Today's paper: Tuesday, Dec. 3

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Founded 1876 daily since 1892 online since 1998

Tuesday december 3, 2013 vol. cxxxvii no. 113

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LOCAL NEWS

STUDENT LIFE

Triangle Club accountant charged with embezzlement

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In Opinion Lea Trusty discusses the stigma surrounding mental health on campus, and Spencer Shen encourages us to vote in the USG election. PAGE 8

By Marcelo Rochabrun associate news editor

Today on Campus 7:30 p.m.: New York Times Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal will address ‘The Facts about Opinion.’ Whig Hall Senate Chamber.

The Archives

Dec. 3, 1929 Harvard men get revenge on bootleggers by aiding federal prohibition agents in liquor raid.

By the Numbers

4

The number of gas leaks at the University in the last two years.

On the Blog Harrison Blackman shares his list of movie soundtracks to listen to while studying.

News & Notes SCORE precept enrollment to be used for all courses this spring

students will be able to select all spring-semester precepts and lab sections directly in SCORE during course selection, University Registrar Polly Griffin announced in an email to the student body on Monday. This new enrollment system, which was piloted the past two semesters, will be instituted for all courses next semester. The new enrollment system is intended to more efficiently centralize student information, course evaluations, calendaring and other administrative functions, University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua told The Daily Princetonian in October. Blackboard, which was previously used to schedule precepts, will remain in use but will no longer handle section assignments. The SCORE enrollment system will update student schedules in real time and take schedule conf licts into consideration, which Blackboard did not do. “Our feedback from the pilot indicates that you will find the centralized enrollment function to be straightforward and friendly,” Griffin stated in the email. Course enrollment for the 2013-14 spring semester opens for seniors on Wednesday.

MONICA CHON :: PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Princeton Fire Department firefighters and Public Safety officers respond to a gas leak near McCosh Health Center on Monday morning. The leak lasted approximately two hours, starting at around 10 a.m.

McCarter Theatre General Manager Thomas Muza, who also worked as Princeton Triangle Club’s accountant, has been charged with embezzling over $100,000 from Triangle, the N.J. State Attorney General’s Office announced Monday. Muza was dismissed from his job with Triangle and suspended from his job at McCarter on Nov. 19 as a result of the investigation, the release said. He surrendered to state authorities last Wednesday and has

since been released pending a court appearance. The alleged thefts were first discovered by the law firm that regularly serves as counsel for Triangle, according to the release. Muza had worked for both McCarter and Triangle since 1993 and had even been featured in the magazine Esquire as one of 35 “Employees of the Month” in September 2012. “[Muza] gives more of himself than one can reasonably expect from anyone,” a quote next to a photo of Muza read. The short feaSee TRIANGLE page 4

ACADEMICS

Gas leak causes evacuation Faculty consider of 500 from 11 buildings Coursera alternative By Michael Granovetter During some routine excavation work occurring just south of McCosh Health Center on Monday morning, a backhoe struck a 2.5-inch high-pressure gas line, causing a rupture shortly before 10 a.m. The resulting gas leak caused about 500 people in 11 buildings in central campus to evacuate for almost three hours. The excavation work was part of an ongoing landscaping project in progress just south of the health center. The workers were using a map marked by the New Jersey public utilities corporation Public Service

Electric and Gas Company to indicate where the gas lines lay. However, it did not indicate this particular line, according to University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua. This is the fourth gas leak to occur on the University campus in less than two years. In April 2012, an outdoor gas leak near the Friend Center prompted the evacuation of more than 200 people. That July, around 100 people were evacuated from the Engineering Quadrangle due to a gas leak. This past February, over Intersession, a burner was left on in the kitchen of the Frist Campus Center Gallery, causing a gas leak. After the leak began this

STUDENT LIFE

LOCAL NEWS

senior writer

morning, the University’s Department of Public Safety and Environmental Health and Safety Office began evacuating the surrounding buildings, as they were in danger of collecting hazardous levels of gas. According to Mbugua, these buildings included McCosh Health Center; academic buildings Guyot Hall, Moffett Laboratory, Schultz Laboratory, Eno Hall and Jones Hall; and Wilson College dormitories 1938 Hall, 1937 Hall, 1927-Clapp Hall, Dodge-Osborn Hall and Feinberg Hall. All 10 a.m. classes in the closed buildings were disrupted, as students and See GAS page 5

By Sheila Sisimit staff writer

Members of the faculty discussed the possibility of creating a University-specific alternative to Coursera, as well as the proposed creation of a new committee to oversee the continuation of online courses, on Monday at the December faculty meeting. Philosophy professor Gideon Rosen noted that the University is free to explore options outside of Coursera in order to avoid conflicts of intellectual property, such as whether the material is owned by Coursera, the University or the professors teaching the courses.

In one alternative to Coursera, he said, the University can “invest considerable resources in developing [its] own proprietary platform.” He added that some members of the computer science department are interested in helping out. “I must say that developing our own proprietary platform gives me nightmares,” University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 replied. Eisgruber currently sits on Coursera’s board of advisers. The new committee would be called the Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching and Learning, and it would not only vet the online courses but would also be See COMMITTEE page 6

Meningitis Eisgruber ’83 meets with local officials for first time consent form maintains students’ rights to sue By Anna Windemuth staff writer

By Elliott Eglash staff writer

Those who wish to receive the emergency meningitis vaccine that the University is offering will not have to waive any rights before receiving it. Consent forms were made available over Thanksgiving break on the University’s website and emailed to underage students in order to be signed by their parents. The content of the forms is identical for both overage and underage students except for the sections pertaining to the signee and recipient. The vaccine, called Bexsero and made by Swiss company Novartis, is being offered by the University in an attempt to curb an outbreak of meningitis type B on campus. Currently, students are required by state law to receive a licensed meningococcal vaccine, but the vaccines licensed in the U.S. only cover types A, C, Y and W-135, not B, the type responsible for the current outbreak. Bexsero has been approved for use in the European Union and See BEXSERO page 6

As University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 met publicly with town leaders and residents on Monday night for the first time since his September installation, the discussion touched on old town-gown tensions but also addressed ways to improve the University’s relationship with town government. Current negotiations regarding the University’s annual voluntary contribution to the town

budget were excluded from Monday’s discussion, Mayor Liz Lempert announced at the beginning of the meeting, which was held in the town hall. Lempert, whose husband is a University professor, has recused herself from the negotiations. In response to a question from council member Patrick Simon about the stress that the development of the Arts and Transit neighborhood places on the community, Eisgruber responded that he is regretful of the “scars” the project has left on the town but that he is still in

the process of listening to community concerns before forming a concrete plan of action. Several members of the community expressed their disagreement with the University’s relocation of the Dinky station. President of Save the Dinky Anita Garoniak said that the Dinky has seen an 11 percent decrease in ridership between July and September of this year due to the ongoing construction. “I miss the days when we could view the University as our friend, and not our adversary,” Peter Marks, who grew up in

Princeton as the son of a professor, said. He explained that he was disappointed at both the Dinky relocation and the “fractured relationship” between the University and the town, a concern mentioned by several other citizens. Eisgruber also discussed the diversity report released by the Board of Trustees in September, which found that the University’s faculty, staff and graduate student populations were dominated by white males and affirmed an institutional See TOWN HALL page 2

BEYOND THE BUBBLE

Citing existing measures, U. declines to join higher education initiative by Obama ’85 By Jacob Donnelly staff writer

Princeton does not intend to take part in a new educational initiative by First Lady Michelle Obama ’85 that seeks to increase low-income students’ access to higher education. Administrators and faculty said they appreciated the motives behind the new initiative but expressed skepticism about the potential impacts of the initiative if applied to Princeton, noting that the University has already taken a number of measures to recruit

low-income students and is already actively working to improve those measures. Obama announced the initiative in November in a speech at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C. She argued for the need to admit more low-income students to colleges and universities in order to raise the proportion of Americans graduating from college. Although details of the initiative have not been made officially available, these may include funding and incentives for colleges to increase their numbers of low-income

students, according to Inside Higher Education. Administrators from several colleges nationwide reportedly have met with White House staffers regarding the initiative, but University officials were not among them, according to University Provost David Lee. Speaking to an audience of Bell students, the University’s high-profile alumna framed the dilemmas facing low-income students in terms of her own experience applying to Princeton. “I decided I was going to Princeton. But I quickly realized that for me, a kid like me,

getting into Princeton wasn’t just going to happen on its own,” Obama said, explaining the financial and educational constraints on low-income students, according to a transcript of the speech she gave in November. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the immediate college enrollment rate for low-income students in 2011 was 53.5 percent, compared to 82.4 percent for high-income students. The White House did not respond to a request for See EDUCATION page 3


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