February 10, 2017

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Friday february 10, 2017 vol. cxxxix no. 5

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Levine lectures on global changes in ecology

staff writer

“It’s an exciting time to be an ecologist,” said visiting lecturer Jonathan Levine from STEM university ETH Zurich, who stood in front of an eager crowd of students, post-doctoral students, and faculty gathered to hear him speak. The lecture focused on Levine’s current research, as well as the current grand scheme of ecological research.

“Ecologists have a fundamental curiosity about how nature operates,” said Levine. However, he added, “What drives today’s research can be found by an inherent need to solve global environmental challenges such as climate change and pollution.”

Levine opened his lecture with these two rudimentary ideas: an essential curiosity about nature and a desire to solve the current environmental challenges.

Current experimental ecologists are interested in how large

impacts on ecosystems operate, Levine explained. Furthermore, he argued, the introduction of “novel competitors” shapes the overall fate of the already inhabitant species. “[Novel competitors] play decisive roles in shaping the fate of individual species under climate change,” Levine said.

“Climate change does not directly influence the eco-physiological performance of focal species, but rather it influences the changes of a competitive environment in which these focal species reside,” Levine said. These dynamic changes in the local ecosystem are what ecologists and environmentalists alike are concerned about — it is this shift in equilibrium that drives Levine’s current research.

In his lecture, Levine stated, “There are hurdles to empirical understanding.” The professor’s lecture made it clear that experimentalists can work around the See ECOLOGY page 2

Legal battle over PCS expansion continues

By Sarah Hirschfield staff writer

The Princeton Public Schools filed a lawsuit against the Princeton Charter School last month, claiming PCS violated the Open Public Meetings Act when its trustees voted to amend its charter to increase enrollment of the school. OPMA is a law that requires all meetings of government bodies be held publicly.

The PCS is a public charter school that educates town children ranging from kindergarten to eighth grade. Last month, at a town hall, the town of Princeton passed a resolution urging the New Jersey Commissioner of Education to deny PCS’s application to expand.

New Jersey Commissioner of Education, Kimberley Harrington, will decide whether to approve or deny the PCS’s expansion application, which would add 76 students to PCS over the course of two years. The PCS Board of Trustees voted in favor of expansion on Nov. 28, 2016.

The question concerns whether the Commissioner can legally consider the application because the PCS application was planned and approved in violation of the OPMA, commonly known as Sunshine Laws, according to a PPS executive summary describing its opposition to PCS’s possible expansion.

PCS did not respond to request for comment at the time of publication.

“It is disappointing that the PPS Board is wasting taxpayer dollars on a nuisance lawsuit to harass a public charter school and its families,” said Paul Josephson, President of the PCS Board of Trustees, to Planet Princeton.

PPS takes the stance that the lawsuit is necessary to protect

MARCIA BROWN :: PRINCETONIAN STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Students protested the Bicker process at St. Archibald’s League outside of Campus Club.

the community taxpayers and students.

PPS Superintendent of Schools, Steve Cochrane, said PPS maintains that “the community was not properly informed that the PCS Trustees were intending to take action to approve an application to increase the school’s enrollment, and that as a result, the court should invalidate that action.”

If the expansion were approved, PPS would be forced to pay an additional $1.2 million each year to the charter school, resulting in teacher and program cuts. The figure amounts to the salaries of approximately 15 teachers.

However, if the expansion is passed, 76 students would be granted admission based on a weighted lottery system that preferences lower-income students, thereby increasing diversity.

Adding further contention is PPS’s assertion that the charter school lottery system’s low-income threshold is higher than that recognized by the New Jersey Department of Education, according to its executive summary.

“PCS’s past enrollment expansions have actually resulted in decreases in its enrollment of economically disadvantaged students, not the increase PCS claims will result from its proposed new round of expansion,” reads the statement.

Other factors leading PPS to oppose the charter school’s expansion application include potential increases in class sizes, the large financial burden it places on taxpayers and the schooling system, statutory violations, and overwhelming local opposition.

In a town hall last month, Principal of PCS, Lawrence PatSee LAWSUIT page 2

News & Notes St. Archibald’s League In an email to most sophomores and the residential college listservs, Kyle Berlin ’18 and Sofia Hiltner ’17 announced St. Archibald’s League, a response to the Bicker process. Sophomores participate in Bicker in order to join one of the six selective eating clubs; five other eating clubs are sign-in, based on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The email invites recipients to “Princeton’s newest, coolest, and most exclusive club” at 5 Prospect Ave., which is the address of the University-ow ned Campus Club. The building formerly housed a private Bicker club which closed its doors in 2005.

According to the St. Archibald’s League website, the organization apparently only needs 15 minutes to decide if students will be accepted into the club. The League states that students won’t want to miss this opportunity “if [they] want to amount to anything in society ... Everyone’s who’s anyone will be

there.”

The invite concludes: “All invited, few welcome.” However, on their website, the League notes that all class years, triple-bickerees, and current club members are also welcome. Describing themselves as an “elite group of students (club members are known as Archis)” who are “cosmopolitan in composition and refined in practice,” the website notes that members eat together as well as partake in afternoon teas and evening nightcaps.

“Each meal is prepared and served to us by authentic immigrants and eaten with multiple gleaming silver forks and knives,” according to the website. Recently, Iv y Club’s former employee was deported following criminal offenses.

The League’s website also details how to be admitted to the club, denoting three categories: “Let’s Talk,” “Heritage,” and “Careful, now! ” The first notes that the club will ask those who wish to join to perform a “series of contrived social exercises”

and other actions and activities which may be humiliating. It advises “bickerees” not to be humiliated and to be f lattering of members, but not obsequious. Heritage is also important: This includes attending an expensive private prep school with a British-sounding name, “being a wealthy international student,” or having a relative who was an “Archi.” The League also advises joining an a capella or dance group, playing on certain sports teams, and having the ability to drink just the right amount. Finally, St. Archibald’s League recommends that “boring people need not apply.”

To reach the league with questions or concerns, inquirers can use the email archibaldsleague @ clubrevolucion.org.

U . A F FA I R S

Announcing the 141st Managing Board

By Sharon Xiang staff writer

Editor-in-Chief: Sarah Sakha ’18 Managing Editors: Grace Rehaut ’18, Megan Laubach ’18, Christina Vosbikian ’18 Head Copy Editors: Samuel Garfinkle ’19, Isabel Hsu ’19 Associate Copy Editors: Caroline Lippman ’19, Omkar Shende ’18 Head News Editor: Marcia Brown ’19 Associate News Editors: Claire Lee ’19, Abhiram Karuppur ’19 Head Opinion Editor:

Newby Parton ’18 Associate Opinion Editors: Nicholas Wu ’18, Samuel Parsons ’19 Head Sports Editor: David Xin ’19 Associate Sports Editors: Claire Coughlin ’19, Miranda Hasty ’19 Head Street Editor: Jianing Zhao ’20 Associate Street Editors: Andie Ayala ’19, Catherine Wang ’19 Cartoons Editor: Tashi Treadway ’19 Blog Editor: Sophia Paredes ’20 Photography Editors:

In Opinion

Today on Campus

Contributor Liam O’Connor writes about St. Archibald’s anti-Bicker protest, and the Editorial Board advocates for professors to stop assigning work over winter break.

PAGE 6

4:00 pm: The philosophy department will host a colloquium with guest speaker Jessica Wilson of the University of Toronto from 4:00PM – 6:30 PM. The event will take place in Robertson Hall Bowl 002

Sneha Iyer ’20, Yuanyuan Zhao ’19, Gemma Zhang ’20, Rachel Spady ’18, Ahmed Akhtar ’17 Design Editors: Quinn Donohue ’20, Crystal Wang ’18, Rachel Brill ’19, Jessica Zhou ’19 Editorial Board Co-Chairs: Ashley Reed ’18, Connor Pfeiffer ’18

WEATHER

By Jacob Tyles

HIGH

32˚

LOW

25˚

Cold and cloudy.

page 2

The Daily Princetonian

Friday february 10, 2017

Climate change detrimental to plant life, forcing migration ECOLOGY Continued from page 1

.............

difficulties of modeling focal species’ reactions to novel competitors from climate change by mimicking temperature and performing field work. He referenced his personal work with local plants in the alpine region in Switzerland, where he worked with two postdocs on mimicking plant migration due to an apparent changing climate.

“In 100 years’ time, due to increasing temperature, these plants will find a climate comparable to the where they live today, about 600 meters upslope,” Levine said.

To see how different species of plant life reacted to novel competitors, Levine and his team dug out sections of plant life and transported them to mid- and upperregions of the mountain, where different plant life grows.

If the focal plant failed to migrate, Levine said, “it exhibited a vastly different ‘demographic performance’ when competing with novel competitors.” However, if the focal species was successful in migrating to a new location, there was very little change in identifying the region’s environmental competitor.

Here, trait differences were responsible for the failure to migrate upslope, or up the mountain. The functional traits of plants were found to be not significantly associated with their competitive niche differences. “In other words,” as Levine said, “if two future competitors who have different trait values were to meet, it is not ex-

pected that these species would have weakened competition — the should not easily coexist.”

“Trait difference in an ecosystem drives competitive balance,” Levine explained, recalling his experiment in Switzerland in which plants with functionally similar traits grew much better than plants that brought in different trait values. This, according to the professor, “may even be generalized to ecologies that are not plant based, but much more complicated in nature.” Novel competitors strongly shape the fates of focal species under conditions of climate change.

Levine argued that there is a strong relationship between ecology motivated by some “fundamental curiosity” and ecology motivated by “a need to solve environmental challenges.”

Namely, having worked on a problem of novel competitive interactions, Levine acknowledged two major gaps in this field that have yet to be determined: which species will actively take part in competitive dynamics, and whether or not ecologists can predict their outcome without doing numerous experiments. Such problems share a desire to address inevitable climate change and how it affects competitive dynamics, but also stems from a fundamental curiosity on how the ecology of an environment ultimately behaves.

The lecture took place on Feb. 9 in Guyot 10 and was part of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology 522 Lecture Series.

PCS principal: “PCS application will not financially devastate PPS” LAWSUIT Continued from page 1

ton, noted that the application “will not financially devastate Princeton Public Schools.”

“Do not feed into the ‘us versus them’ narrative,” he added.

In an official response to PCS’s application, PPS wrote, “Even as we pursue legal actions

to challenge PCS’s proposal, we remain hopeful that we can accomplish something truly positive and educationally advantageous for our students and our community.”

If the application is approved, 54 of the 76 students will be phased in this year. If not, PCS will have to wait two years to reapply.

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SNOWSTORM

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A snowstorm hit Princeton on Thursday, leaving Prospect Garden with a white blanket.

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No, don’t further arm PUPD Guest Contributor

Y

esterday, our colleague Ari Maas wrote an op-ed that urged the University Board of Trustees to “arm Princeton University’s Police Department officers with handguns.” He started the piece by rhetorically asking, “Princeton University wouldn’t have its carpenters do their work without a hammer, so why does the Princeton University Police Department not have the tools it needs to do its job effectively?” Unless PUPD’s job is to intimidate and kill, this insensitive analogy holds no merit in this debate.

As a diverse group of public policy students and former social service providers, we do not believe that the Princeton University community, officers included, is any safer with handgun-armed officers than under current policy.

First, campus police officers simply do not occupy the same purview as municipal police officers.

Police chiefs are typically accountable to elected officials, whereas chiefs of private campus police departments respond to campus administrators.

Second, campus police departments are not subject to the same regulatory and legal standards as municipal police officers. On private campuses like Princeton, for example, police are not subject to the same accountability safeguards and thus are not required to make many police records public.

Maas offers anecdotes of serious and tragic incidents that took place on college campuses in order to justify his argument in favor of arming the police. Let us revisit some of those. In the University of Pennsylvania case, the shooting occurred outside of the Penn Patrol Zone, the police officer was armed, and the suspect was shot and killed

by Philadelphia Police officers. Here, as would happen under normal protocol in Princeton, campus police worked alongside their municipal partners to “neutralize” (that is, to kill) the suspect. The Wayne State University officer who was shot while on patrol was armed. The Southwestern State University police officer was accompanied by a local police officer and both officers were armed. In fact, not only were all of these officers armed, but they were also supported by local law enforcement officers. In none of these instances is it apparent that the presence of a handgun played a role in diminishing or deterring the horrific attacks that ensued.

To be clear, sworn officers of PUPD do have access to weapons in the case of any armed assailant on campus. The department also has close collaborations with local police departments, including the municipal police departments in Princeton, West Windsor, and Plainsboro, which each have concurrent police jurisdiction over parts of campus. Officers in these departments are armed with handguns and

areat the ready to support PUPD immediately in case of emergency.

From surveying studies, we see a different potential threat to the Princeton University community: the danger to the public of armed police encounters and the statistical likelihood of disparate racial outcomes. An analysis of national police-involved shooting data in 2015 found “no correlation between the level of violent crime in an area and that area’s police killing rates” — which is to say, living in a low-crime suburb like Princeton doesn’t mean armed police officers would choose not to use their gun.

We know that PUPD received the same training as police throughout the state — a fact which may not be reassuring with respect to racial disparities. A 2015 report by the New Jersey ACLU found that in four small towns near Princeton, “black and Hispanic people were between two and 10 times more likely to be arrested for petty crimes than white offenders.” In fact, police across the State of New Jersey were not uniformly required to undergo de-escalation or cultural diversity training until state officials mandated them in late 2016. Now, all police officers must participate in five hours of continuing education on these topics before the end of 2017. A 2016 bill signed by Governor Christie additionally required that each local police department “develop their own diversity training catered toward their commu-

nities.” Even though these new measures represent an important step, they are the bare minimum that should be required of all police officers, armed or not. As members of Princeton’s diverse community, we would feel much safer knowing our police are thoughtfully prioritizing de-escalation and community-centered diversity training. We feel less safe at the thought that our campus could suddenly contain dozens more guns.

This debate is not new.

A 2010 survey showed that a majority of Princeton students opposed arming officers. As a result, the Princeton student government formally recommended that officers not carry handguns. The University Board of Trustees must stand by their decision to limit the weapons carried

by PUPD. We should seek to measure up to — even surpass — our Ivy League peers in academia and sports, but not in an arms race for potential lethal force and violence.

By Alessandra Brown, Mari Castaldi, Aya Saed, and Laura Williamson; all four authors are Master in Public Affairs candidates at the Woodrow Wilson School.

E

ach year, Princetonians leave campus in mid-December with the knowledge that they will return to campus in early January to complete all written work and final examinations for the fall semester.

Additionally, juniors and seniors often return in January to pressing independent work deadlines. However, this prolonged break between the end of classes and reading period is also on occasion used by faculty members as an opportunity to assign additional academic assignments and coursework, such as short papers, lab reports, and problem sets. The Board believes that professors should not use winter break as an opportunity to do so but should rather treat the time off as a true “break” from the semester. Additionally, the Board is concerned about the availability of faculty members and preceptors to students completing end-of-term coursework during reading period.

The Board has previously endorsed calendar reform, which would move fall semester examinations from after winter break, in January, to before winter break, in December. We believe examinations after winter break pose a series of unique challenges to students; namely, we believe the impending knowledge of independent work deadlines, Dean’s Date, and final examinations places unnecessary stress on students. As a result of this stress, students who are burdened with excessive workloads may not be able to use the winter break to enjoy valuable time with

their friends and family or to focus on their personal and mental health.

Adding to this dilemma are the many Princeton professors for whom it is common to assign further coursework, such as papers and problem sets, over winter break. University policy does not restrict professors from imposing deadlines during the winter break or reading period, nor does it restrict professors in the type of work they may assign, making this kind of behavior somewhat common. Unfortunately, we believe professors’ assignment of extra work is problematic, for several reasons.

First, extra work imposes a stress on students to complete their academic work during winter break. When a student faces an academic deadline at the end of December or during the first days of reading period, he or she may feel the need to complete the required work during the winter break. The Board thinks this is inappropriate, as Princeton students already face intense stress during the winter break due to impending end-of-semester work and examinations in January. Assigning additional work further exacerbates this challenge, ensuring that students have little opportunity to avoid work and truly relax during their winter breaks.

Second, students do not have access to the same resources at home in order to complete coursework; these resources would otherwise be available to students during the regular semester.

In particular, students do not have access over winter break to the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, the Writing Center, or office

hours. For some students, these resources are vital to the successful completion of academic work.

Third, there is an unfair lack of parallel between the fall and spring semesters.

During the spring semester, professors are strictly limited to a 12-week teaching period, followed by a 10-day reading period. Exploitation of reading period for the completion of regular semester assignments is far less common during the spring semester, perhaps because professors recognize that students have an extremely limited period of time with which to prepare for their spring exams.

This same standard should be applied to the fall semester, with winter break not considered as extra working time, but rather as a break that should be free from academic pressures.

In addition, the Board also encourages professors and preceptors to make themselves more available to students during the fall reading period. The Board recognizes that many professors and graduate student preceptors use the three-week winter break and 10-day reading period as an opportunity to complete research off campus. Given this, we recommend that the teaching staff of each course inform its students of their January travel plans in December. For example, if a student knows in December that his or her professor will be traveling in January, that student can choose to plan ahead to meet with the professor before break. Furthermore, the Board believes that either the professor or at least one preceptor of a given course should be on campus during the reading period. Oppor-

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editor-in-chief

Matthew McKinlay ’18 business manager

BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 vice presidents John G. Horan ’74 Thomas E. Weber ’89 secretary Betsy L. Minkin ’77 treasurer Michael E. Seger ’71 Craig Bloom ’88 Gregory L. Diskant ’70 William R. Elfers ’71 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 Joshua Katz Kathleen Kiely ’77 Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Jerry Raymond ’73 Randall Rothenberg ’78 Annalyn Swan ’73 Douglas Widmann ’90

141ST MANAGING BOARD managing editors Megan Laubach ’18 Grace Rehaut ’18 Christina Vosbikian ’18 Head news editor Marcia Brown ’19 news editors Abhiram Karuppur ’19 opinion editor Newby Parton ‘18 sports editor David Xin ‘19 street editor Jianing Zhao ‘20 photography editor Rachel Spady ‘18

Editorial: Don’t break winter break Daily Princetonian Editorial Board

vol. cxxxix

tunities to meet with professors and preceptors in office hours are an important study tool for students -- the absence of a professor and his or her entire teaching staff during the month of January could impose a serious challenge for many students.

The Board encourages professors to reconsider the role winter break plays in the fall semester calendar. Regular semester work, such as problem sets, lab reports, and short papers, should be assigned and completed during the 12-week semester, and winter break should be left as an opportunity for students to take a real break from the rigors of Princeton. Reading period alone should be used for the completion of final semester work and assignments, and to create the best conditions for student success during reading period, it is essential that course teaching staff are available on campus to assist students.

The Editorial Board is an independent body and decides its opinions separately from the regular staff and editors of The Daily Princetonian.

The Board answers only to its Co-Chairs, the Opinion Editor, and the Editor-in-Chief. It can be reached at editorialboard@ dailyprincetonian.com.

web editor David Liu ‘18 chief copy editors Isabel Hsu ‘19 Samuel Garfinkle ‘19 design editor Rachel Brill ‘19 associate opinion editors Samuel Parsons ’19 Nicholas Wu ’18 associate sports editors Miranda Hasty ’19 Claire Coughlin ’19 associate street editor Andie Ayala ‘19 Catherine Wang ’19 associate chief copy editors Caroline Lippman ’19 Omkar Shende ‘18 editorial board co-chairs Ashley Reed ‘18 Connor Pfeiffer ’18 cartoons editor Tashi Treadway ‘19

NIGHT STAFF 2.10.17 copy Minh Hoang ’19 Jordan Antebi ’19

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America never was America to me Imani Thornton

senior columnist

I

n the wake of Donald Trump’s executive order that “suspends admissions of Syrian refugees and limits the f low of other refugees into the United States by instituting what the President has called ‘extreme vetting of immigrants,’” many have called the first weeks of Trump’s presidency a nightmare. Others have even implied that Trump’s administration represents a departure from Americanism, that there is nothing American about deportations and xenophobia. In short, the American Dream has turned into the American Nightmare.

Trump’s vision for the United States is perniciously fascist — incorporating elements of racism, xenophobia, jingoism, totalitarianism, and misogyny.

Worst of all, Trump’s vision is indefinite: His actions have no bounds, and it is unclear when this nation will heal from his actions.

But this is not a departure from Americanism. There is nothing specifically unAmerican about Trump’s executive orders or rhetoric.

The American Nightmare is an American Reality. Only when we realize that “living up to American values” is to sanction Trump may we wake up from this horrid dream.

Immigrant exclusion based on race, religion, or national origin is an Ameri-

can pastime. The Alien and Sedition Acts, arguably the first discriminating immigration act, were signed into law in 1798. Following this was the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act; in response to popular racist and xenophobic anti-Chinese sentiment, the act “required the few nonlaborers who sought entry to obtain certification from the Chinese government that they were qualified to immigrate.”

The act was extended into the 20th Century with the Geary Act, and its effects were not effectively reversed until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

The Chinese Exclusion Act is only one of many governmental measures to marginalize those deemed a “threat” to white civilization. Notably, the United States is guilty of genocide against Indigenous tribes.

The Trail of Tears, perhaps the most infamous atrocity committed against an Indigenous tribe, resulted from Andrew Jackson’s abuse of presidential power to seize Native lands and force thousands into what is now Oklahoma. More than 4,000 died on the journey, with hundreds of others dying upon arrival. Trump’s executive orders in support of Keystone XL and the Dakota Access Pipeline is a continuation of the United States’ regnant disregard for indigenous peoples, not an anomaly.

I end with another heinous crime: the enslave-

ment of millions of Africans as a capitalist ploy advancing the prosperity of the United States. The descendants of those enslaved have failed to see any monetary reparations despite the cultural, economic, and social effects that this history has on many black “Americans” to this day. Perhaps most insidiously, AfricanAmericans and their allies even today are often called “’hateful American’ groups” and are likened to the Ku Klux Klan.

In the words of Langston Hughes, “America never was America to me.” The policies of Trump are not new, just refashioned for the 21st century. The heinous fascism that makes monoliths of refugees and fails to see the disease of white supremacy f lowing through the foundations of American “ideals” is more American than apple pie.

I stand in solidarity with those who wish dearly for the United States to live up to its constitutional ideals, even if the men who wrote them never meant to include women, African-American people, indigenous people, or other marginalized groups. My only wish is that in the aftermath of Trump, we turn not to antiquated and hypocritical ideals, but to new ones that can stand on their own without exception.

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Friday february 10, 2017

Archibald’s Temptation Liam O’Connor

contributing columnist

F

og blanketed Princeton’s campus like a mask as I hustled toward Prospect Avenue. Earlier in the day, I had received a mysterious email from St. Archibald’s League, which proclaimed the group to be “Princeton’s newest, coolest, and most exclusive club” and invited me to its “admission events” at 5 Prospect Ave. — a humorously sophisticated way of indicating Campus Club.

Upon arrival, I was greeted by a bouncer for St. Archibald’s Bicker, as well as two people protesting the club. The protesters shouted, “Don’t let them fool you into thinking that you’re not worthy!” to which the bouncer replied, “The real world doesn’t accept everyone, and this only prepares you for a competitive, capitalistic society.” I chuckled at the exchange, realizing it to be a joke, but the conversation sent a chill through me nonetheless, as I recognized its realism.

My group of 12 was ushered into Campus Club, and we all underwent a simulated Bicker process, during which interviewers asked us preposterous questions that apparently were taken from real Bicker events in the past.

“Based on my appearance,” someone asked, “how many

people do you think I have hooked up with?” “Who in the group do you think has the richest family?” After everyone was “admitted,” we were then seated around a table and given invitations to join Club Revolución, an anti-Bicker student group.

Although St. Archibald’s League was a cleverly crafted parody of every Princeton stereotype ever, Club Revolución’s message honed in with laser-like precision on the idiosyncrasies of Bicker eating clubs: Their unnecessary exclusionary practices create unwarranted power structures on a campus that otherwise seeks to proclaim itself inclusive.

Bicker, of course, is the annual event that sophomores undergo to join an eating club, the quasi-fraternity organizations that occupy large mansions on Prospect Avenue. Some have interview-only Bicker and others feature competitive games.

While some clubs have eliminated Bicker, six remain: Ivy Club, Cannon Dial Elm Club, Tower Club, Cottage Club, Tiger Inn, and Cap & Gown Club.

Complaints about elitism in Bicker are not uncommon amongst students. A few months ago, I attended a feedback group for University Dining Services; I remember hearing from a few upperclassmen who lamented how the eating clubs’ divisive admissions process

led to the breakup of their groups of friends. Freshmen, meanwhile, often tend to lose contact with their sophomore friends as they retreat into their clubs’ bubbles.

The pass system is also a point of ire for underclassmen. Eating club members are given a limited number of passes that allow non-members to attend their parties.

This creates a power structure in there are two classes of students: the privileged few with passes, and those without them.

Freshmen regularly complain about their need to ask multiple upperclassman friends for club passes, like a beggar on the Street. For the students who are not as well connected to upperclassmen — usually because they were not accepted into a tightly knit dance group or nationally ranked competitive club with its own overly selective tryouts — they may have to wait a few years to get passes until their friends gain acceptance to eating clubs.

Despite all of the criticism directed toward the University’s six exclusive eating clubs, students continue to participate in Bicker. Clubs like St. Archibald’s captivate our attention because of the promises they make to us, if we are so lucky as to be accepted. Future prospects of wealth, status, and social connections tempt Princetonians like the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Yet,

The Trek Anne Zou ’20

..................................................

by partaking in this annual ritual, Princetonians only preserve a pseudo-elitism on campus — to their own detriment.

For example, Bicker eating clubs claim that students will gain invaluable career connections by joining them. But, when one goes to a college where everyone is of a high caliber, making these connections is possible in almost any organization.

Still, the defenders of Bicker claim, like St. Archibald’s bouncer, that the process prepares students for the real world and for high profile jobs where getting hired depends upon one’s ability to converse urbanely. Perhaps that is true, but it is also true that this environment endures because institutions like the eating clubs at Princeton perpetuate it.

Elitism exists at Princeton because we allow it to exist; Bicker is only one of its many manifestations. It is fueled by our natural desire to want to be included and accepted by our peers.

Throughout our lives thus far, we have searched for others who are like us. Now that we have overcome the innumerable odds of the University’s admissions and are gathered on a single campus, we will do anything possible to ensure that we “fit in.” This desperation permits eating clubs to subjugate us with their arbitrarily exclusive methods, until we can be-

come the masters ourselves and do the same to the next class.

As Senator Daniel Webster said, “There is always room at the top.” Apparently, this is not true of social life at Princeton, where “the top” is limited by the number of people who can be in it — not that there should be a “top” to social life in the first place!

Bicker and the eating clubs may never go away — they have too many alumni and too much money propping them up. But St. Archibald’s message is still valid. We do not have to continue this system that rejects our fellow classmates and dictates our social lives. After all, these “elite” clubs are only as powerful as we allow them to be. I, for one, will not allow them to hold dominion over me.

Liam O’Connor is a freshman from Wyoming, Del. He can be reached at lpo@princeton.edu.

Friday february 10, 2017

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Sports

Friday february 10, 2017

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{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } MEN’S BASKETBALL

Men’s basketball prepares for doubleheader against Cornell and Columbia

By Owen Tedford staff writer

COURTESY OF PRINCETON ATHLETICS

Princeton will take on Big Red this weekend, hoping to extend its lead in the Ivy League.

With two close wins last weekend against Dartmouth (4-15 overall, 1-5 Ivy) and Harvard (12-7, 4-2), as well as a mid-week win over Penn (7-12, 0-6), the men’s basketball team (13-6, 6-0) comes home leading the Ivy League; these wins extended Princeton’s win streak to nine games. Now, at 6-0, the Tigers remain one of only a small handful of undefeated teams in conference play in the country, no small feat on their part. The last time Princeton hit the 6-0 mark, the team won the Ancient Eight.

This weekend at Jadwin Gymnasium, the Tigers will host two tough opponents: Cornell (6-15, 2-4) on Friday night at 7 p.m. and Columbia (10-9, 4-2) on Saturday night at 6 p.m.

With the Big Red coming into town, an old Tiger is returning as well. Cornell’s first-year coach Brian Earl ’99 is one of the greatest players in Princeton men’s basketball history. But Earl’s first year has not been smooth sailing, with the Big Red hitting a tough stretch and los-

ing three games out of their last four to Harvard, Brown (11-11, 2-4) and Yale (13-6, 5-1), with a lone win over Dartmouth. All of the losses were close, by an average of eight points.

Cornell is led by guard Matt Morgan, who is averaging 17.3 points per game, the highest mark in the Ivy League. He has scored in double digits in 36 of his last 37 games. To counter this, Princeton will need to rely on its defense, which ranks No. 2 in points allowed in the Ivy League, at 64 points per game. Sophomore guard Myles Stephens anchors this defense, averaging around one block per game.

When Columbia comes to Jadwin on Saturday evening, watch out for forward Luke Petrasek, who leads the Lions in points and rebounds, averaging 15.8 and 6.6 respectively. Petrasek is part of a strong rebounding Columbia team, which ranks No. 2 in the Ivy League and averages 35.8 points per game. The Tigers will in turn have to rely on senior forward Spencer Weisz, one of last week’s Co-Players of the Week in the Ivy League, and senior forward Steven Cook

to compete on the boards and prevent Columbia from picking up easy points off of offensive rebounds.

The Lions have been on a hot streak as of late, winning three of their last four games. However, Princeton versus Columbia has been a great matchup over the last three years, with four of the six games being decided by five or fewer points, including an overtime thriller last year at Columbia. The Tigers are 5-1 in these games, but when these teams meet on the court, history can be thrown out the window, with each game promising to be a tight, exciting affair.

As Weisz said after the win over Penn, “The name of the game for us going forward is going to be defense.”

This will be put to the test this weekend, with the Ivy League’s highest scorer and a good rebounding team coming to town.

If Princeton is able to win both of these games, it will extend its lead in the Ivy League and keep its momentum going as the Tigers march toward a league-leading No. 27 title.

WRESTLING

Wrestling gains momentum in Ivy League

By Michael Gao staff writer

Coming off a monumental season last year, the Princeton wrestling team has high expectations for its performance this season. Bolstered by a strong corps of returning NCAA qualifiers, spearheaded by All-American Brett Harner, and featuring a tough freshman class led by standout wrestler Matthew Kolodzik, the Tigers have cracked into the top 25 numerous times and have been recognized as one of the nation’s most vibrant programs.

It’s also been a season of heartbreaking losses, however, as Princeton has faced some of

wrestling’s marquee programs.

In just the first half of the season, the Tigers faced off against Rutgers, Nebraska, and Lehigh, all programs ranked nationally in the top 20. Princeton also kicked off the 2017 season with a tough battle at home against the nation’s No. 6 program, Virginia Tech. Despite being immense underdogs, the Tigers clinched three victories, with Kolodzik and sophomores Pat D’Arcy and Mike D’Angelo winning their matches, and started out the meet with an 11-7 lead. Ultimately, however, the Hokies would bring six wrestlers ranked nationally in the top 10 of their weight class, an onslaught to which the outmatched Tigers had no answer.

A similar fate would befall the Tigers in a later New York bout with No. 22 Stanford. Once again, Princeton started the meet well: Team captains and seniors Jordan Laster and Brett Harner both took down their opponents, with Harner scoring an exciting marquee win over the Cardinal’s top-ranked Josh Marchok. Meanwhile, two other Tigers scored crucial upset victories, with senior Ray O’Donnell felling No. 10Nathan Butler and freshman Ty Agaisse nabbing a stunning 3-2 victory over No. 14 Gabriel Townsell on a late takedown. Stanford, however, would ultimately take the 22-12 victory over Princeton.

Despite these losses, Princ-

eton has rallied to an impressive 3-0 start in the Ivy League.

The Tigers opened Ivy play by decisively trouncing Penn 28-8, with No. 17 Jonathan Schleifer, recently returned from an injury, scoring a major upset victory over Penn’s No. 8 Casey Kent. This past weekend, the Tigers built on their momentum, crushing Brown and Harvard 32-6 and 33-3, respectively, and establishing themselves as one of the strongest contenders in the Ivy League.

Buoyed by their victories, a hungry Princeton team now looks to end Cornell’s three decade-long Ivy championship streak. Back in 1986, Princeton was the last team other than the

Big Red to clinch the title. Now, the Tigers will enter the match as significant underdogs. No. 9 Cornell, though relatively shorthanded this year, still boasts a score of All-Americans and two NCAA tournament finalists and has taken down, among other squads, Rutgers, Lehigh, and the University of Oklahoma, all teams that have spent some time this season ranked in the top 10. But the right combination of skill, luck, and perseverance may lead the Tigers to accomplish what no other team in the Ivy has done for 30 years.

Princeton will head to Columbia first on Friday before entering its showdown against the Big Red on Sunday night.

WOMEN’S SQUASH

Women’s squash to take on Cornell, Columbia

By Claire Coughlin

Associate Sports Editor

Both the Cornell (8-4 overall, 3-2 Ivy) and Princeton (9-2, 3-2) women’s squash teams are looking to set program records for wins in Ivy League play this weekend.

The Tigers are set to travel to Ithaca this Friday to play against the Big Red, a game that will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Cornell’s Belkin International Squash Courts.

Last weekend, Cornell matched up against Dartmouth in a 7-2 win and topranked Harvard in a 9-0 loss.

That allowed the Big Red to keep their No. 7 ranking in the College Squash Association national rankings, but Princeton’s talent has also allowed the team to climb

the ranks to No. 4. Princeton’s current ranking guarantees a spot in the Howe Cup — the A Division of the CSA’s national championships — which is set to take place at Princeton in a mere three weeks. Moreover, despite their loss against Penn last week, the Tigers’ 5-4 victory over the No. 5 Bulldogs last weekend effectively defended Princeton’s national standing.

On Sunday, Princeton will return to New Jersey to match up with No. 8 Columbia (6-5, 2-3) at noon in a match that will be streamed live on the Ivy League Digital Network.

Last summer, Princeton defeated Columbia 7-2 in New York City, so the Tigers feel confident that this match will again be successful. If

Tweet of the Day “Congrats to incoming tiger balle r, Abby Meyers, breaking a 50-year record. The kid can sure score, but only cares about winning. The tiger way!”

Courtney Banghart (@coachbanghart), Head Coach, Women’s Basketball

the Tigers do clutch a Friday victory, the win would secure a 5-2 Ivy League record for them.

Sunday also marks Senior Day for the women’s squash team. Gabriella Garr, Ashley Richards, Alexandra Toth, and Maria Elena Ubina of the Class of 2017 will be honored before Sunday’s match.

These players have achieved a total win tally of 106 individual matches and counting over the last four seasons, and they have also helped the Tigers achieve a 44-14 team record in their time on the team.

Both upcoming games will be streamed live on Friday at 5:30 p.m. and on Sunday at 12 p.m., each on the Ivy League Digital Network.

COURTESY OF PRINCETON ATHLETICS

Women’s squash prepares for two consequential games this week.

Stat of the Day

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Men’s squash senior co-captain, Ben Leizman, boasts 24 career victories heading into his last Ivy League match against Columbia

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24 victories