would be the first municipality in Mercer County to adopt such a policy, but the $250 fine is in line with a state statute, according to Health Department Officer David Henry. “This is not about getting revenue,” said Heather Howard, a Princeton Councilwoman who serves as the Council’s liaison to the Board of Health. “The goal is to create a smoke-free environ-
ment.” Howard, who is also a lecturer at the Wilson School, said she first suggested the ordinance to Henry in February. She added that she thought it would be approved unanimously. Because of the 35-foot condition in the ordinance, a designated smoking area at the old borough municipality building will be relocated, while the remote patio for smokers at the Princeton Municipal Complex will not be affected. Howard said she has received positive feedback from her colleagues and the public about the ordinance. Although no formal initiatives have been taken to gauge public support, the vote on March 19 will be open to the public, and an initial hearing on the ordinance in February was See LAW page 5
STUDENT LIFE
Thomson-DeVeaux ’13 receives Martin A. Dale ’53 Fellowship By Austin Lee staff writer
Flora Thomson-DeVeaux ’13 was awarded the Martin A. Dale ’53 Fellowship in late February to continue the research she began with her senior thesis on Argentinean butler Santiago Badariotti Merlo. The fellowship provides a senior with a grant of $30,000 to pursue an independent project after graduation. ThomsonDeVeaux, a Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures concentrator, will conduct “onthe-ground research” on Merlo in Brazil for her project entitled “The Universal History of Santiago Badariotti Merlo.”
FLORA THOMSONDEVEAUX ’13
Thomson-DeVeaux’s thesis attempts to construct a biography of Merlo, who lived in Brazil and worked over 60 years to compile a universal history of the aristocracy, which spanned a 6,000year time period and totaled over 25,000 pages. ThomsonDeVeaux’s thesis also examines this universal history and some of Merlo’s poetry.
Thomson-Deveaux will begin her research in Rio de Janeiro, visit various locations to track down individuals related to Merlo and then return once more to Rio. However, she predicts her plans will change as she finds new sources and information. “I expect to find plenty along the way that will change the trajectory of the trip, so I asked the Dale Committee’s lenience in giving me some flexibility,” Thomson-Deveaux said. “In just the last weeks of research in Rio, I went back to do more thesis research and I discovered Santiago [Merlo]’s niece, tracked her down, and when I got in touch with her, it turned out that she was in possession of the only copy of the
manuscript of his autobiography, which I didn’t know existed.” Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures Pedro Meira Monteiro, who taught Thomson-DeVeaux in two different courses and is now her thesis adviser, described her as a true scholar and a hardworking student who was always prepared for the next step throughout the thesis-writing process. “She always comes here with a lot of material, so it’s not that I need to remind her that she owes me something. Quite the contrary, I’m always trying to catch up with the velocity, the speedy way she produces her various drafts.” Monteiro said. “Usually this kind of thing is very rhe-
torical when we say she is a young scholar, but in her case, she really already is a scholar.” Thomson-DeVeaux said she first encountered Merlo in her freshman year, when she watched the documentary “Santiago” in a Brazilian cinema class. The following year, she took a course offered by the director of the documentary, Joao Moreira Salles, as part of the Humanities Council course titled “Shooting the Enemy in Non-Fiction Cinema.” Salles then invited ThomsonDeVeaux to come do research at the Moreira Salles Institute, which is located in the house where Merlo lived and worked. She accepted his offer since she See PROJECT page 5
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