The Daily Princetonian: February 24, 2023

Over 150 rally for graduate student unionization

The PROSPECT

The hype and family behind Sympoh

By Russell Fan | Associate Prospect Editor

On a bustling Friday night, I was surrounded by an intoxicating energy in Frist Theatre, where Sympoh, Princeton’s only B-Boy/B-Girl (break-boy/ break-girl) crew, was performing.

By Lia Opperman

Over 150 graduate students, undergraduates, and post-graduate fellows rallied together with Princeton Graduate Students United (PGSU) to demand fair wages and more affordable housing from the University. A flyer distributed for the event stated “power and protection for grad workers,” and promoted PGSU’s union card campaign, which makes organizing efforts an official union campaign.

The audience listened to speeches from graduate workers, Rutgers American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers (AAUP-AFT), Teachers and Reachers United (TRU) at Johns Hopkins University, and Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA). Undergraduate student groups including the Princeton College Democrats and the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) also went to the rally to show their support.

“Princeton works because we do,” members of PGSU stated during a speech.

The crowd chanted at one point during the rally, “accept my labor, respect my rights.” They also repeated the chant in Spanish. A number of attendees held signs, including those saying, “more pay, more say,” “I signed my union card,” and “union yes!”

U. AFFAIRS

After the rally, graduate students walked around different buildings on campus to hand out union cards. A member of PGSU collected cards on the first floor of the Frist Campus Center. By the time of publication, over 1,200 cards were filled out.

According to the flyer, the group demands fair and effective grievance procedures, improved international student support, better healthcare and funded childcare, affordable housing through graduation, guaranteed pay raises and contingency funds, and clear and safe work standards. PGSU also hopes that the rally and union cards will help them fight for legal recognition as a labor union so that they can represent graduate student workers and negotiate with the University to form a contract.

Gaby Nair, a graduate student and organizer of the rally, spoke to The Daily Princetonian about her hopes for the future of graduate students at the University.

“Today, we are building momentum to get through the first stage of the unionization process [and] to cut to the next phase,” Nair said. “This phase includes signatures that indicate that grads want to have a union election at Princeton, and so we decided to have this rally to kick off that process.”

This move comes in light of a larger unionization movement among universities, including Columbia University graduate workers’

10-week strike last year and Boston University graduate students’ overwhelming vote to unionize in December. It also comes two months after 48,000 academic employees at the University of California’s (UC) ten campuses walked off their jobs as the nation’s largest education strike, which some have claimed started a “wave” to intensify unionization efforts in universities across the country. Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and Brown are the four Ivy League universities to have unionized so far.

Liana Katz, the vice president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, explained that “New Jersey is union strong” and that the group supports Princeton and other universities’ efforts.

“We know that organizing together is a really exciting moment for labor,” she said in her speech. She emphasized the organizing of graduate workers and faculty from the UCs to Temple University and The New School.

“All of our members… stand in solidarity with grad workers at Princeton,” Katz added. “When we organize together, we can win.”

Nancy Tang, an international graduate student who spoke at the rally, expressed a similar sentiment to the crowd.

“As a proud member of the PGSU, I want to ask my fellow international students to join PGSU for our rights and build collective power,“ Tang

Second annual DEI report reveals slew of new programs, minor increase in faculty diversity

By Julian Hartman-Sigall & Bridget O’Neill assistant News Editors

In June 2020, amid nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd, University President Christopher Eisgruber charged the University cabinet with specifying “a set of actions that could be taken within [their] areas to identify, understand, and combat systemic racism within and beyond the University.”

Two and a half years later,

the University released its second annual Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Report, described as part of an ongoing effort to make Princeton “more diverse, inclusive, and accessible.” The report reveals that while the diversity of the undergraduate student body has remained relatively consistent over the past five years, there have been some improvements in the diversity of the University’s faculty. The University also added a number of administrative positions

to further DEI goals. The report also describes long-term plans to increase transfer numbers, create an affinity space for Native and Indigenous members of the community, expand the Center for Jewish Life (CJL), and invest in supplier diversity.

The 41-page report summarizes many “events, programs, and initiatives” undertaken by the University and its students, as well as data on the demographics

See DEI page 4

A rumbling current of enthusiasm shook the room. People roared in anticipation of seeing Sympoh’s spring-semester production, “Beat Kill”: a showcase of bold, electrifying performances that both embodied the essence of breakdancing and challenged its conventions through freestyle. Hip-hop and alternative dance blended, forming the basis for locking, dropping, and other moves.

The lights dimmed and the trailer began, augmenting the excitement with a murdermystery skit, starting the storyline in a playful opening. The main show then began. In each set, the dancers presented

a unique style through dynamic moves. These movements, fashionably compiled, yielded thrilling, captivating acts of break-dancing. Intense spurts of dance illuminated by fiery floodlights alternated with moodier formations. Some pieces displayed mellower, expressive auras while others spotlighted valiant, vigorous grunge.

“We punned on the phrase ‘killing the beat,’ which describes a dancer who is completely in sync with the music,” said copresidents Hank Lin ’24 and Tuan Dinh ’25 in reference to the concept of the show.

Although the theme revolved around a murder-mystery parody, it did not dictate the pieces that were performed. Rather, its storyline fitted into the fillers between pieces. Lin and Dinh explained that this choice “allowed [their]

By Staff

Writer Abby Leibowitz

Data Contributor Sabrina Effron

By Assistant Opinion Editor Christofer Robles

GRADUATE SCHOOL

As grad student union builds, Graduate Student Government votes to release message of support

By Olivia Sanchez Staff News Writer

Amid a flurry of questions regarding the Princeton Graduate Students United (PGSU) efforts to unionize, the Graduate Student Government (GSG) voted to release a message of support for PGSU, at their meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 21 presided by GSG Vice President of Internal Affairs Allison Tang.

The GSG serves as the primary representative body for Princeton’s graduate students. It was formed in 1989, with early priorities including addressing Teaching Assistant pay and

By Staff Features Writer Raphaela Gold

organizing graduate student social events. Graduate students formed the PGSU in 2016 to serve as a vehicle for grad students working to secure contractual benefits, including guaranteed housing and improved health insurance, and to create an equitable and safe work environment.

The vote comes less than a week after a PGSU rally on Feb. 15, which drew over 150 supporters of the unionization effort. According to union representative Aditi

See FAMILY page 13 Please

Associate News Editor

ZEHAO WU / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Over 150 rally with the PGSU to support unionization efforts.

Union rep.: “Striking is a protected activity, and forming a union is a protected activity.”

Continued from page 1

Rao, a graduate student in the classics department, 1,200 Princeton graduate students signed up for their union cards following the Feb. 15 rally alone, bringing the total to 1,500 students.

The GSG is composed of 33 representatives from various academic departments, along with an elected executive board. According to their website, the GSG’s “mission is to support and advocate for graduate students in their multiple roles: as researchers, as teachers, as students, and as members of the broader Princeton University community.”

Before the vote, Rao spoke about the “historic movement of graduate unions” at

various universities across the country. Graduate students at peer institutions, including Harvard, Columbia, Brown, and Yale are unionized, with Yale unionizing in January. After initial statements by Rao, the meeting opened to questions about the proposed union. One graduate student asked Rao when union members would be expected to pay a due equating to 1.44 percent of their paychecks. Rao answered, “Nobody will ever pay the dues until there is a guaranteed, negotiated raise.”

In response to a question about the unionization process, Rao said. “We’re at the petitioning stage. In order to file for a union election with the … National Labor Relations Board, we need 30 percent of graduate students

at this university to sign a union card. We are well past that number. We are almost at 50 percent.”

“We really want it to be a super majority so we know for ourselves that the vast majority of students at this university support a union,” Rao added. “We want to get our number up to as close to 2,000 [students] as possible.”

“One of the big union pushes is to make sure, contractually, every international student has the right to work over their summers,” Rao said, referencing the union’s plans to fight for Curricular Practical Training (CPT). CPT is a training program that allows international students to work during the summer and make money on top of their stipend. According to Rao, “This makes a huge differ-

ence to the financial stability of international graduate students who make up 40 percent of this campus.”

Currently, Princeton does not offer CPT to international students on a campus-wide basis, leaving it to individual departments to decide whether they will provide the program instead.

Another student asked if the University could take retaliatory action against students involved in the union, such as terminating their housing contracts.

“Striking is a protected activity, and forming a union is a protected activity. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be up here giving my name,” Rao responded. “If the University chooses to cancel your housing contract you are paying for because you are striking,

that is an illegal activity.”

The assembly then held a vote to release a statement in support of PSGU’s unionization efforts. The vote passed, with one person abstaining and one voting against the measure. There were 24 graduate students present.

Also during the meeting, the GSG voted to begin election proceedings and announced a listening circle for the anniversary of the war in Ukraine.

According to the GSG website, meetings are typically held on the second Wednesday of every month in Friend Center 113. The meeting was held in Louis A. Simpson International Building B60 on Tuesday, February 21 at 6 p.m.

Olivia Sanchez is a staff news writer for the ‘Prince.’

Eisgruber reaffirms commitment to diversity, campus expansion in CPUC meeting

By Olivia Sanchez Staff News Writer

University President Christoper L. Eisgruber ’83 discussed his annual letter to the community, campus expansion, combating mental health issues, and the University’s renewed focus on diversity at the first Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meeting of 2023.

President’s Annual Letter to the Community recap Eisgruber reviewed the content of his Annual Letter to the Community, highlighting his comments on University expansion, mental health, and affirmative action.

He emphasized that the Class of 2026 is the largest

incoming class in Princeton’s recent history, stating that more students enrolled than the University had intended or anticipated. The University’s target was a class of 1,425 students, and 1,500 admitted students decided to matriculate. While noting that the University is “fantastically happy” to have more students, he clarified that the admissions deans aim to avoid classes of this size in the immediate future.

“We cannot be admitting 1,500 students a year going forward,” he said.

Shifting to discussion of current students, Eisgruber stated that the University needed to focus on combating distraction, citing cell phones as a direct cause.

“We literally want people to get lost in thought. And

that’s hard … when you are constantly dealing with distraction,” he said. “What we do now is to carry with us, in our pockets, devices that are constantly tempting us to think about something other than what we might be focusing on.” While displaying images of young adults using their phones while crossing a street and hanging out with each other, he suggested that cell phones were detrimental to being “mentally healthy and mentally well.”

He added that he hopes “students, faculty, and others will come up with proposals and initiatives that speak to the deeper issues in our society that are signified by these images.” Eisgruber also commented on the expansion of the University’s transfer pro -

gram, highlighting the recent success of Sachs scholarship recipient and transfer student Shaun Cason ’23, before briefly discussing the recent DEI report. Regarding the report, he stated, “It provides us a way both to hold us accountable to our commitments and to see where it is we have made progress.”

He mentioned the pending Supreme Court decisions, which could threaten Princeton’s use of race as a factor in admissions but emphasized the University’s commitment to diversity.

“We believe that the diversity we have achieved on this campus is essential to the excellence of this campus and the excellence of this country.”

Updates to the University policy on discrimination

University Provost Deborah A. Prentice announced that the CPUC Executive Committee had previously reviewed changes to the University’s policy on discrimination and harassment that were “not substantive at all.” While Prentice did not describe what the changes to the policy are, she expressed that the policy was reviewed for clarification purposes.

Campus expansion

During the Q&A portion of the meeting, Undergraduate Student Government (USG) president Stephen Daniels ’24 asked, “What is the plan to further assess the impact of campus expansion on students?”

Eisgruber replied, describing how the University is focused on looking at how it is meeting student needs: “Figuring out exactly how to assess that can be complicated … Sometimes, you’re standing in a [dining hall] line that is longer than you would want it to be … What that is achieving at the same time is enabling students who otherwise wouldn’t have had a Princeton experience at all … to be on the campus.”

In regards to construction, U-Councilor Genevieve Shutt ’26 asked, “Are there any plans in the coming future as construction continues … to increase the time between class changes?”

Deputy Dean of the College Elizabeth L. Colagiuri answered by outlining the work of the Faculty Committee on Classroom and Schedule in collaboration with the Registrar’s Office. “[The committee] is just on the verge of taking out two proposals to the broader campus to stress-test them, socialize them, get feedback, and test the possibility of

a 15-minute passing time or a 20-minute passing time,” she said. “Each would have pros and cons.”

University staff concerns

Also during the Q&A portion of the meeting, Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) co-chair Bryce Springfield ’25 stated that a number of Princeton service employees expressed concerns to YDSA that wages are lagging behind the cost of living increases.

Springfield asked, “Will the University commit to establishing annual cost of living adjustments for all positions as a minimum, while continuing to provide additional performance raises for those who demonstrate exceptional performance?”

Eisgruber responded, “Your question packed in a bunch of assertions that I don’t think are fully accurate … We just did, for example, a 2.5 percent increase for most of our staff at this University, which was not part of the annual merit pools … The union contracts are negotiated separately from that.”

Vice President of Human Resources Romy Riddick added, “Part of what we also did was look at minimums within the service workers … we had two increases to [the] minimum over the last year as well … We are paying very close attention to the salaries and making market adjustments.”

U-Councilor Daniel Shaw ’25 also asked for an update regarding the faculty committee for institutional neutrality and free speech, which were last mentioned at a November CPUC meeting.

Eisgruber replied, “That committee … is continuing to collect information from other faculty members and other constituencies around the University, which I think is a good way for it to be proceeding.” He stated that a report is under the works of the Committee, though it may not be out soon, adding, “On something like this, getting it right is more important than having a particular deadline.”

The meeting was held on Monday, Feb. 20 at 4:30 p.m. in the Frist Campus Center’s Multipurpose Room. CPUC’s next meeting will occur on Monday, March 27 from 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in the same location and is open to all University community members.

Olivia Sanchez is a staff news writer for the ‘Prince.’

Grad student: “The University has failed us, and their priorities aren’t clear”

Continued from page 1

said. “I also hereby ask my fellow students, regardless of your nationality, to show your support for international graduate students by signing a union card today.”

“I speak here as one of the over 1,300 international graduate students teaching and researching,” she added.

Graduate student Anthony Taboni explained how he lost the graduate student housing lottery this past summer and took four months and hundreds of dollars in application fees to find a one-bedroom apartment. He explained that the University should do more to help students having problems finding housing, as “being close to campus allows [graduate students] to spend more time in [their] labs and be available for undergraduate students [and] be active members of this intellectual community.”

“The University has failed us, and their priorities aren’t clear,” he added. Erin Firestone, a University spokesperson, responded to the claims made by the PGSU in an email to the ‘Prince.’

“Dean [of the Graduate School Rodney] Priestley is always available to speak with the Graduate Student Government about student interests or concerns,” she wrote. “He is also available during one-on-one office hours to speak with any graduate student about a student’s own individual concerns.”

Last year, the University announced its largest one-year increase in graduate student stipend rates for the 2022-2023 academic year by an average of 25 percent to about $40,000 for doctoral candidates.

In regards to housing, in the University’s announcement, Cole Crittenden, former Dean of the Graduate School, stated, “We offer University housing to a very large percentage of our graduate students, and when the Lake Campus graduate housing facilities are completed, we will be able to offer housing to any enrolled graduate student who wants it, just as we do to our undergraduate students.” The Lake Campus project has since been renamed the Meadows Neighborhood.

Tang said the University should provide more support to international graduate students and do more to help them with challenges related to immigration. She claimed that only 16 departments offer a

Shaun Cason ’23 and Anna Allport ’23 win Sachs scholarships

summer Curricular Practical Training (CPT) course — which offers certification to international students for pursuing work in their area of study — and only six departments offer internship courses during the academic year.

According to the Davis International Center (IC), during the academic year, “your [Optional Practical Training] eligibility and the number of hours you are allowed to work is determined by the Graduate School employment policy.” The website does not specify how many or which departments offer courses.

The University also provides immigration and visa information for students on the Davis IC website.

“We need Princeton to step up their game and help international students with visas and immigration related challenges, including navigating the complicated U.S. tax system,” Tang said. “Today, we flip the script and declare the University is here to support us and should not be allowed to threaten us with the potential question about immigration status,” she added.

The ‘Prince’ also spoke with students who attended the rally.

“This is the start of Princeton’s formal effort to start a union,” graduate student Sophia Menemenlis said.

Graduate student Jacob Matthew Molina shared a similar remark and noted the mental health crisis on campus.

“The student body needs a greater voice, especially in wake of all the unfortunate passings of students,” he said.

Bryce Springfield ’25, co-chair of the YDSA, told the ‘Prince’ that “the least we can do in a system like this is to have workers on somewhat of an equal footing with their employer and some sort of democratic mechanism.”

When graduate workers follow a link shared at the rally and on the PGSU website to obtain a union card, the website reads, “I hereby request and accept membership in the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), and authorize it to represent me, and in my behalf to negotiate and conclude all agreements as to hours of labor, wages, and all other conditions of employment.

The rally took place on Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 12 p.m. at Scudder Plaza.

Lia Opperman is the Investigations Editor and an Associate News Editor for the ‘Prince.’

THE MINI CROSSWORD

By Claire Kaneshiro Staff Puzzles Constructor

“ the Wall P t 1”

By Simone Kirkevold News contributor

On Jan. 20, Shaun Cason ’23, a senior in the History department, was awarded this year’s Sachs Scholarship to pursue a master’s degree at Worcester College at University of Oxford. Anna Allport ’23, an independent concentrator in performance studies and interdisciplinary theater at Princeton, was also awarded the Sachs Global Scholarship, which allows recipients to study at any university outside of the U.S.

Cason will continue studying the Byzantine Empire and, more generally, the Middle East during the medieval period. A recipient of a Purple Heart and military veteran, Cason is the first transfer student and veteran to have been awarded the Sachs Scholarship.

Cason spent 15 years in special operations in the Marines. He transferred to Princeton as a sophomore knowing he wanted to pursue history. “Because of my time in the military, you realize how rich and diverse the world is,” Cason noted. Cason, who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, is also focusing on Southern Iraq for his thesis. “[It’s] interesting how they tie into each other,” he said regarding his service and research. “I’ve been there. I’ve been to some of the places that I’m researching right now. I’m seeing how it was hundreds of years before I was there.”

Allport will be pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Shakespearean literature, with research focusing on “combining Shakespeare’s dramatic literature with multimedia technology tools in K-12 education curricula,” she wrote in an email to The Daily Princetonian. After completing her Masters in Fine Arts (MFA), she is interested in creating a standardized Shakespeare education curriculum for K-12 public schools.

The Sachs Scholarship, which Cason received, enables recipients to study for any degree from the University of Oxford, guaranteeing a full scholarship for two years and an allowance for other expenses. Worcester College, a college within Oxford, has been housing Sachs Scholars since the establishment of the program in 1970.

Oxford University has been the “golden standard” for becoming a Byzantinist or Medievalist, Cason told the ‘Prince’.

While at Oxford, Cason said that his studies are going to be a “lot more focused,” citing that his next 10 years of academia are going to be focusing on this niche, which he discovered during his undergraduate education at Princeton.

In addition to history, Cason plans to continue studying Greek and learn Arabic.

“Learning Arabic is high on my priorities because there is a treasure-trove of source work in the Arab world,” Cason said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’

“I’m a huge nerd, I love history: just all of it excites me. If you told me the history of garbage cans, I’d sit here and listen,” he said.

Despite his interest in history, he never anticipated that he would become a medievalist. “I started looking to the east, and really looked at Byzantium and the Middle East and the Islamic world,” Cason said.

“I didn’t know anything, so it was all fresh, shiny, and really exciting, and so I took a complete right turn, went in head first,’’ Cason said about his developing interest in medieval and Byzantine studies. “We have this amazing middle ages tradition here [at Princeton] and just access to the most brilliant minds in the field. You can’t help but get excited about it.”

Cason focuses on “slavery in the Middle Ages and middle Byzantine period, which coincides with the golden age, the Abbasid caliphate.”

According to Cason, medieval studies in the Byzantine Empire are “lacking academic work” right now. He noted that, unlike with other periods and locations, historians in his field have to look beyond written texts to artifacts and other sources. Because of this, Cason is pursuing the archeology certificate. “I really like multidisciplinary approaches to research,” Cason said.

Referencing the lack of available sources, Cason said that his studies are “going to take a lot of effort. You really have to look at more of a geographic study, looking regionally and at the interactions [between cultures]. But that’s the interesting thing about this area: you have such a mixing of cultures and people, languages, customs. I think the Middle East was a really exciting place during the Middle Ages,” Cason said. Cason, who describes himself as “not the traditional recipient,” said that receiving this scholarship was “huge” for him, his family, and his community. Accordingly, he thanked some of his professors: Professor Helmut Reimitz, Professor Teresa Shawcross, and Professor Jack Tannous.

“Their investment in me has really solidified that I’m making the right decision,” said Cason. “One day, I would like to be in a position to pay it forward and to have the same impact on students’ lives and not lose sight of what’s important in academia, which is the student,” he added.

Cason plans on pursuing his Ph.D. to become a professor who can mentor non-traditional students and veterans. “That’s a long term goal, to continue to put myself in a position to advocate — to do good,” Cason said. “I aspire to live up to this legacy that has been placed before me.”

Simone Kirkevold is a news contributor for the ‘Prince.’

ACROSS

1 "Comfortably ___" (Pink Floyd song)

5 Kayak cousin

6 Play the role of

7 Horned African animal

8 Pulls off DOWN

1 "What do you call cheese that isn't yours? ___ cheese!" (dad joke)

2 Let loose, as laces

3 Sounds of pleasure or pain

4 Spanish kiss

5 Uno reverse, e.g.

Shaun Cason ’23 and Anna Allport ’23 (left to right), the two Princeton recipients of the Sachs Scholarship.

Eisgruber: “This University is — and will remain — a work in progress.”

and climates of students, staff, faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and academic professionals.

The Daily Princetonian broke down the four sections of the report: climate, inclusion and equity; the academic experience; access and outreach; and demographic and campus climate data.

In September 2020, the University Cabinet identified a series of priorities related to diversity and inclusion. Issuing the report goes to one of the priorities, increasing accountability and engagement by publishing annual reports. Of the other priorities identified in 2020, campus iconography, professional development relating to DEI, and programs to assist lower-paid staff are addressed in the first section of the report; increasing faculty diversity is addressed in the second section of the report; and increasing diversity in graduate programs and in suppliers are addressed in the third section of the report. The fourth section provides statistics to assess progress towards each priority.

The 40th anniversary of the Asian American Alumni Association (A4P), the 5th anniversary of the AccessAbility Center, and the 50th anniversary of the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding, kosher dining on campus, and the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center (GSRC) are mentioned in report, an invocation of past efforts to increase diversity and inclusion.

1. Campus climate

The first section of the report highlighted University-sponsored resources and events aiming to foster a more inclusive environment for students of all backgrounds, including lectures on topics of race, gender, sexuality, and speech at the Fields Center and programs focused on women and LGBTQ+ students by the GSRC. The report noted community affinity events including more than a dozen events celebrating Latinx Heritage Month, such as a “Latine in STEM Dinner.” The report also emphasized the creation of a dedicated affinity space for Native and Indigenous community members in Green Hall in response to advocacy from student group Natives at Princeton.

The University laid out some future events and initiatives including an expansion of the CJL’s dining hall to “better serve” the growing student population. Capacity constraints on the CJL have been a topic of debate in recent weeks, as three students argued that the closure of Butler Dining Hall has led to decreased accessibility for kosher-keeping students at the CJL due to long lines.

The section discussed strides in professional development and cocurricular educational opportunities on diversity, which included 12 employee resource groups supported by Human Resources and the launch of the annual Inclusive Academy (IA) Symposium and Best of Access, Diversity, and Inclusion (BADI) Awards.

Campus iconography got a section in the report. The University highlighted changing artwork in University buildings along with renaming Marx Hall as Laura Wooten Hall. The report does not allude to a debate over whether to take down the statue of early University President John Witherspoon on the grounds that he owned slaves.

The report also emphasizes “ensuring equity” amongst faculty and staff, noting the enhancement of the Employee Child Care Assistance Program, Children’s Educational Assistance Plan, Long-Term Disability, and Adoption and Surrogacy Benefit. In 2020, the University wrote that policies and benefits would be assessed “with an eye to enhancing equity for employees in lower-paid positions and others who may have been disproportionally affected by systemic racism or other class-based disadvantages.”

The University has also created a new Human Resources position — manager for faculty and staff accommodations — to support those with disabilities. This year also saw the creation of new assistant dean positions for Muslim Life and Hindu Life, both positions that previously had the title of religious life chaplains. These are among other new positions alluded to across the report including a vice dean for diversity and inclusion, a vice provost for academic affairs, and an associate director for supplier diversity.

2. Diversity in faculty, teaching and research

In the second section of the report, the University highlighted the work of academic departments in increasing diversity.

The University emphasized efforts to increase hiring of diverse candidates by academic departments, citing flexibility in recruitment to enable academic departments to recruit in advance of a vacancy. Diversity of faculty hiring was at the center of an open letter signed by over 350 University faculty members in July 2020.

The section also highlights efforts to increase access to University resources by lowering barriers to entry, noting the Lewis Center for the Arts’s (LCA) decision to replace “high-intensity auditions” with “Try on Theater Days.”

The section closes with a discussion of academic freedom, noting that “inclusivity and respect” can coexist with academic freedom, but emphasizing: “Princeton is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters and guarantees all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn.”

This section may allude to a plank in the 2020 faculty letter calling for the University to form a committee to review and discipline racism in faculty behavior and research. The plank received pushback from some faculty members as calling for a violation of academic freedom.

3. Engagement with broader community

The report highlights initiatives that “expanded Princeton’s engagement with local community colleges during the 2021–22 academic year,” including sending 20 graduate students to teach at community colleges nearby. This comes after last year’s report promised to form these connections.

Two new positions at the Emma Bloomberg Center for Access and Opportunity will focus on the expansion of Princeton’s transfer student body and initiatives for the families of first-generation, low-income students. The University announced that over the next few years, it plans to increase the number of transfer students from 40 to approximately 100.

The report also noted efforts to

make graduate school more accessible to students from socioeconomically diverse backgrounds by increasing stipends: the University announced an average 25 percent increase in graduate fellowship and stipend rates last January. Pay for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers has been a major campus topic of discussion in 2023, with some feeling that the University’s recent pay raises are insufficient. Postdocs marched for a higher minimum salary and an effort to unionize graduate students has developed, with organizers citing pay and housing costs as motivating factors.

There is a focus on diversifying suppliers, which impacts the broader community given that the University plays a significant role in the local economy. Princeton’s supplier diversity action plan, which “aims to support more businesses owned by minorities, women, veterans, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community,” led to the creation of Princeton’s first Associate Director for Supplier Diversity. At the end of the 2021–22 fiscal year, 12 percent of the University’s total expenditures were with diverse suppliers, representing more than $114 million. Additionally, 26.8 percent of the Princeton endowment is managed by “diverse-owned firms.”

4. Breaking down the statistics

The report concludes with a section featuring data on the diversity of various campus populations, including professors, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates. Additionally, “climate data” is included, which is data gathered from surveys “assessing individuals’ experiences on campus.”

The report details the racial diversity of the undergraduate student body for 2021–22: 56 percent white, 32 percent Asian, 13 percent Black/African American, 12 percent Hispanic/ Latino/a, or Mexican American or Puerto Rican, and 2 percent Native American, Native Alaskan, or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander.According to the graph provided in the report, these numbers are roughly in line with the racial diversity of the undergraduate student body in the past few years. It is not yet clear how these numbers may be impacted if the Supreme court rules that race-conscious admissions processes are unlawful as expected. However, University President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83 has said that the decision will likely lead to a less diverse student body. The racial diversity of master’s students and doctoral students was roughly in line with the undergraduate numbers.

In 2021–22, 2 percent of undergraduate students identified as genderqueer, gender nonconforming, nonbinary, or transgender. This figure was 3 percent for master’s and doctoral students. In 2017–18, that number was 0 percent for undergraduates and master’s students and 1 percent for doctoral students.

The main demographic difference among the three given categories of students — undergraduates, master’s, and doctoral students — is in U.S. citizenship status. One in eight undergraduate students is not a citizen. For doctoral students, that number is more than two in five. Among master’s students, the percentage who are not citizens has decreased to 30 percent from 38 percent in 2017–18.

In an interview with the ‘Prince’ last semester, Eisgruber said that increasing the diversity of the faculty was a goal. Eisgruber said, “let’s see if

we can increase the number of underrepresented minorities by 50 percent over a period of five years.” He continued, “In the 2022 report … the numbers will show significant progress over the last couple of years.”

According to the report, 26.2 percent of tenured and tenure-track faculty identified as non-white or international in fall 2022, up from 23.7 percent in 2021, a 11 percent increase since 2018. There was a smaller impact on non-tenure-track faculty, a substantially more diverse group as a whole, where the number of nonwhite or international faculty increased from 35.3 to 37.1 percent, a five percent increase over the same period. The lack of faculty diversity was cited in 2020, when it was noted that the percentage of non-white tenured or tenure-track faculty members had increased from 15 percent to 19 percent in 18 years.

The report’s graphs show that, in Fall 2022, 21.4 percent of tenured or tenure-track faculty identified as Asian, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino/a/x, or American Indian/Native American/Native Alaskan. While the report does not give any numerical totals for demographic groups, the Office of Institutional Research has a Diversity Dashboard which states that in 2022, out of 1,064 total tenure or tenure-track faculty, 770 identified as white, 61 identified as Black, 43 identified as Hispanic, 5 identified as Native American, and 139 identified as Asian.

There were slight discrepancies in the data from the Diversity Dashboard compared with the graphs in the DEI report. The reason for these discrepancies was not immediately apparent.

In his interview with the ‘Prince,’ Eisgruber also discussed the economic diversity of the student body in the context of the University’s recentlyexpanded financial aid plan. Roughly one in five undergraduate students are Pell Grant-eligible, a number that has remained relatively steady for the past five years, a statistic that would not reflect the University’s new financial aid policy, which has not yet gone into effect.

The report also broke down data on campus climate, collected from surveys of students that asked the following questions: “Would you recommend Princeton to someone (same background, ability, interests, and temperament as you) considering your field of study?” and “Would you encourage a high school senior who resembles you when you were a high school senior (same background, ability, interests, and temperament as you) to attend Princeton?” The survey also asked respondents to state whether the following sentence was true or false for them: “I would encourage a prospective colleague or friend who resembles me (in interests, background, etc.) to work or study in the department.” The responses are broken down in the report by gender, sexual orientation, and race.

The main prompt, about whether students would recommend Princeton to high school seniors with similar backgrounds, saw “definitely” as the most common response. White, Asian, and Hispanic/Latino students gave more positive responses, with 75, 77, and 71 percent, respectively, responding “definitely” or “probably.” Black and Native American students, on the other hand, were slightly less likely to recommend Princeton, with their rates of answering “definitely” or “probably” resting at 61 and 65 percent.

On the same prompt, men and women had similar responses, but gender nonconforming students answered “definitely” or “probably” at a significantly lower rate.

Eisgruber framed the report in his opening letter with the following words, “This University is — and will remain — a work in progress. Commitments to diversity, inclusion, and excellence require constant vigilance and unceasing effort.”

With the University expected to continue releasing reports on diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus, progress on core goals can be monitored by community members going forward.

Julian Hartmann-Sigall is an assistant News editor for the ‘Prince.’

Bridget O’Neill is an assistant News editor for the ‘Prince.’

Eating Club officers boast extensive financial aid, process to expand continues

By Abby Leibowitz Staff News Writer

As the spring 2023 Bicker season comes to a close, and with financial aid set to substantially increase in the new year, The Daily Princetonian examines how eating clubs have worked to expand financial accessibility.

This fall, Princeton announced that starting fall 2023, it will cover the full cost of attendance for students from families making up to $100,000. In the same year, Street Week saw its largest Bicker class size since 2001.

For many financial aid recipients, affordability plays a crucial factor in bicker decisions. In a message to the ‘Prince,’ Yonatan Ambrosio ’24, a member of Cap and Gown Club, said that as a full-aid student, the affordability of eating clubs was “a driving force” in his decision to bicker.

University aid does not necessarily cover the full cost of an eating club membership. First-years and sophomores on full financial aid receive a fully subsidized, unlimited campus dining plan, valued at $7,670. The financial aid plan grants $10,034 to juniors and seniors to provide more flexibility in dining options. As the University’s financial aid website explains, “The amount of aid you receive as a junior or senior does not change, whether you choose to join an eating club, purchase a University meal plan, or eat independently.”

The fees paid to eating clubs, according to board members at a number of clubs, cover food, social events, bands, sound equipment, staff wages, and general house upkeep.

In regards to communication between eating clubs and the University, Charter Club President Mia Beams ’24, told the Prince that “transparency around University financial aid has been low which has caused some difficulties, but no concerns have been voiced to club leadership.”

Beams told the ‘Prince’ that “Charter has consistently charged less than [the University’s board] amount so that students on full aid have no out-of-pocket costs for Charter.”

Additionally, Beams shared, any students who still face financial difficulty can apply for grants ranging from $500 to $1,500. Historically, every applicant has received a grant of some amount.

Kate Liu ’23, former president of Cap, told the ‘Prince’ that the club “guarantees that no member on full financial aid pays any out-of-pocket

costs for club membership.”

Cap’s website explains that “each year, Cap members who receive any financial aid from Princeton University will receive a grant from the Cap and Gown Financial Aid Fund that covers the difference between the Princeton board rate (inclusive of the additional grant provided by Princeton Financial Aid for upperclass student board) and Cap and Gown member house and board rates.”

Ambrosio, a member of Cap, told the ‘Prince’ in a message that he is “extremely satisfied” with Cap’s financial aid. He bickered Cap because he “found from talking to others that Cap was one of the best options financially on the Street.”

“Financial aid, as it pertains to Cap membership, has never been a factor in the relationship I have with others in the club,” he said. He attributes this to Cap officers recognizing that there are members who receive aid and thus trying to create inclusive events.

Hannah Faughnan ’23, a member of Quadrangle Club, reported a similar experience. “All members receive equal privileges and treatment,” she said. “There aren’t really expectations to make expensive commitments once inside the club, and it is always communicated that any fees are negotiable.”

Faughnan noted that, in her experience, being in an eating club is just as affordable as being on the dining plan, since “the majority of [her] leftover aid is spent on school-related expenses.” However, she feels that she “would have a lot more money if [she] were independent or in a co-op.”

While no Quad board member responded to the ‘Prince’’s request for comment, Faughnan told the ‘Prince’ that “Quad has set their dues so that if a student is on full financial aid, their dues are automatically covered. For example, if full aid students receive $11k a year, quad dues may be $10k,” clarifying that these numbers were ballpark estimates for the purposes of the example.

“However, for middle-income students or students with outstanding circumstances, Quad’s financial aid is on a case-by-case basis,” Faughnan added.

Faughnan also noted that she qualified for reduced dues for accessibility reasons, not financial ones.

“Quad does not have an elevator and I am disabled, so roughly two-thirds of the clubhouse is inaccessible to me on the regular,” she said in an email to the ‘Prince’. “I requested a reduction in

dues and negotiated reduced fees that waived my house and social dues.”

“It is really important for students to know that these types of negotiations, especially in light of accessibility, ARE possible,” she added.

Leila Grant ’24, president of Terrace Club, stated that Terrace gives a total of $80,000 in grants to members every year with an additional $20,000 to student employees of the club, referring to meal checkers and other positions. Grant said this leads to no-cost options for students on zero financial aid. Grant was not sure where the money for the financial aid policy came from.

Tower Club began its own aid plan this year. Joe Becker ’23, the outgoing treasurer who built the plan, explained that “financial accessibility is one of the issues that members talk about most — every year, cost of membership in the club comes up among board discussions.”

When the inaugural financial aid policy debuted, the response was very positive, according to Becker. He noted that most of the financial aid money comes from alumni donations. Tower offers a grant of $200 a year toward eating club fees for all members qualifying for financial aid. Tower’s dues are $10,017. Multiple Tower members also noted a $140 charge, known as “Milk Money,” required for access to Tower nighttime events.

A statement by the Ivy Board of Governors sent to the ‘Prince’ by Ivy Club president Sophie Singletary ’23

explained that the club subsidizes the total cost of Ivy for students on financial aid. With the total cost at $11,800, the Ivy 1879 Foundation provides a scholarship of $1,766 for students who apply.

“Thanks to these scholarships, the family of a student on full financial aid would not have any out-of-pocket obligation to the Club,” the statement reads. “The same grant is provided to each member who receives financial aid, regardless of the percentage of the total cost of Princeton covered by the University’s aid package.”

In an email to the ‘Prince,’ Hap Cooper ’82, chair of Tiger Inn’s Board of Governors, said that this academic year, every student on financial aid who applied was awarded $1,000. He wrote that Tiger Inn is now undergoing a capital campaign to establish an endowment for financial aid and club maintenance.

Despite these financial aid policies, some students may still feel the eating clubs are not a cost effective option. Ambrosio noted that that he knows some students “stick to the dining hall or go independent because the eating clubs they want to join will be more expensive or put an additional financial burden on them.”

Cannon Club, Cloister Club, Colonial Club, and Cottage Club did not respond to the ‘Prince’s request for comment in time for publication.

Abby Leibowitz is a staff news writer for the ‘Prince.’

USG talks Campus Pub and Lawnparties, receives committee updates, and approves budget

By Nandini Krishnan Staff News Writer

The Undergraduate Student Government (USG) met on Sunday, Feb. 19 to approve the spring semester’s budget, confirm new committee members, receive committee updates, and discuss the Mental Health Work Organization.

The budget, which had not been changed from the previous week, went through a second approval vote and passed unanimously. New committee members were also confirmed unanimously.

Social Committee Chair Avi Attar ’25 provided updates on Lawnparties, explaining: “Regarding Lawnparties, we’re in the process of announcing the date, and we’re also in the process of beginning to send out bid letters to artists that we’re interested in working with.”

Attar said that beyond investing in a headliner, he hoped to “invest in other areas of the event, particularly low-cost investments that will create a positive experience.” For example, Attar hopes to invest more resources in non-headliner events on Prospect street and student gatherings at the Freedom Fountain.

Undergraduate Student Life Committee Chair Caitlin McNally ’24 spoke about creating better relaxation and communal spaces around campus. Mc-

Nally spoke of plans to propose the reinstatement of the Campus Pub, formerly located in Chancellor Green when the New Jersey drinking age was temporarily lowered to 18. There have been various unsuccessful attempts to revive the pub, including the 2011 formation of a steering committee dedicated to the matter and a 2014 referendum.

USG President Stephen Daniels ’24 frequently shared plans to revive the Campus Pub in his campaign for the role. Daniels said that the Office of General Counsel is “looking into whether we could reuse one of the previously existing liquor licenses that hosted piloted events,” in order to restart Campus Pub.

McNally also said the committee will continue to have conversations about security cameras, focus on the international student experience, and attempt to ease student burdens surrounding construction.

McNally provided updates on the Academics Committee in lieu of Academics Chair Srista Tripathi ’25. The committee is focusing on several goals: mental health in the academic context, the minors program, evaluation of the first-year experience, evolving academic policies as class sizes increase, and a TigerHub working group.

Sustainability Chair Sean Bradley ’24 said the committee was hoping to im-

prove sustainability in campus dining and within eating clubs while further educating the student body on the topic.

Campus and Community Affairs Chair Isabella Sibaja ’26 said they are looking into whether “there’s means to push for more than the regulated $150” for Pay with Points as Tigers in Town expands. In regards to Pay with Points, Daniels clarified that sophomores actually receive a maximum of $300 (when the amount from both semesters is combined) through the program to offset eating club dues, as opposed to the previous $200.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Chair Uma Fox ’26 said the committee was looking into forming USG-Affinity group ties, creating affinity spaces, forming a gender-neutral bathroom commission, adding pronouns to TigerHub, and investigating PSAFE presence at student celebrations. The group will also be looking into increasing outreach to first-generation low-income (FLI) students, enhancing resources for non-traditional students, and improving culturally-informed attendance policies.

The USG also confirmed a $1100 Project Boards expenditure by Kesher, a student-run reform Jewish community group in Princeton, to host an event with comedian Alex Edelman. The Projects Board is responsible for distribut-

ing USG funding to student organizations. The expenditure was approved unanimously.

The USG then heard from class senator Noah Luch ’24 about the Mental Health Institute (MHI). He said the group was hoping to expand collaboration with not only other USG members, but also other members of the University community. Luch hopes to continue collaborative events like MHI luncheons where “students, admin faculty staff get together to talk about their own experiences and mental health on campus.”

The group is also working on expanding mental health week and creating new support resources. Luch said he hopes to “advertise [the] group as a group where students can come in with a specific project or policy they have in mind. We can connect them with relevant people or talk them through some strategies for how to get things done.” The group was renewed as an ad-hoc community in a unanimous vote, with suggestions to promote it to a core committee at some point. The USG meetings are held on Sundays from 4–5 p.m. and are open for all students to attend.

CANDACE DO / THE DAILY

Nandini Krishnan is a staff news writer for the ‘Prince.’

Where do students spend their Dining Points? We looked at the numbers.

By Sabrina Effron Data Contributor

Speaking to broad student use, 68 percent of students used all of their Dining Points, a part of the Pay with Points program that kicked off in Fall 2022.

Created in order to increase students’ exposure to Princeton’s businesses, the Pay with Points program is an initiative implemented by the current Undergraduate Student Government (USG) president Stephen Daniels ’24 in fall of 2022, at which point he led the initiative while serving as the USG community dining task force chair.

Each student with an unlimited meal plan, including all first-years and sophomores, was given $150 of credit per semester to use at participating locations. Points carry over from the fall to spring semesters, but not between academic years; points not used by the end of the spring semester will be forfeited.

With the $300 given to each eligible student, the total cost for the program is just shy of half a million dollars.

Pay with Points began with five participating off-campus vendors: Jammin’ Crêpes, Proof Pizzeria, Small World Coffee, Say Cheez Café, and The Bent Spoon; since then, the program has expanded to 16 off-campus locations — with plans to grow. (A list of all vendors can be found here.) With more than 15 participating vendors by the end of calendar year 2022, Emma Marshall, Manager of Campus Card Systems, shared with The Daily Princetonian that the team who put the Pay with Points system together has met their goal.

In the Oct. 9, 2022 USG Senate meeting, Marshall and Chris Lentz, the Director of Customer Experience and University Services, spoke about the state of the program thus far. When asked about selecting merchants to participate in the program, Lentz said, “we are keen to think about merchants who encourage a sense of community, so we’ve been trying to prioritize places that are not just grab-andgo per se, but encourage students to come together, dine together, because that’s really part of what the program is intended to do.”

Marshall told the ‘Prince’ that students spent $140,000 in points off-campus over the fall semester. 87 percent of this value was Dining Points, and the other 13 percent was from Paw Points — a program within Pay with Points that can be used at locations including the UStore and Labyrinth Book Store.

Marshall shared further that for the month of September 2022, the first month of the program, the average amount of points spent by each student was $33, just below a quarter of the $150 given to each student per semester. Of students who have Dining Points, 81 percent used at least a dollar in that month, and the other 19 percent did not use any in September.

However, by the end of the semester, many students had — in Marshall’s words — “unsurprisingly” used most or all of their points. 68 percent of students who were given

Dining Points had less than a dollar remaining in their balance, using the vast majority or all of their points. 31 percent of students used at least a portion of their points, and the remaining students — just under 2 percent — did not use any of their points.

For the month of September, the locations where students spent their Dining Points had a fairly even distribution. In terms of breakdown, 36 percent of points were used at the off-campus locations, 40 percent were used at Campus Dining locations, and 23 percent were used at on-campus locations not operated by Campus Dining, such as the U-Store and the Coffee Club.

Those trends remained the same throughout the semester. Of the $370,000 of Dining Points spent, 32 percent were used at the off-campus locations that are a part of the program, 39 percent of the funds were spent at Campus Dining locations, and the remaining 29 percent at on-campus locations not operated by Campus Dining.

Additionally, according to Lentz and Marshall, Pay with Points expenditures were roughly evenly split across vendors, which Lentz and Marshall said was their goal. Although they were unable to provide a specific breakdown of the amounts spent at each business, they said that they were happy with the distribution because it meant that they succeeded in selecting vendors that students wanted to patronize.

“We like to see points being used at a lot of different locations because then that tells us that we’re making good selections in terms of meeting the interest and the needs of a diverse group,” Lentz said during the meeting.

Lentz and Marshall also shared that they have received positive feedback from participating vendors. Kathy Klockenbrink, co-owner of Jammin’ Crêpes (one of the original restaurants under the Pay with Points Program), said that “the system is pretty seamless,” bringing “more kids across the street” from campus to Nassau and is a “nice effort to the University with the business community.”

“One of the unexpected things that came out of the program — one of the vendors has had more students apply for positions [jobs] than they’ve ever seen before,” Marshall noted. (This instance could not be definitively linked to Pay with Points.)

Other vendors who were not a part of the program in September expressed interest in the program, reaching out to USG with an interest in the Pay with Points system. Marshall said, “We’ve also had a lot of vendors reach out to us saying, ‘hey, we’ve had students asking — do we accept points yet?’”

New businesses are opening soon on Nassau Street, which may provide new potential opportunities for the expansion of the Pay with Points program.

Sabrina Effron is a firstyear Data contributor from New York City, New York.

Elisabeth Ruschmann contributed reporting.

This Week in Photos

Rain or Shine

For this week, students captured the erratically changing weather and the coming of spring.

By Guanyi Cao, Jean Shin, Louisa Gheorghita, Aarushi Adlakha, Jessica Dong & Kenzy Elshazly Staff Photographer, Head Photo Editor & Contributing Photographers

Hum r

We looked at Datamatch numbers: here’s what we found

By Frida Ruiz Contributing Humor Writer

The following content is purely satirical and entirely fictional.

This year, over 1,500 Princetonians signed up for Datamatch, an online match-making service where students fill out a survey and create a profile. The “Algorithm™” then pairs each user with ten potential matches, which they can narrow down by selecting “Match.”

Although the intricacies of the “Algorithm™” will forever remain a mystery, this year it did an exceptional job of pairing almost everyone with a match — over 99.9% of students, to be precise. The program’s success is due to its inclusion of thoughtful and introspective questions, like “Why do so many men hold up fish in their online dating profiles?”

The Daily PrintsAnything spoke to some of the successful matches who spent Valentine’s

Day together. “This was my first time using Datamatch, and I didn’t think I would find the perfect match. That was until I found out we both spend our free time marveling at the details of Fine Hall, Princeton’s most aesthetically pleasing building,” said Loust Fuil ’25.

Fuil added, “All my friends told me no one takes Datamatch seriously, but they were obviously wrong. Our

next date is going to be a candlelit dinner of U-Store sushi in the windowless basement of Joline.” More experienced Datamatch users were pleasantly surprised by the drastically different outcomes from previous attempts at using the platform. “Last year, I was matched with a total jerk! He took me on a date only because he found out I interned at Deloitte the summer before. The en -

tire date he was begging me to refer him. This year, things are different. I truly believe I met the love of my life. He worked at McKinsey last summer and said he would give me a referral,” said Ana Moure ’23.

University President Christopher Micesgruber expressed dismay that the percentage of Datamatch users continues to go up each year, noting how the high success rate

threatens the status of the University’s “challenging, high-aspiration environment.”

Referring to heartbreak, Micesgruber said, “We need to know how to cope with and manage uncomfortable emotions, but we cannot sustain high aspirations, or personal growth, without them.”

“It’s incredible to see the sheer number of people who were able to find their one true love,“ said Kyu Pidd ’26, “but we’re all left wondering: who is that 0.1%?”

An investigation by the ‘Prints’ found the one person failed by the “Algorithm™,” who was not able to find love this Valentine’s Day. It was you. That’s right. You were the only person without a Valentine.

Frida Ruiz is a writer for the Humor section and begrudgingly signed up for Datamatch for research purposes. She can be reached at fr2168@ princeton.edu.

Board of Trustees votes to divest from dog fighting and other illegal enterprises

By Sam McComb Humor Writer

The following content is purely satirical and entirely fictional.

Princeton’s Board of Trustees voted on Thursday to divest the University’s endowment from dogfighting, copyright infringement, and various illegal businesses.

This announcement shocked the Princeton community, who were unaware that one-fifth of the University’s endow-

ment was heavily invested in criminal enterprises such as art theft, wildlife poaching, and Medicare fraud.

“When Public Safety warned us about securing our scooters, I think they should have disclosed that they were the ones trading them for cash,” said Emily Durrand ’24. Others, however, were concerned with how this divestment would affect the University’s $35.8 billion endowment, which lost $1.9 billion since last year. “Yeah, Princeton

may be stealing valuable Renaissance-era pieces” said Annabelle Howard ‘26, “but, at least it’s paying for Lawnparties.”

According to eyewitnesses, Andy Erickson, Managing Director of the Princeton University Investment Company met with Phil Leotardo, boss of the Lupertazzi crime family, at Bada Bing strip club in Lodi to break the news of the divestment.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Erickson announced that the University will cede its mo -

nopoly over criminal enterprises in Mercer County to a reputable consortium of various crime families. However, the University stated that it will maintain ownership of Bada Bing strip club chain.

Sam McComb is an associate humor editor and secondyear politics major. He’s been rejected from every acapella group on campus, including the one he co-founded.

FRIDA RUIZ / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Datamatch results for Valentine’s Day 2023

PIXABAY

Sprinkles (2022-2023), the Conor McGregor of the dog fighting world. Rest in Power, King.

“C ir C le of l ife ”

By Juliet Corless

1 Applaud

5 Hi in HI

10 Common recipient of an erroneous apostrophe

67 Actor Sean of "The Lord of the Rings" 68 Amorphous lump

1 Spiced tea

2 Superior, e.g.

3 In the thick of

4 It's mightier than the sword, so it's said

5 Company that launched "Pong"

6 Explorer Erikson

7 You can count ___

8 "Someone's gonna pay for this!"

9 She-Hulk's profession: Abbr.

10 Con

11 Like a big grin

12 Listen to gossip, slangily

13 Cardinal letters

17 Show that had an average cost of $15 million per episode for its last season 21 She played Donna in "Mamma Mia!" 23

Claire Kaneshiro

58

61

62

Affirmative action doesn’t do enough to diversify elite education

Christofer Robles Assistant Opinion Editor

According to a number of court-watchers, this spring, the Supreme Court is probably going to rule affirmative action unconstitutional. Elite colleges, like Princeton, will then be faced with the challenge of building diverse classes despite race-blind admissions, a problem University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 has admitted will be difficult to solve. But why does our admission process fail to include students of color without the bandage of affirmative action in the first place? It is because our admissions criteria is largely dependent on metrics that guarantee students of color will be excluded. We must reimagine how we admit applicants to guarantee students of color are included without superfluous solutions.

It is important to first establish why racial diversity is necessary.

Racial diversity matters because it is productive. An analysis of 366 companies yielded, “a statistically significant connection between diversity and financial performance” in research conducted by a 2015 McKinsey & Company project. According to this project, the most racially and ethnically diverse companies were “35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their national industry median,” with “companies in the bottom quartile in both gender and ethnicity” underperforming, in the same study. Not only does diversity provide an environment in which its members may feel comfortable enough to succeed, but a variety of identities yields an in-

herently nuanced and rigorous outcome by virtue of difference in thought and experience.

Racial diversity also matters because it provides community for students of color.

It is difficult to navigate a predominately white institution when hardly any of your peers share your same racial or ethnic identity. According to Princeton’s 2021–2022 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Annual Report, Black, Hispanic/ Latino, and Native American undergraduate students combined only make up 27 percent of the student body. White students make up 56 percent. If enrollment were more varied, students of color would have an easier time finding commonality and, by extension, security with people of shared experiences and practices. As a student of color myself, it has often been difficult to thrive in an environment in which my experience is so foreign to that of the majority community.

Many strong communities coexisting not only provides affinity spaces to minority students, but also the opportunity for those many communities to exchange and learn from each other.

For this reason, the University has stood by its purported commitment to “recruiting, retaining, and supporting a diverse community of students.”

Just recently, in his 2023 annual State of the University Letter, Eisgruber advocated for “embracing and cultivating talent from all backgrounds,” to fulfill our mission. But can we say Princeton really is committed to diversity if Princeton would not be diverse without the construct of affirmative action?

The core elements of Princeton admission — the parts that come before affirmative action — do not promote a di-

verse class.

One of factors listed as “Very important” to Princeton admission in the Common Data Set is the rigor of secondary school. Black students of all socioeconomic levels attend worse schools than their White peers of similar socioeconomic status.

Surveying tens of thousands of PreK–12 teachers revealed that 55.0 percent of teachers surveyed “[demonstrated] some degree of pro-White/antiBlack implicit bias,” with 14.8 percent demonstrating “some degree of pro-White/anti-Black explicit bias.” This is certain to impact GPA and recommendation letters, both also listed as “Very important” to Princeton admissions in the Common Data Set.

Standardized testing, one more “Very important” criteria, also disadvantages diverse communities. Income and race continue to strongly predict standardized testing scores, with 2020 ACT scores reflecting that students from households with incomes greater than $150,000 perform 42.9 percent better than students from households with incomes less than $24,000, and White students perform 31.0 percent better than Black and Native American students.

Though Princeton has suspended the requirement to submit standardized testing scores for the application process through 2025 in light of COVID-19, this change may not be permanent. Even with this suspension, students from privileged backgrounds still take advantage of this part of the application. Of Princeton students enrolled in the fall of 2021, 56 percent submitted their SAT scores (with the 25th percentile of enrolled students’ SAT scores being a

1470—nationally representative of a 99th percentile score), 35 percent submitted their ACT scores, and 91.25 percent had above a 3.75 high school GPA.

Princeton also continues to consider legacy, even though legacy is nothing more than a purchase made between the privileged to secure 12.5 percent of enrollment.

Clearly, the admissions system favors white and wealthy students — not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. Affirmative action does not resolve this, however. Although affirmative action has been an important tool for nationally increasing diversity in higher education, it is simply an unsustainable bandage on a defective admissions ethos.

To promote diversity without affirmative action, Princeton ought to redefine its admissions criteria to realize its “pervasive commitment to serve the nation and the world.” Rather than continuing to rely on inequitable and often dubious metrics for predicting performance then, Princeton would place more emphasis on past achievement and future potential in service.

So what would a new admissions criteria look like? In an enhanced Princeton Common Data Set: Work experience and volunteer work, which are currently only “Considered” should be given “Very important” consideration; categories like community involvement, familial obligation, and demonstrated commitment to intellectual and social curiosity could be added; “Rigor of secondary school,” “Academic GPA,” and “Standardized test scores” could drop to “Considered” or be removed entirely; legacy admissions would end.

This solution does not signal a lowering of standards

but a challenging of them. A university designed to foster altruism not only better justifies our tax-exempt status, but is actually good. If a Princeton education is supposed to be in the name of service, then why does our admissions process reflect a monetary and racial bargain with bleak post-grad public sector participation?

Yes, having a class less based on “success-predicting” benchmarks may lead to students who struggle more in college, but it is Princeton’s responsibility to be inventive in accommodating these students. An environment that promotes inequitable and selfserving failure is not rigorous, it is neglectful. Disadvantaged students should be supported such that they are better able to take advantage of Princeton’s immense financial and educational resources. If not, the University is simply perpetuating a system that only caters to an already greatly and historically prepared and rewarded group of students.

Strong character and dedication to community is far less defined by one’s test scores than by an applicant’s commitment to using Princeton and its riches to contribute to good. The University’s admissions process ought to reflect the values it prides itself on and consider the potential that it may cultivate when it is better able to select students who indicate a strong desire to learn and better the world in diverse ways.

Christofer Robles is a sophomore from Trenton, N.J. He serves as an Assistant Opinion Editor and DEIB Committee Chair. Christofer can be reached at cdrobles@princeton. edu or on Instagram @christofer_ robles.

Consistency matters in campus free speech debates

Last week, the Department of English hosted Mohammed El-Kurd, a left-wing writer and anti-Israel activist, for its annual Edward W. Said ’57 Memorial Lecture. El-Kurd, a 24-year-old columnist for The Nation, has a long history of making incendiary anti-Israel statements. His past comparisons of Jewish Israelis to “Nazis,” his praise for the Second Intifada, and his defense of a University of Southern California student who said she wanted to “kill” Zionists are just a few examples. El-Kurd’s past statements are obscene and depraved, and his searing antiIsrael views, as shown, obviously verge into blatant antisemitism. In addition, both El-Kurd’s contemptible past commentary and his raucous campus appearance on Feb. 8 clearly demonstrate his preference for brazen prejudice and circus-like provocation over serious intellectual engagement. Much of the campus’s response to El-Kurd’s appearance was justified and reasonable. El-Kurd’s views were harshly condemned by many Jewish students and the leaders of both of the University’s Jewish chaplaincies. But in their understandable frustration with the English department’s decision to give El-Kurd a platform, some students appeared to urge that important aspects of institutional neutrality to be set aside in order to elicit official condemnations of El-Kurd and his appearance on campus. A letter, authored by Alexandra Orbuch ’25 and reportedly signed by over

40 students, called on the English department to “openly denounce” El-Kurd and “condemn” its own event.

While the letter’s signatories professed “full support” for the robust freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry protections contained within Section 1.1.3. of Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities, they overlooked the part of Section 1.1.3. that affirms that “it is for the individual members of the University community” and “not for the University as an institution” to judge whether speech is “offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.” The English department, as a constituent institution of the University, has no business issuing statements or taking official positions on speech-related issues.

Of course, the English department’s actual commitment to institutional neutrality is nonexistent. The acting department chair’s claim that “the Department as a whole does not issue statements,” offered in advance of El-Kurd’s appearance, is laughable and easily proven untrue, given that its website features a highly contestable statement taking ideological positions on racism and colonialism in literature. Even so, the English department’s obvious hypocrisy is not an excuse for community members — who are ostensibly committed to a free and open campus environment — to themselves advocate for further breaches of institutional neutrality. As others have eloquently expressed in this publication’s pages before, a steadfast dedication to upholding institutional neutrality is an essential and inextricable aspect

of the University’s stated commitment to freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression. In short, without consistent faithfulness to principles of institutional neutrality, Princeton compromises its ability to fulfill its truth-seeking mission.

It would have been wrong for the English department to denounce and condemn its own event, just as it was wrong for the dean of the School of Public and International Affairs to send an institution-wide memo decrying Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal as “dangerous,” and wrong for the classics department to issue an official statement denouncing a professor’s protected speech as “fundamentally incompatible with our mission and values as

educators.” The deplorable nature of El-Kurd’s past statements and the widespread violations of institutional neutrality elsewhere at Princeton do not justify attempts by those who profess a commitment to free speech and open inquiry to abandon those principles when they feel it suits them.

Rather, as the University of Chicago’s renowned Kalven Report notes, abridgments of institutional neutrality must be carefully limited to “exceptional” situations where a university’s mission is at risk or academic freedom is itself under threat. El-Kurd’s appearance, while highly inflammatory and understandably offensive to many, does not meet those exceedingly high standards. Instead of clamoring for insti-

tution-wide censures and official condemnations, we as students are called to vigorously debate and critically engage with those whose opinions we find abhorrent or objectionable. Indeed, this is what several attendees at the El-Kurd event sought to do. For those of us who are truly committed to building a university that consistently upholds freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression, such a method of serious and critical engagement represents the only principled approach to challenging anti-intellectual provocateurs like El-Kurd.

Matthew Wilson is a junior in the Department of Politics from Ashburn, Va. He can be reached at mxwilson@ princeton.edu

NATALIA MAIDIQUE / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Students walk past McCosh Hall, home of the English department.

Matthew Wilson Contributing Columnist

editor-in-chief

Rohit Narayanan '24

business manager

Shirley Ren ’24

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

president Thomas E. Weber ’89

vice president

David Baumgarten ’06

secretary Chanakya A. Sethi ’07

treasurer Douglas Widmann ’90

assistant treasurer

Kavita Saini ’09

trustees

Francesca Barber Craig Bloom ’88

Kathleen Crown

Suzanne Dance ’96

Gabriel Debenedetti ’12

Stephen Fuzesi ’00

Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05

Michael Grabell ’03

Danielle Ivory ’ 05

Rick Klein ’98

James T. MacGregor ’66

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd Abigail Williams ’14

Tyler Woulfe ’07

trustees ex officio

Rohit Narayanan ’24

Shirley Ren ’24

147TH MANAGING BOARD

upper management

Kalena Blake ’24

Katherine Dailey ’ 24

Julia Nguyen ’ 24

Angel Kuo 24

Hope Perry ’ 24

Strategic initiative directors

Archivist

Gabriel Robare ’24

Education

Kareena Bhakta ’ 24

Amy Ciceu ’ 24

head audience editor

Financial Stipend Program

Genrietta Churbanova 24

Mobile Reach

Rowen Gesue ’24

DEIB Chair

Christofer Robles ’25

Sections listed in alphabetical order.

community opinion editor

Rowen Gesue ’24

associate audience editors

Laura Robertson ’24

Paige Walworth ’26

head copy editors

Jason Luo ’25

Nathalie Verlinde ’24

associate head copy editors

Tiffany Cao ’24

Naisha Sylvestre ’25

head data editor

Elaine Huang ’25

Charlie Roth ’25

head features editors

Paige Cromley ’24

Tori Tinsley ’24

associate features editor

Sejal Goud ’25

head graphics editors

Noreen Hosny ’25

Katelyn Ryu ’25

head humor editors

Spencer Bauman ’25

Liana Slomka ’23

associate humor editors

Sam McComb ’25

Sophia Varughese ’26

head news editors

Sandeep Mangat ’24

Isabel Yip ’25

associate news editors

Lia Opperman ’25

Annie Rupertus ’25

Tess Weinreich ’25

head newsletter editors

Olivia Chen ’26

Sidney Singer ’25

associate newsletter editor

Aly Rashid ’26

head opinion editor

Abigail Rabieh ’25

Stop blaming students for the mental health crisis: A response to Ethan Hicks ’26

Justin Lee

Guest Contributor

Lucia Wetherill ’25

associate opinion editors

Eleanor Clemans-Cope ’26

Ashley Olenkiewicz ’25

head photo editor

Jean Shin ’26

head podcast editor

Eden Teshome ’25

associate podcast editors

Senna Aldoubosh ’25

Kavya Kamath ’26

head print design editors

Avi Chesler ’25

Malia Gaviola ’26

head prospect editors

Kerrie Liang ’25

Claire Shin ’25

associate prospect editors

Isabella Dail ’26

Joshua Yang ’25

head puzzles editors

Joah Macosko ’25

Simon Marotte ’26

associate puzzles editors

Juliet Corless ’24

Sarah Gemmell ’24

Jaeda Woodruff ’25

head sports editors

Nishka Bahl ’26

Wilson Conn ’25

associate sports editors

Cole Keller ’26

Brian Mhando ’26

head web design and development editors

Ananya Grovr ’24

Brett Zeligson ’24

associate web design and development editor

Vasila Mirshamsova ’26

147TH BUSINESS BOARD

assistant business manager

Aidan Phillips ’25

business directors

Benjamin Cai ’24

Juliana Li ’24

Samantha Lee ’24

Gabriel Gullett ’25

Amanda Cai ’25

Jonathan Lee ’24

project managers

Brian Zhou ’26

Sophia Shepherd ’26

Andrew He ’26

Diya Dalia ’24

Tejas Iyer ’26

Laura Zhang ’26

Dauen Kim ’26

Julia Cabri ’24

Jessica Funk ’26

Tony Ye ’23

Anika Agarwal ’25

147TH TECHNOLOGY BOARD

chief technology officer

Joanna Tang ’24

lead software engineer

Roma Bhattacharjee ’25

software engineers

Eugenie Choi ’24

Carter Costic ’26

Dylan Esptein-Gross ’26

Ishaan Javali ’26

Adam Kelch ’26

Tai Sanh Nguyen ’26

John Ramirez ’26

Aidan Phillips ’25

Jessie Wang ’25

Shannon Yeow ’26

Brett Zeligson ’24

THIS PRINT ISSUE WAS DESIGNED BY

Avi Chesler ’25

Malia Gaviola ’26

Annabel Green ’26

Vanessa Auth ’26

Cindy Chen ’26

Vivi Lu ’26 AND COPIED BY

Lindsay Pagaduan ’26

Arecent op-ed from Guest Contributor Ethan Hicks ’26 claims that Princeton’s academic rigor and mental health problem is merely “the price of greatness.” This price is not right — the price of greatness and excellence should be hard work and dedication, not asking students to sacrifice their mental health. Yes, some stress has been scientifically proven to help performance, and whether it be from academics, extracurriculars, or social life, stress may be an inevitable part of life. Hicks echoes the words of President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 who first implied that academic rigor should not be sacrificed in the name of mental health. But, this choice to blame students for the campus mental health crisis deflects the causes of stress. We have to invest in our campus resources, not cast blame on the student body.

Let me be clear: I do not think Princeton should arbitrarily give out A’s to every student, nor decrease the depth and breadth of the academics offered here, nor make assignments less significant. Princeton is challenging and students who come to Princeton know that it takes hard work and dedication to succeed.

Princetonians want to challenge themselves and immerse themselves in an environment to push their intellectual limits. Many would also agree that academic rigor as a concept should be preserved; In fact, academic rigor is one of the many things that makes Princeton great. Luckily for us, academic rigor, including difficult rites of passage such as writing seminars and the senior theses, is not, in my opinion, truly at the heart of Princeton’s mental health problem. Rather, the problem is the lack of accessible mental health resources and our overall attitude towards mental health. What is the point of expanding campus when it’s clear that the real construction that needs to be done is expanding mental health resources? The current limitations of Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS) and the steps that should be taken to improve CPS in order to truly meet the needs of Princeton students have been well-documented.

Yet, I’d like to direct our focus to something equally important: the stigmatization of mental health on campus. Mental health, despite its importance, remains stigmatized, and the minimization of the struggles students experience is a step in the wrong direction. Both Hicks and President Eisgruber blame students for their own struggles with mental health. Hicks suggests that “self-destructive choices,” such as “[finding] ourselves on Prospect Avenue past midnight multiple times a week” whilst taking on a heavy course and extracurricular load, is what leads to deteriorating mental health.

Similarly, President Eisgruber comments on Princeton’s “work hard, play hard” culture and asserts that if “‘play hard’ involves alcohol or other drugs, it is by far the riskier element of that couplet from a mental health standpoint.” These types of remarks place the blame on students for being overwhelmed, suggesting that choices solely devoted to having fun are problematic rather than restorative. This attitude stigmatizes mental health issues, causing students to be ashamed for so-called problems of their own making, rendering them less likely to seek help.

However, for any successful — and, perhaps more importantly, fulfilling — life, balance is key. To many, the nights on Prospect are their outlet to de-stress. Extracurricular activities build relationships that last far longer than their time at Princeton. Taking difficult courses and setting ambitious goals motivates many students. Granted, everyone has difficulty with setting goals and managing their efficiency. Many of us do set challenging goals. Yet, these are not problems that warrant blame or intense criticism, especially considering that Princeton encourages students to take advantage of the bevy of opportunities outside of the classroom. The answer is not to make students feel guilty, but to provide the resources to improve their time management skills.

Worse, the stigmatization of mental health and stress coupled with an inadequate support network creates a perpetual cycle of worsening mental health, in which students need help but are unable to access it.

Even the currently offered support focuses on productivity optimization at whatever

cost necessary, as opposed to addressing the “deal with it” culture; the emails we receive about managing heavy readings or problem sets still center on trivial advice. Princeton culture says that the ends justify the means, and there is currently no effort to transform this into a movement to make obtaining a degree actually mentally sustainable. No emails or 50-minute appointments can change a dominant attitude.

Any improvements to the support offered by CPS are likely to be ineffective unless they are coupled with efforts at destigmatization. After all, it doesn’t matter what resources are accessible if students are unwilling to utilize them.

When we bring up our concerns about Princeton’s institutionalized limitations on supporting student mental health, we shouldn’t be accused of challenging the core principle of Princeton’s aspirational educational model and that we are looking for an “easy-way out”, advocating for grade inflation or the reduction of the quality of education offered here. Yet on the whole, complaints about stress and productivity culture have not asked the University to compromise its academic rigor; instead, they have been pleas for support and understanding.

Rather than minimizing these natural parts of student life as “self destructive,” resources must be allocated to help students with time management and goal setting, through the McGraw Center or other programs. Furthermore, steps need to be taken to destigmatize these struggles and affirm to students that feeling overwhelmed isn’t a sign of weakness, that wanting to talk to others about these emotions isn’t unnatural, and that it isn’t shameful to utilize resources like the CPS drop-in hours and the Princeton Peer Nightline. I have the following demands for students: Increase outreach on an institutional level to destigmatize stress and mental health. Make mental health and stress management a core right for students here at Old Nassau. Academic rigor and student well-being can and should coexist, especially at an institution like Princeton.

Justin Lee is a freshman from Toronto, Canada. He can be reached at justin.lee@princeton. edu.

Why is the Office of Religious Life celebrating Israel’s Independence Day?

Zachariah Sippy Guest Contributor

The first time that I ever received any serious reprimand for misbehavior in school was in the seventh grade. At the suburban midwestern Jewish Day School I attended from ages 8 to 14, we commemorated a wide variety of Jewish holidays. But as I came of age, I became increasingly skeptical about the “Jewish” content of many of the events that we celebrated.

Towards the end of an all-school assembly celebrating Israel’s Independence Day in 2013, I refused to stand and sing the Israeli national anthem with the rest of my peers, and held a printed image of a Palestinian flag. I wish that I could say that my actions were wholly motivated by a selfless demonstration of solidarity with Palestinians subjected to what a litany of human rights groups has aptly described as Israeli apartheid. But truth be told, my conduct also reflected, at least in part, the antics of an attention-seeking teenager.

Retroactive analysis of my intentions aside, after I refused to participate in the singing of the anthem, a school administrative figure rushed to my side and insisted that I stand. I didn’t. Later that day, another school employee insulted me and compared my behavior to that of Hitler. It was a deeply painful and formative experience.

The lesson I learned that day was clear: whenever young American Jews questioned their relationship to the state of Israel, others would question their Jewishness. Jews like me are branded by Jewish community leaders as “Un-Jews,” and regularly excluded from the institutional Jewish world, including at Princeton’s own Center for Jewish Life (CJL). (Take for example, the recent advocacy of CJL Executive Director Rabbi Gil Steinflauf ’91 for the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which effectively equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, serving to brand many Jews critical of Israel as either self-hating or not Jewish altogether.)

In a letter sent to the student body last week, Dean of the College Jill Dolan directed members of the Princeton community to a list of religious holidays compiled by the Office of Religious Life (ORL). Among the Jewish holidays on the ORL list: Israeli Independence (Yom HaAtzmaut) and Israeli Memorial Day (Yom HaZikaron).

The ORL’s inventory and Dean Dolan’s

Letter to the Editor: The ORL is right to recognize all Jewish holidays

email served as yet another example of the painful erasure of non- and anti-Zionist Jews from the Jewish community on this campus. To state the obvious: Israeli Independence and Memorial Day are not historic Jewish holidays; they are recent inventions of a modern nation-state. (No other day of national independence or memorial is on the ORL list.)

Many non- and anti-Zionist Jews, such as myself, are uncomfortable with undiscriminating celebrations of Israel’s Independence, which entailed the mass expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians, a process amounting to ethnic cleansing. And Yom HaZikaron — an uncritical day of mourning for Israeli soldiers and terror victims — is similarly problematic, often ignoring the root causes of Palestinian resistance to occupation and apartheid, to say nothing of the millions of Palestinians who have suffered and received no such memorial.

Judaism is not Zionism. And when campus administrators imply that they are one and the same, it is inaccurate and offensive. The University should not be in the business of declaring new Jewish holidays, especially when such proclamations serve exclusionary and reactionary ends.

Zachariah Sippy is a senior from Lexington, Kentucky, and Managing Editor emeritus of The Daily Princetonian.

Yonah Berenson Guest Contributor

The following is a letter to the editor and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit a letter to the Opinion Section, click here.

In “Why is the Office of Religious Life celebrating Israel’s Independence Day?,” Zachariah Sippy ’23 protests the inclusion of Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut — Israel’s memorial and independence days — on the ORL’s calendar of religious holidays. “The University,” Sippy writes, “should not be in the business of declaring new Jewish holidays, especially when such proclamations serve exclusionary and reactionary ends.”

I set Sippy’s claims of ethnic cleansing and of the “exclusionary and reactionary” nature of these days aside not because I accept them — I do not — but because they distract from his argument’s main flaw: What exactly does Sippy think the ORL’s calendar is supposed to do? Is it a prescriptive set of rules declaring who must celebrate which holiday? Certainly not. Yud Tet Kislev, for example, is marked as a Jewish holiday on the ORL calendar. I, a Jew, do not celebrate that holiday because it is actually specific to the Chabad Hasidic sect. Many of my Jewish friends at Princeton of varying levels of religious observance do not celebrate one or more

of the holidays marked as Jewish on the ORL calendar. No one feels pressure to observe them because the ORL listed them as Jewish. That’s because the purpose of the calendar is not to endorse religious holidays. Instead, it is to note holidays that are celebrated by certain students to increase understanding of others’ religious practices. It recognizes reality; it does not create or endorse it. And the reality is that Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut are observed by Jews on Princeton’s campus and around the world. Many of us observe these days not as the invention of a “nationstate” but as religious holidays. On Yom HaZikaron, our community will recite prayers commemorating those who died fighting for a Jewish state (and those who died in acts of terror just for living in it). On Yom HaAtzmaut, we will recite Hallel, the traditional prayer of gratitude, in recognition of what we believe to be the miraculous restoration of Jewish self-rule after two millennia.

Sippy need not mark those days with me and the dozens of Jews on Princeton’s campus who will. But if anything is “reactionary,” it is his demand that our very real religious practices be excluded and ignored.

Yonah Berenson is a sophomore from Los Angeles, CA. He can be reached at yberenson@princeton.edu.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are crucial to Princeton. Let’s change how we talk about them.

In this year’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Annual Report, the University presents progress worth recognizing. The University reports higher levels of faculty and student diversity. Many of its affinity spaces had landmark anniversaries, bringing together alumni and students to celebrate the increasing heterogeneity of our campus community. All of this is news we should commend and utilize to frame conversations about the future of Princeton.

Yet, despite these successes, the narrative surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) leaves much to be desired. University President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83 dedicates a large portion of his opening message to presenting DEI as an “investment” in building Princeton’s “talent.” He includes one extended anecdote:

“We saw the importance

of [DEI] principles in October 2021 when five Princetonians received Nobel Prizes. Four of these laureates were immigrants to the United States and the fifth was a dual citizen. Their achievements remind us that supporting talent from all backgrounds constitutes a long-term investment in teaching, research, and innovation that benefits our country and the world.”

This narrative is a common one: promoting DEI translates into more opportunities for individuals to succeed and for institutions to thrive. While President Eisgruber may be attempting to laud the successes of diverse members of our community through this popular argument, the characterization misses the mark. Advancing DEI is a necessity for “scholarly and teaching excellence,” President Eisgruber mentions. However, it is more importantly a necessity in treating people with basic humanity and respect.

When we depict DEI as a mere “investment” and a step

toward the accrual of meritocratic excellence, we imply it would not be a priority if it didn’t have value for the University’s wider goals. Actualizing DEI becomes a method for furthering aims of institutional success and prestige, as opposed to a value in and of itself.

The impacts of this popular messaging fall on the very community members DEI initiatives aim to center. Diverse students are made to “prove” the worth of DEI initiatives through the prizes we win and the recognition we accrue. This implication feeds into the well-documented “model minority myth” in American society. This exceptionalism is one of the many pressures making it difficult to thrive at Princeton as a marginalized student. When diverse students are reminded of their status as “investments,” they become tokens with expectations of greatness placed on them. The phrase “DEI” has an implicit connection to the crucial idea of “belonging” — the

ability for all of us to thrive

and feel like valued members of the Princeton community. When we make our DEI initiatives conditional on their benefits for the University’s aims, as opposed to students, staff, and faculty themselves, we make “belonging” conditional on what diverse people can bring to the table. We will not all be Nobel Prize winners, yet we all deserve to study, learn, live, and belong at this institution. Our strengths not only lie in cutting-edge scholarship or tokens of merit, but in the conversations we have, the perspectives we add, and the roles we play as community members.

What if we didn’t focus on the accolades, but instead on quantitative data measuring belonging and qualitative stories of community on campus? What if DEI wasn’t a strategic investment but a reaffirmation of Princeton’s dedication to being in the “service of humanity?” What if we framed DEI not as a quest for institutional merit, but as a necessary, historic

reckoning our University is excited to lead?

The sensitivity and complexity of DEI demand nuanced messaging that re-affirms belonging. Already, we can see possibilities for its development. Michele Minter’s message in the report aptly recognizes that we’ve “[held ourselves] accountable for systemic change.” This messaging, rooted in the value of DEI, is what we need more of. We can invest in diversity while recognizing that students, staff, and faculty are more than diversified investments in a portfolio aimed at maximizing acclaim. We can build an inclusive community through humility and humanity, and we can make a better Princeton when we celebrate our community members for being people — not fungible assets.

Uma Fox (she/they) is a firstyear from Maryland. She can be reached at umafox@princeton. edu.

Uma Fox Guest Contributor

the PROSPECT.

Love Languages

By Kyung Eun Lee Staff Prospect Writer

In movies, books, and real life, we’ve all encountered the classic scene when one person drops the L word. Finally, after waiting many moons for the honeymoon stage to pass, a lover professes: “I Love You.”

Why is there always tension and suspense in these three words? What is it about this arrangement, the entanglement of “I” and “You” and the mediating “Love” in between? What does it really mean for a relationship to be defined by love?

Why does love always seem to escape language?

Whether it’s perceived as serendipitous or catastrophic, love is an event that transcends the discourses of everyday life. When one confesses their love to another for the first time, they’re always fascinated. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, I’m not one to say.

But that’s why an event of love and loving can’t fit into the regular discourse of language.

Love remains “horizontal” in language, as Roland Barthes states in “A Lover’s Discourse.” The horizontal arrangement forces love into a successive series of episodes, through “I,” “Love,” then “You.”

We still can’t quite make out the proper meaning of the sentence, “I love you,” but usually, we give it time, let it simmer, and we can reciprocate.

Isn’t this exactly what happens when someone confesses their love? Everything is suspended — the beloved doesn’t know what to say because they are unsure if they’re ready to mirror their lover. They don’t know what love means. If they say it back, they’re afraid of not meaning it — or worse, meaning it, saying it, and being disappointed with a mediocre feeling. For example, in season one, episode 16 of “Gilmore Girls,” protagonist Rory goes through this exact situation when her first boyfriend, Dean, confesses his love for her. Rory can’t help but be “surprised,” and nothing else.

It’s always made me anxious, the order of this statement. It’s as if “Love,” is a force — the only force — that keeps “I” and “You” intimately intertwined. Yet simultaneously, it’s the one thing in the world that can prevent us from coming together. It feels as though “I” and “You” could burst into flames from anxiously tread-

FAMILY

Continued from page 1

ing the blurry lines that are so carefully, yet carelessly, demarcated by “Love.”

In some sense, love obtrudes and keeps us apart in order to save us from each other — isn’t it always the case that if one lets love marinate for too long, hate bubbles up, and if hate simmers long enough, it eventually boils over into an amorous love?

When discussing “relationship” issues with a friend, she asked me, “Why would you stay friends with someone who’s only ever going to like you more than that? It’s cruel for both you and for them.” It’s true.

Whenever anyone speaks to me of love, they always only say, “Well, love is love!” They give concrete examples of how love is represented through “love-acts” like presents, touch, words of affirmation, and affection. Isn’t that the whole point of having “love languages”? Because we can’t speak of love or properly define it. We know immediately when it happens — that is, when we fall in love — but it’s never easy to put it into words.

Love escapes language.

For Jean Luc-Nancy in “Shattered Love,” love is already

splitting me from my original other piece. Now, I’m eternally searching for what I’ve lost. Soulmate? Mother? Daughter? Who am I looking for? Where are they?

Other languages illustrate love differently. The first version I ever learned was in Korean: “Sa-Rang-Hae.” It’s an isolated action, and the subject-object relationship is only implied. “You” and “I” are no longer in the picture, but we are properly negated. The love story is never about us. It’s a story about love and only love in and of itself. The utterance, “Sa-Rang-Hae,” holds a greater connotation of sacrifice — belonging to a strong culture of kinship. “SaRang-Hae” is used for unconditional love. It brings me back to childhood, before I learned to say anything in the first person, before I learned to speak for myself. For me, saying “Sa-RangHae” destroys the individual and gives in to universal love.

In French, “Je t’aime” is of a different nature. Instead of “J’aime toi,” “Je t’aime” detours to the direct object, putting the subject, “Je,” and the object, “te,” in an intimate encounter. Perhaps for the French, love is more narcissistic. Lovers can’t help but trap the beloved in a space between them and love.

Once love decides to end, there’s no way out except to look the other way. Otherwise, it can only arrive at its underside: hate.

For some reason, though, I can’t help but still have faith in this strange thing called love.

There’s no other way to explain the obsession people have (and have had since the beginning of time) with love, regardless of — or maybe because of — its eternal ambiguity.

What is love?

Every time I feel like I’m close to understanding it, I immediately fall through the cracks of reason, suspended in thought, and placed farther away than I’ve ever been before.

ken in its syntactic form: “Love re-presents I to itself broken… this subject, was touched, broken into, in his subjectivity, and he is from then on, for the time of love, opened by this slice, broken or fractured, even if only slightly.”

Rather than thinking of love as the force that breaks a person that was already whole, I like to think that it simply exaggerates an inherent split we all have in ourselves — just like when a plate shatters, there was probably an invisible crack that was already there.

Likewise, ancient myths, from the Bible to Plato, say that man was originally made up of two of our current forms. They tell me that something happened at the beginning of time,

I’m also tempted to see “Je t’aime” as a performance — as if a lover says, “I love you, don’t you see? I’m here. I’m you. I love for you.” It’s an excessive statement that overflows from the lack of mediation between the subject and the object. It reminds me of Paris — the city’s overabundance and over-valorization grows from the roots of its language, performing glamorous lights every night on the Eiffel tower and begging for an audience.

There are so many ways to confess and profess love. Circling around the subject until it doesn’t seem real — a sophism that intellectuals with existential ennui created for themselves when they couldn’t figure out the actual meaning hidden under the word “Love.”

That’s why love is cruel. We can feel it, but we can never know it. It keeps us waiting, and in the final moment when we confess our feelings for each other, it leaves us high and dry. So, I have no choice but to keep circling back until I catch the meaning of love.

Kyung Eun Lee is a staff writer for The Prospect at the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at kl4617@princeton. edu or on Instagram @entertainmentkyung.

Sympoh stuns in spring show

choreographers and casts to have creative freedom.” The placement of the parody motif both allowed company members to craft their individual styles and maintain enthrallment throughout the show. The light-hearted satire provided transitions between the awe-inducing Windmills, Baby Freezes, and Air Freezes, classic break-dance moves present throughout every dance. Hip-hop and break-dancing were central to the night, but influences of martial arts and gymnastics also surfaced. The choreography reflected the mosaic of dance styles and interpretations that the dancers wanted to honor by incorporating them in the rap-centric pieces. Every spin and shuffle provoked amazement. Each leg swing, torso sway, and boisterous jump possessed power. Dexterity of the hand motions, intricacy of the footwork, and sharpness of the movements highlighted suave, groovy energy. The end featured a performance that began as a spirited rendition of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want

for Christmas Is You” but eventually evolved as each dancer improvised their own funky moves to auto-tuned emo rap. Tying together the best of freestyle and break-dance, this choreography is what I learned was known as the Bread Piece.

Lin and Dinh clarified that the Bread Piece is a Sympoh tradition that “allows people to just enjoy themselves and participate in a choreography that’s not really meant to be executed perfectly, but to give the audience something to laugh about.” They elaborated, saying, “Bread Piece represents a prime aspect of Sympoh: no matter how hard we work, we always make sure to have fun as well.”

Further, it was evident that strong sentiments of passion reigned throughout the production. Every breaker (jargon for an individual who break-dances) reciprocated each other’s energy and excitement. Each move was executed with vitality and vigor. They were absorbed in the hype of the environment.

As the only no-cut, no-audition dance group on campus, Sympoh takes pride in this differentiating virtue that creates a prevalent sense of camaraderie.

“Starting from nothing, we all help each other grow as dancers during laid-back seshes that really feel like you’re just hanging out with friends while trying to throw a cool move that you learned about,” said Lin and Dinh. They further articulated how their relaxed practice culture “along with the freestyle nature of break-dance itself, are things that [they] feel have helped us develop relationships with each other that keep alums from even decades ago coming back.”

Sympoh has become a place for students to integrate into the Princeton community. As Kevin Rosales ’26, my friend and fellow zee who joined the company this past semester, proclaimed, “Sympoh is more than just a dance group — it’s a group of friends here at Princeton.” Essentially, Sympoh is a close-knit family that has “made [the] experience at Princeton a lot more of an easy and enjoyable experience to transition into,” according to Rosales.

After one of the fillers, Rosales was encouraged by upperclassmen members to join them on stage for the freestyle segment, despite not being part of the official lineup of the show. Company members who were initially spec-

tators for the night soon became active performers. At one point, Rosales showed off impressive moves in the center of the semicircle huddle, which consisted of the entire dance company.

“It was very gratifying to be able to show off what I have been practicing since the beginning of my freshman year to both my peers and those in the audience,” Rosales remarked. “It overall encapsulated feelings of genuine thrill, adrenaline, and most of all, fun,” he added.

I’ve been to other dance shows before. I’ve never seen one where members in the audience are pulled onto stage and put everything they have into expressing themselves as B-Boys and B-Girls, as Rosales did that Friday night. Amidst the hype of the dynamic break-dancing, there is a strong pillar of comradeship that drives the group, galvanizing the passion of every piece and performer. Sympoh bled energy and comradery: qualities that personify the company as one big, vivacious family.

Russell Fan is an assistant editor for The Prospect at the ‘Prince.’ He can be reached at rf4125@princeton. edu, or on Instagram @russell__fan.

‘A physical place of transition’: Inside Princeton’s natural gas plant

By Raphaela Gold Staff Features Writer

On a chilly day, as students meander down Elm Drive heading south to the new colleges for a meal, or perhaps rushing to class, they might be consumed in conversation or music. But if any of the passersby happened to look up, they might notice a plume of water vapor billowing from a nearby pipe attached to a squat, rectangular building.

This structure is Princeton’s cogeneration plant, and through the combustion of natural gas, it has been heating, cooling, and providing electricity to Princeton’s campus since 1996. The campus is in a moment of energy transition as the University builds a geoexchange system that will become the primary energy system over the course of the next decade. On a tour of the cogeneration plant, The Daily Princetonian saw the energy transition process first-hand and learned about the day-to-day life of the operators who have been working to power the University’s buildings for years.

In the context of natural gas, combustion refers to the burning of natural gas to produce heat, as well as various chemical byproducts. The cogeneration plant uses this reaction to generate heat and electricity simultaneously. The plant can take credit for the refuge in warm classrooms or residential colleges that students are guaranteed on a chilly day.

In an interview with the ‘Prince,’ Tom Nyquist, Executive Director of Facilities Engineering and Campus Energy, explained how geo-exchange will improve upon the existing cogeneration system. In the summer, as the cogeneration plant provides air conditioning to campus by sending cold water to buildings, that water picks up heat from the atmosphere as it returns to the plant. “We have to get rid of the heat. Traditionally, we just blow it into the atmosphere,” said Nyquist.

The geo-exchange system will take that excess heat and press it into the ground through a heat exchanger, which will warm up the bedrock beneath campus. In the winter, the system will harvest the stored energy and send it back in order to heat campus buildings. “It’s seasonal storage,” Nyquist explained. “We’re recycling the heat from summer into winter.”

Even after the geo-exchange is fully installed, the cogeneration system will continue to run in extreme weather conditions to save the University the cost of purchasing energy from the regional power grid. The cogeneration plant will remain a critical part of the campus energy network, serving as a backup for the geo-exchange.

Energy Plant Director Ted Borer gave the ‘Prince’ a tour of the cogeneration plant to explain its inner workings and where the new geo-exchange network will fit in.

After entering the warm building and adjusting to its industrially lit interior, visitors are greeted by a

twisting maze of colorful pipes lining the ceiling and walls: greens, blues, reds, purples, and oranges.

The pipes are color-coded to represent specific purposes, helping both plant workers and outside contractors understand the system. “And almost as a tertiary thing, it’s kind of sweet for tours,” said Borer. “It makes it pretty.”

“The purple pipe goes down to the thermal storage out back. The green pipe goes up and helps this [large chiller] evaporate water and throw heat away,” he explained.

As geo-exchange is gradually installed over the next decade, the plant will be renovated to make way for new pipes and structures. Borer pointed to a large empty space in the plant where the team is planning to install their next chiller and has already allotted a spot to connect the new pipe to the larger system.

“We’ve already thought through where the electricity comes from, what size [the chiller] would be, where the pipes would connect up,” Borer explained.

“We try to plan one or two chess moves ahead of wherever we are now,” he added.

Moving briefly outdoors, Borer pointed out the 12 squat cooling towers from which heat from water coming out of the energy plant is ejected.

“I want everyone when they look at a cooling tower going forward to think of that as an energy throwaway machine,” Borer said. When chilled water rushes through the cogeneration plant, it captures heat which the cogeneration system rejects instead of using. “In the future, that should make us cry,” Borer added.

Borer then led the way into a small control room which, according to him, has “never been unstaffed for 25 years.”

At the time of the tour, this duty fell to Lead Engineer Erick Maier. While on

shift, Maier is tasked with making sure that all of the equipment is operating safely and reliably. He also considers the most costeffective way on a daily basis to deliver heating and cooling to all of Princeton’s campus, which is made up of over 180 buildings. These jobs require both engineering experience and multiple years of apprenticeship. Reflecting on the skills required to perform the job, Borer and Maier reflected on the extent to which they each use math in their work.

“I was talking about this last night. Teachers don’t teach you how applicable [math] is. If they would have taught people what they were interested in, from race cars to energy plants, people would have been paying a lot more attention in math,” said Maier.

“I never use calculus,” noted Borer. “I had to study it all the way up through grad school. I never use it. No, I mostly use a four function calculator.”

Though artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced to the point where the system could run on its own, Borer and his team maintain the importance of human insight. The plant’s control systems make recommendations to a human operator, but the technology does not automatically carry out functions without human approval.

“A lot of our peers would [automate these systems],” said Borer. “We, in this plant, choose not to.”

For example, AI might be able to control a chiller, but lacks awareness of when people are working on the chiller, potentially activating the machinery automatically and frightening or even harming workers. Additionally, the operator walks around the plant, takes notes, and writes the numbers manually in or

der to keep track of them and catch any issues. These judgments factor in human senses, vibration, plant in

struments, and experience.

“We want key decisions to go through the human brain. We intentionally involve a human in decisions that many other people would automate,” noted Borer.

Next, Borer led the way upstairs, where red and orange pumps push water from the plant “all the way to the E-Quad or to the Berlind Theatre and back.”

When the plant was built in the early 1960s, it was all steam-driven. Pointing out two steel machines from 1964 and 1967 respectively, Borer said, “We take really good care of our stuff, so usually we get rid of it not because we broke it, [but] because it’s either too small or too inefficient.”

Borer showed how the pumps could be dated: two dull silver pumps remain from the 1960s, while brighter red pumps have been installed more recently.

Seeing a juxtaposition between the past and the future, Borer pointed to a “physical place of transition” between the old chillers that reject heat to the cooling towers and a new chiller that will pull heat out of the chilled water and deliver it to a hot water system. Over the next six months, the plant will begin operating new equipment, such as a new chiller which will work in conjunction with the geoexchange.

Borer brought the ‘Prince’ to another control room, which was occupied by cogeneration plant operators Mike Luling and Glenn Warner. These workers operate the plant along with Maier and the other manual operators, but are focused on combustion, combustion safety, and making steam and electricity. The teams regularly communicate with one another to make decisions about which aspects of the system to run. The operators strive to make economically sound decisions while protecting the life of

the equipment by turning engines on and off as infrequently as possible.

Just outside the control room, Borer showed the ‘Prince’ an old campus map displayed on the wall showing the old chapel, McCosh Hall, Dickinson Hall, and Princeton’s old energy plant.

“They had the most awesome name for a powergenerating plant back then: the Dynamo building. I love that,” said Borer.

The Dynamo building was constructed in 1880 next to the Class of 1877 Biological Laboratory, and it burned coal to produce steam and electricity for campus. Borer described a time when coal was delivered to the plant by horsedrawn carriage and shoveled into the basement of the Dynamo building.

Reflecting on the old map, Borer pointed out the parallels that tie Princeton’s current energy landscape to the coal-burning system of the 1800s. As the plant’s director explained, workers in the old energy plant were having the same conversations, from scheduling shifts and weekend plans to ordering new equipment and maintaining the facilities.

Borer said he hopes people feel a sense of stewardship over centuries and across generations.

“There’s a direct continuity of the work that happened back then to what we’re doing today and what we’re doing next,” remarked Borer. “And what we’re doing is very meaningful: we’re providing heating, cooling, and comfort to a community of over 15,000 people — and, we’re striving to do it as sustainably as possible.”

This is part one of a twopart series on Princeton’s cogeneration plant. The second part will be released in the coming days.

Raphaela Gold is a staff Features writer for the ‘Prince.’

ZEHAO WU / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN The campus cogeneration plant on Elm Drive emitting a plume of water vapor.

An eternal optimist: pro-tennis player Matija Pecotić ’13 makes a comeback at the Delray Beach Open headline

By Cole Keller and Zoë Scheske Associate Sports Editor and Sports Contributor

For Matija Pecotić ’13, the journey to victory in the round of 32 at the Delray Beach Open, a professional men’s tennis tournament in south Florida, was far from typical. The native Croatian, who majored in politics at Princeton and was a member of Ivy Club, had major success during his time on the Tigers’ tennis team. Pecotić became the firstever three-time Ivy League Tennis Player of the Year. At the time, he was the 11th person across any sport in which there is an Ivy League Player of the Year to win it three times. He also ended his Princeton career with 22 consecutive singles match victories.

Now, ten years after his Princeton graduation, in his first-ever Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) main draw, Pecotić defeated former top-ten singles player Jack Sock and jump-started the third attempt at a pro tennis career at the Delray Beach Open. After a major staph infection in 2016 forced him to be bedridden for eight months, and the COVID-19 pandemic stopped him in the midst of his comeback, Pecotić’s resilient pursuit of a professional tennis career can be attributed to his mental fortitude and strong support system behind him.

“I’m an eternal optimist. At any moment of despair or suffering, I always think that it’s gonna turn out well,” Pecotić said.

Pecotić, for all the impact he made on Princeton tennis as a captain, also attributes his success to those who surrounded him at Princeton.

“You had just so many great people all around that would just feed your fire. And [they would] just make you say, ‘I could be doing more with myself.’ You move away from someone with potential to someone that’s doing great things. That’s what a place like Princeton does,” Pecotić told The Daily Princetonian.

Pecotić had an opportunity to train with current world tennis No. 1 Novak Djokovic in the summer of 2013. While Djokovic was in the area for the U.S. Open, he was in search of a hitting partner for the practice courts, and his consultant, Gordon Uehling, went down I-95 to find Pecotić in Princeton.

“I heard about Novak being in New Jersey at the U.S. Open and I got connected with Gordon,” Pecotić said.

“He saw me hit and he said ‘Oh, you’ll be perfect for Novak’ and we had a couple of training sessions. We’ve been friends ever since.”

“He’s certainly the first one leading the charge in telling me to get back on the tour,” Pecotić continued. “That’s what he wrote in his Instagram post. The translation is ‘Matija, you’re not for the office yet.’ He said, ‘I’ll see you on the court soon.’”

While his victory over Sock in itself is an impressive feat as a 33-year-old who has never won a main draw match, it’s particularly remarkable when you

consider the double life he has led. Alongside tennis, Pecotić attended Harvard Business School from 2017–2019, and now works a full-time job as a Director for Wexford Real Estate Investors LLC., a finance company based out of Palm Beach, Florida.

Pecotić credits much of his current success to conversations he had at Pine Brook Country Club in Boston around 2019. On the weekends, Pecotić routinely played tennis at the club with a group of four men, consisting of David Fialkow and Adam Valkin of venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners, as well as Yellowstone Club owner Sam Byrne and Pine Brook Country Club member Leif Thompson. After playing with and getting to know Pecotić, the men approached Pecotić with a

proposition.

“They were like, ‘Call your hedge fund and your friends and tell them you’re not taking the job [in finance], because we’re getting you back on the pro tour, and we’re gonna back you.’ If it wasn’t for those guys. I wouldn’t have even entertained a second shot on the tennis tour.”

Pecotić, backed by supporters on and off the tour, is still fueled by his passion for tennis and the possibility of what is to come, considering the unprecedented path that has led the 33-year-old to his athletic success.

“I think you should maximize your athletic potential and your athletic abilities, because if you don’t go on to play sports after college, the worst feeling that you’re going to have is thinking that you could

have accomplished more, and that you didn’t leave it all out there,” Pecotić remarked.

As an aforementioned ‘eternal optimist’, the victory at the Delray Beach tournament brings into question just how much further Pecotić is willing to go.

“I’m still trying to figure that part out. But I’m not used up. I don’t have a lot of mileage. And I guess I’m forced to take the road less taken once again and see where that takes me.”

Cole Keller is an associate editor for the Sports section at the ‘Prince.’

Zoë Scheske is a contributor to the Sports section at the ‘Prince.’

No. 3 men’s lacrosse avoids upset versus Manhattan in dominant second half

By JP Ohl Sports Contributor

On a frigid and gloomy Tuesday night on Sherrerd Field at the Class of 1952 Stadium, No. 3 men’s lacrosse (2–0 overall, 0–0 Ivy League) clashed with the Manhattan Jaspers (2–1, 0–0 Metro Atlantic Athletic) in what was a tougher-than-expected game for the heavily favored Tigers. After a 22–9 stomping of Monmouth (1–1, 0–0 Colonial Athletic), Princeton’s endurance, resilience, and poise were tested, but the Tigers emerged with a 14–9 win.

The Jaspers started off strong thanks to the work of midfielder Tadhg O’Riordan, who secured the ball from the opening face-off and scored within twelve seconds. Despite a threegoal deficit, the Tigers refused to accept defeat, responding to the Jaspers’ barrage with a goal of their own from senior midfielder Alexander Vardaro.

Princeton’s defense struggled in the first quarter, allowing easy shots on goal. Manhattan’s relentless attack allowed them to push the lead to 4–1, forcing Princeton lacrosse head coach Matt Madalon to take a crucial timeout to reevaluate the game plan. It paid off, as senior midfielder Jake Stevens immediately netted a goal to make it 4–2.

To start the second quarter, the Jaspers committed a holding foul, allowing Princeton to take advantage. Sophomore attacker Coulter Mackesy netted an underhand dinger to cut the lead to one.

However, Princeton committed a penalty of its own, allowing Manhattan to capitalize and score to make it 5–3. Vardaro’s second goal of the game came 30 seconds after the Jaspers’ fifth goal, not allowing the visitors to celebrate for long. The rest of the half was a defensive battle, and Manhattan took a surprising one-score lead into the break.

“Manhattan did a really good job of playing their game plan. We are used to playing a little bit faster, and they slowed it down and we had to recalibrate,” Madalon told The Daily Princetonian.

He also remarked that the team had to be “a little better with perimeter ball movement and sharper with [its] shooting.”

That’s exactly what Princeton did in the second half. The coaches’ messages and game plan brought out an entirely different Princeton team. The defense only allowed four more goals the entire game.

Princeton went on to score four goals of their own in the first six minutes of the third

quarter, dominating the helpless Jasper defense. Mackesy would later score two crucial back-to-back goals to pad Princeton’s lead, pushing the Tiger advantage to 11–7. Princeton would then score one more to round out the third quarter.

The Tigers controlled the fourth quarter with poised defense, allowing no goals for Manhattan until halfway through the quarter. Both sides netted two more goals to round out the scoring in the final frame, leading to a 14–9 victory for the Tigers.

Princeton’s strong secondhalf performance propels them into a highly anticipated home match-up against perennial powerhouse, the No. 9 Maryland Terrapins (2–1, 0–0 Big Ten). This matchup will be at 1 p.m. on Saturday and will be streamed on ESPN+.

“They are one of the best teams in the country year in and year out,” Madalon told the ‘Prince.’ “We’ll look at the film from today, learn from it, have a quick flip of the page and then go on to the Terps.”

In recent history, the Tigers have struggled against Maryland, with a season-ending loss last year in the NCAA Lacrosse semifinal. Coach Madalon hopes to “come out on the right side” of the Maryland game, this time against a fellow NCAA

title contender. This Maryland matchup is only the start of a rigorous out-of-conference schedule, as Princeton will play Georgetown (0–2, 0–0 Big East), No. 14 Rutgers (2–1, 0–0 Big Ten), and No. 19 Syracuse (3–1, 0–0 Atlantic Coast) later this season, on top of an already-stacked Ivy league conference that features four teams currently in the top seven of the national rankings.

“We always try to give our guys two ways into the NCAA tournament: [the] Ivy League [championship] and then atlarge through tough scheduling,” Madalon told the ‘Prince’. “Hopefully we [will have] an opportunity to play in both the Ivy League and NCAA tournaments.”

JP Ohl is a contributor to the Sports section at the ‘Prince.’

PHOTO COURTESY OF ANDREW PATRON/DELRAY BEACH OPEN

Matija Pecotić waving to crowd after victory at Delray Beach Open.

COURTESY OF @TIGERLACROSSE/TWITTER. The Tigers trailed at the half before taking a commanding lead.

Women’s basketball earns dominant road wins at Yale and Brown, secures spot in Ivy Madness Tournament

By Isabel Rodrigues Senior Sports Writer

The Tigers have hit their stride with reigning Ivy League Tournament MVP, junior guard Kaitlyn Chen, leading the way.

Over the weekend, Princeton women’s basketball (19–5 overall, 10–2 Ivy League) picked up their 10th and 11thstraight wins, with dominant performances against the Yale Bulldogs (11–14, 5–7) and the Brown Bears (11–13, 4–8). Against the Bears, the Tigers shot a season-high 55.9 percent from the field and laid down a season-high 11 blocks.

The Tigers have been chasing a full 40 minutes of perfect Princeton basketball since first tip-off in November — now, as the Ivy Tournament looms ever larger, head coach Carla Berube says the pieces are all coming together.

“I think it’s the chemistry; it was a work in progress, and we incrementally got better over the last few weeks,” Berube told The Daily Princetonian.

“I like the way we’re working really, really hard,” she added. “That’s half of it, how hard you play and how well you play together.”

Across the weekend’s matches, Chen put up a jawdropping 45 points on 70 percent shooting. It made for two of the junior guard’s most efficient scoring performances of her Princeton career. But it’s more than just Chen — across the board, the Tigers are boosting their shooting efficiency, particularly in the mid-range, per CBB Analytics.

Prosperity in Providence Princeton crushed Brown, 80–37, behind a scoring barrage from Chen and first-year guard Madison St. Rose.

Princeton’s rout of Brown was slow-going at first — the Tigers traded baskets with the Bears early on, until sophomore center Parker Hill and Chen started to force their way into the paint. The pair catapulted Princeton into a 9–2 run to close the quarter, but as the second quarter rolled around, St. Rose took over.

St. Rose splashed a threepointer to open the second, and took the ball all the way to the paint on the next Princeton possession to give the Tigers a 21–14 lead early. But Brown was responding — the Tigers hadn’t gone full-out on either end of the court just yet.

“I think it was more due to our offense and not allowing them to get easy scoring opportunities in the [fast] break,” Berube said. “One feeds the other — you get your offense going and that feeds your defense.”

Coming out of halftime, the story had completely shifted: for the second time in Berube’s tenure with the Tigers, Princeton held their opponent (this time, the ill-fated Bears) to zero made field goals in a quarter. They also cashed in on the offensive end too, the 33 points were enough for a new season-high in points scored in a single quarter.

St. Rose kicked off the second half with a quick five points, pushing the lead to 16. Then, Chen went on an 11–0 run (yes, you read that right) vaulting the Tigers ahead by 27. By that point, things looked dismal for an already scrambling Brown squad. It certainly didn’t help that junior forward Ellie Mitchell was grabbing all of the Bears’ missed shots and slinging them up the court to a sprinting Chen.

And the Princeton bench was no less ruthless — senior center Kira Emsbo became the first Princeton player, and the 15th player in NCAA history since 2009, to record three blocks and two points in less than five minutes.

Domination in New Haven

Chen’s 25 points and Mitchell’s 15 rebounds power Princeton past Yale, 68–42.

In many ways, Princeton’s second meeting of the season with Yale was a replay of the previous day’s match against Brown. Chen put up another efficient 20-piece, this time scoring 25 points on 67 percent shooting. While no other Tiger was in the double figures by the end of the game, four others had scored at least five points. Mitchell grabbed 15 rebounds and added nine points, slowly growing her offensive presence and getting ever closer to the elusive double-double.

While the Tigers shot just 40.7 percent from the field, they out-rebounded Yale 41–31 and dominated in the paint, out-scoring the Bulldogs down low, 38–24, and grabbing eight more offensive rebounds.

In New Haven, the offense seemed to stem from Chen — the Tigers are the 304th slow-

est team in the NCAA (by possessions per game), yet Chen brings a much-needed fluidity and speed to the team’s half-court offense. Even when she plays off-ball next to senior point guard Maggie Connolly, you’d be hard-pressed to find her not on the run.

“She’s playing with a lot of confidence, which she should be — she’s a really, really great player,” Berube said. “We need her to be a playmaker, and that doesn’t always mean [getting] shots for herself, but [also] getting into the paint and finding scoring opportunities in the break.”

Berube also pointed to Connolly’s leadership coming off the bench: “It’s been awesome to have another really, really great point guard and really great ball handler come in and alleviate that pressure [for Chen],” Berube said. “Maggie runs our offense really well and just understands the game … having them play together is definitely a benefit and a great spark off the bench.”

With Friday’s 80–37 shutout of Brown, the Tigers, the League’s best defensive team, secured their spot in the 2023 Ivy League Tournament come March. The Tigers remain tied with Columbia at the top of the standings, a tie that will likely take the rest of the regular season to break. If both teams close their regular seasons without another loss, it’ll come down to who has the best record against Penn or Harvard, the other two teams that qualified for the tournament.

Columbia defeated Harvard twice, but lost to Penn in early January; meanwhile, the Tigers defeated Penn once but lost to Harvard on New Year’s Eve. Depending on who emerges as the No. 3 seed, the Tigers may or may not claim their fourth consecutive Ivy League regular-season title.

Up next, Princeton will host Harvard at Jadwin Gym on Friday, Feb. 24 for the final regular-season game of the season. The team will honor its senior class, which makes up just over 30 percent of the roster, prior to tip-off at 6 p.m. The game will be streamed on ESPN+.

Isabel Rodrigues is a senior writer for the Sports section at the ‘Prince’ who typically covers women’s basketball.

THIS WEEK IN NUMBERS: TIGERS STANDINGS AND RESULTS

MEN’S BASKETBALL: IVY LEAGUE STANDINGS

RESULTS FROM THE LAST WEEK: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17:

PRINCETON 78 AT BROWN 67

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18: YALE 83 AT PRINCETON 83

UPCOMING GAMES:

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25: PRINCETON AT HARVARD, 2 P.M.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL: IVY LEAGUE STANDINGS

RESULTS FROM THE LAST WEEK: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17: BROWN 37 AT PRINCETON 80 SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18: PRINCETON 68 AT YALE 42

UPCOMING GAMES: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24: HARVARD AT PRINCETON, 6 P.M.

OTHER SPORTS NEWS:

MEN’S AND WOMEN’S BASKETBALL WILL BE AT IVY MADNESS

Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams have clinched spots in the 2023 Ivy Madness Tournament. While the women had a dominant weekend, beating both Brown and Yale by more than 20 points, the men secured a big Friday night win against Cornell but lost in overtime to Yale in Jadwin Gymnasium on Saturday night. Both squads now sit at second in the respective Ivy League standings as they prepare for their final two games of the regular season before Ivy Madness on March 11.

WOMEN’S LACROSSE FALLS IN SEASON OPENER TO VIRGINIA

In a top-25 matchup that featured some of the nations top talent, No. 16 women’s lacrosee fell 20--11 to No. 13 Virginia. The Tigers came out to a 5--1 lead, but ultimately couldn’t keep the Virginia offense in check. This game was the Tigers’ first under new head coach Jenn Cook, as well as their first in recent memory without the team’s all-time leading goal-scorer, Kyla Sears ‘22. The team will suit up again on Saturday, Feb. 25 to hopefully bounce back against Temple.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL