The Daily Princetonian: February 3, 2023

U. announces increased minimum salary for postdocs, postdocs say it’s not enough

‘The Princeton I wanted to join’: The evolution of Wintersession

By Sejal Goud & Gia Musselwhite Associate & Assistant Features Editors

In 2014, the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) Senate hosted the first-ever Wintersession, where undergraduate students had the opportunity to enroll in informal classes between the end of fall term exams and the beginning of the spring semester.

and two other U-Councilors, Katherine Clifton ’15 and Elan Kugelmass ’14, with support from USG President Shawon Jackson ’15 took note of these challenges and set out to create an alternative.

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Gathered on the steps of Nassau Hall, a group of about 50 postdoctoral re- searchers read aloud their open letter calling for a higher minimum salary. Armed with a printed pe- tition which spanned the length of the Nassau Hall steps, the protest comes just two days after an announce- ment from the University that postdocs would receive an increased minimum salary of $65,000 and follows months of discussion about whether postdoc pay is suf- ficient.

On Jan. 19, a group of post- doctoral researchers sent an open letter addressed to Dean of the Faculty Gene A. Jarrett ’97 and Provost Deborah A. Prentice, urging the University to raise the minimum postdoc salary to $68,500, provide experience- based increases, and adjust salaries annually to account

for costs of living. Over 400 individuals signed this let- ter, which called for administrative action before Feb. 6.

The discussion about postdoctoral pay was in part catalyzed by the University raising graduate salaries by an average of 25 percent in January 2022. In an anony- mous op-ed in the ‘Prince’ published in April of that year, a postdoc wrote: “the University seems to have forgotten to extend the same pay increase to the essential postdoctoral community.”

The postdoc cited that Princ- eton’s minimum wage for postdocs was set at the NIH postdoc minimum, noting that under certain assump- tions, postdocs could be earning less than graduate students and “paying up to 68 percent or higher of their after-tax income for rate.”

Eight days after the open letter was delivered, the University announced that it would raise the minimum salary from $54,840

to $65,000, an 18.5 percent increase.

In a letter to postdocs, Jar- rett said, “Establishing this new minimum salary rec- ognizes the vital role that postdocs play in our campus community as researchers, in advancing faculty schol- arship, and in contributing to Princeton’s academic mission.”

Jarrett also stated that “The new minimum salary will make [the University] even more competitive in recruiting excellent and di- verse postdoctoral research- ers to Princeton.”

However, organizers from Princeton University Post- docs and Scholars critiqued that message in an email to fellow postdocs.

“We deserve more than a salary increase that allows for ‘more competitive’ re- cruitment. We need a salary that covers the cost of housing, food, and childcare in Princeton,” the message

Five key takeaways from Eisgruber’s State of the U. Letter

By Laura Robertson

Staff News Writer

On Jan. 31, President Eisgruber released his seventh annual State of the University letter, focusing on the lessons learned from COVID-19, the changing priorities of the University, and the dangers of technology.

He discussed some high points of University life over the past 18 months — the end of COVID-19 restrictions in classes and performances, the high number of Nobel recipients this fall, and the “highest one-year fundraising total in Princeton’s history.”

Next, he moved on to focus on the present challenges and future priorities of the University.

Here are five take-aways from the letter:

Eisgruber warned about the risks posed by technology to mental health and focus.

While praising some of the benefits of the technology which has taken off over the last decade — including easy access to information and the ability to keep in touch with loved ones — Eisgruber also reflected on the perils of technology as he sees them.

He noted that disinforma-

Over the past nine years, this system has evolved, changed leadership, and expanded, while retaining its original mission of providing free, accessible programming to all students. This winter break, Princeton undergraduates, graduate students, staff, and faculty are invited on campus from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 to participate in the third annual Wintersession program sponsored by the Office of Campus Engagement (OCE).

“It’s very rare that you, as a student at a historic institution, get to create something that becomes lasting way beyond yourself. [Wintersession] could really improve the lives of [our] fellow classmates around [us] for future generations to come,” said Laura Du ’14, one of the USG representatives who proposed the platform.

Creating USG Wintersession

Prior to the restructuring of Princeton’s calendar in the academic year 2020–2021, fall term exams were held at the conclusion of winter break in January.

Following exams, students had the option of returning home or remaining on campus during a one-week Intersession break.

Time and financial constraints limited some students’ abilities to return home over break. Du

“If you weren’t in a group that was touring — like a performing arts group — or part of a club that had a retreat at that time, there wasn’t much programming happening on campus. It’s kind of crazy to think about, a week that’s quieter that happens to overlap with the week when students have the most time. It seemed like this mismatch that we wanted to address,” Clifton explained.

Inspired by enrichment programming at other institutions such as Williams College, the team of U-Councilors began work on a Princeton-specific model.

“When we did a couple of focus groups with students, they were interested in being able to lead their own as well as take other people’s offerings,” Clifton said. “So that’s why we landed on this hodgepodge model,” with students able to enroll in multiple informal sessions led by others on campus. Clifton also shared that their Wintersession model was in part a product of USG’s budget constraints, though Du noted that the team was able to provide modest compensation to facilitators.

“Our [USG] funding was pretty small. I mean, most of these sessions didn’t require anything but space and people’s time. I remember there was a Magic 101 [offering], and it was ‘bring your own card deck’ — pretty DIY,” Clifton recalled.

Despite Wintersession’s limited budget and advertising at the time, the program with its tag-

U. alumni in Congress share thoughts on House speaker election

tion was not the only problem, writing that “even when the information they provide is fully accurate, online media facilitate distraction, remoteness, and provocation.”

He wrote that the media landscape is “flooded with the intellectual equivalent of irresistible junk food,” and noted some scholars suggest online media may be “a major contributor to the epidemic of mental illness” in America.

“These claims are controversial,” he wrote, “but it seems undeniable that the students who arrive at Princeton today have grown up very differ-

By Abby Leibowitz Staff News Contributor

Of the 434 congresspeople voting in the historic election for Speaker of the House, in which Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was elected Speaker after 15 rounds of voting, seven

INSIDE THE PAPER

are Princeton undergraduate alumni.

The only other time in the post-Civil War era when a vote required multiple rounds was in 1923, when it took nine tries.

Princeton has traditionally been one of the schools

Grant Wahl ’96 to receive Colin Jose award for ‘significant, long-term contribution’ to American soccer by Head

Editor Wilson Conn

ANGEL KUO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Harrison Ritz, a postdoctoral researcher and organizer of the demonstration, stands in front of the Icahn building before marching to Nassau Hall.

Sophie Glaser News Contributer

KATHERINE DAILEY / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Eisgruber: “ Living amidst construction is not easy, and I appreciate the changes people have made to adapt to it”

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ently from even their quite recent predecessors. The relevant question is not whether those differences have changed the way that students learn and live, but rather how they have done so.”

Conversations about mental health on campus continue following the death of Misrach Ewunetie ’24 in October and the most recent campus loss of first-year graduate student Maura Coursey. In the past year, the University has suffered two other undergraduate student deaths — Jazz Chang ’23 and Justin Lim ’25 — as well as the death of a staff member in September.

In an interview with The Daily Princetonian in November, President Eisgruber stated that Princeton’s rigorous demands regarding academics and productivity are not at odds with student mental wellbeing. “I think high aspiration environments are consistent with mental health and I don’t see any evidence that academic laxness or academic mediocrity would somehow be better from the standpoint of mental health,“ Eisgruber explained.

Following these comments, the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) discussed Eisgruber’s perception of men-

tal health on campus. USG President Stephen Daniels ’24 commented that Eisgruber “seems to be confused about why students are not flourishing.”

In his letter, Eisgruber wrote that new technology was one of the major challenges which Princeton was facing today, and expressed hope that the University would find ways to address these issues “through its research and in its own campus community and pedagogical culture.”

He emphasized the importance of in-person learning.

He notes that when COVID-19 began and classes moved to Zoom, many people thought this would change the way universities functioned, as they “predicted that this forced experiment with remote learning would demonstrate the inefficiency of residential teaching models.”

“Instead,” he said, it “highlighted how difficult it is to teach online effectively.” He noted “widespread concern about ‘learning loss’” and its effect on “even the exceptionally talented students who apply to and attend Princeton.”

Since Fall 2021, all classroom learning has been required to be conducted in person.

While the University is exploring the possibility of online education in order to reach “new audiences,” Eisgruber

wrote that it “will have to do so in a way that respects the power of residential engagement and the limits of online teaching.”

He focused particularly on the future of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

The proportion of Princeton students studying Engineering has jumped to 28% from around 19% a decade ago, and Computer Science is the most popular concentration at the University.

Eisgruber wrote that the University is “investing boldly in its School of Engineering and Applied Science [SEAS].” A massive construction project will update buildings built a half-century ago, while moving the SEAS “from the periphery into the core of the University.”

He wrote that this would facilitate “stronger links between its departments and those in the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.” He explained this could benefit both engineering students who can draw from the “insights and values drawn from the arts, humanities, and social and natural sciences,” and “educate leaders in other fields who are competent and comfortable with technological issues.”

He listed the University’s new priorities and addressed the construction on campus.

Eisgruber listed four goals and initiatives to serve as a framework for the University as liberal arts institution in the 21st century.

Firstly, to “reach more students from more backgrounds,” which the University plans to achieve through the expansion of the residential colleges, financial aid, transfer programs, and a “commitment to racial equity.”

Secondly, to “add to the University’s capacity” in STEM, through the new construction projects and creating a Vice Dean for Innovation.

Thirdly, “to open the University up to a wider range of collaborations with both academic and non-academic partners” — for example, by launching a joint Google-Princeton AI lab.

Finally, to “enhance Princeton’s commitment to service.” He wrote that Princeton is addressing urgent issues in the world by strengthening “initiatives in environmental science and policy, American studies, regional studies, and plasma physics, among other fields,” as well as instituting the Learning and Education through Service (LENS) program, which “promises at least one funded service opportunity for every Princeton undergraduate.”

“I recognize that the number and scale of these projects make them disruptive for all of us. Living amidst construction

Gallagher: Voting process was “quintessentially American.”

versity system, and Stanford University.

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with the largest number of undergrad alumni in Congress. In the previous Congress, Princeton had the sixth most number of undergrad alumni in Congress, behind Harvard University, the University of California system, University of Wisconsin-Madison, the California State Uni -

This Congress, there are Princeton alumni on both sides of the aisle: five Democrats and two Republicans. The party ratio of Harvard undergrad alumni is more skewed, with nine Democrats and two Republicans in the 118th Congress. Of the Princeton alumni in Congress, some Democrats suggested the vote was a sign of Repub -

lican weakness, while one Republican suggested it spoke to the strengths of American democracy.

In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, Rep. Glenn Ivey ’83 (D-Md.) shared his thoughts about the vote. “It was a surreal experience,” he said. “I never imagined that Mr. McCarthy would come to the floor 20 votes short of what he needed to be elected Speaker. We haven’t

seen anything like this in nearly 150 years. Apparently, this was a sign of things to come under House Republican leadership.”

Indeed, to some, the divisiveness of the unprecedented vote represents something much bigger than nominating a speaker.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi ’95 (D-Ill.) told the ‘Prince’ that, “the level of dysfunction that exists in the Republican Caucus ... serves as a concerning potential preview for what the next two years of Congress will look like with Republicans in the majority in the House of Representatives.”

Republican alumni in Congress had a different view of what the vote showed. Rep. Mike Gallagher ’06 (R-Wis.) saw this voting process as “quintessentially American.”

In a press statement to the public he explained why: “For the first time in years, members weren’t going to fundraisers or lunches with lobbyists — they were on the House floor, engaging with each other and debating the foundation for the next two years of this Congress. The institution would be better served if more legislation involved the same energy we’ve seen over the past few days.”

In a speech on the house floor, Gallagher explained that “democracy is messy” and “that’s a feature, not a bug, of our system.” He then shifted into an argument in favor of McCarthy, attempting to end the ongoing standstill, but concluded, “what I see right now is energy, a tremendous amount of energy in this Republican caucus, to do the work of the people.”

Many of the Republicans that voted against McCarthy were members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Rep. Ken Buck ’81 (R-Colo.) is a member of the Freedom Caucus. Buck voted for McCarthy through the first nine rounds, yet told CNN after the sixth vote, “I’ve had a number of conversations with Kevin, and I basically told him at some point this needs to break loose … he either needs to make a deal

is not easy, and I appreciate the changes people have made to adapt to it,” he wrote.

He alluded to the University’s potential response to the upcoming Supreme Court Decision on Affirmative Action.

The Supreme Court is considering a decision which may strike down race-based affirmative action. The decision will come sometime late this spring or early this summer.

“[D]iversity is a source of great strength to this University [and] essential to our future,” Eisgruber wrote in response. “Affirmative action ... has been an important tool in the effort to achieve the diversity that our educational and research missions require,” he added.

He wrote that while the University will have to comply with whatever the decision is, the University “will also be creative and persistent in our efforts to preserve and build upon the diversity of our scholarly and educational community.”

Laura Robertson is a staff News writer for the ‘Prince.’

Please send all corrections to corrections@dailyprincetonian. com.

to bring the 19 or 20 over, or he needs to step aside to give somebody the chance to do that.”

Buck did not record a vote in rounds nine through 11. It wasn’t until McCarthy agreed to multiple concessions to members of the Freedom Caucus that 14 of the 20 defectors reversed their votes and provided McCarthy the necessary threshold to win. Buck’s office did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

Ivey warned that the vote might be a harbinger of votes to come: “It looks like the House might not be able to carry out the chamber’s most basic functions.”

To Ivey, the divisiveness on display during the vote poses the biggest threat to addressing the debt ceiling crisis, as detractors might “shut down the government if they don’t get their way.”

Currently, the nation’s outstanding debt is at its statutory limit of $31.4 trillion. If the United States defaults on its debt, this would have enormous consequences on the U.S. economy, global financial stability, and many Americans.

McCarthy has rejected Democratic calls for a clean debt ceiling increase without any conditions attached — among them deep cuts in federal spending. Additionally, McCarthy must walk a fine line in negotiations, since any member can call for a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair, one of several concessions he made to gain the top post after the 15 rounds of voting earlier this month.

Of the seven Princeton alumni that currently serve in the House of Representatives, the offices of Buck, Rep. Derek Kilmer ’96 (D-Wash.), Rep. Terri Sewell ’86 (D-Ala.), and Rep. John Sarbanes ’84 (D-Md.) have not responded to requests for comment from the ‘Prince.’

Abby Leibowitz is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’ Please send all corrections to corrections@dailyprincetonian. com.

Ritz: “As a starting point, we want a modicum of dignity and respect. We want a

SALARY

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said.

“[We asked for] the same 25 percent raise that gradu- ate students received in 2022 (to $68,500), a yearly increase to track continued inflation, and an experience-based scale to acknowledge the value we bring to Princeton over time. Princeton did not meet these asks.”

Harrison Ritz and Judy Kim, two organizers of the protests, told The Daily Princetonian that the new plan announced by the Uni- versity fell short in a few key areas and failed to consider the voices and needs of post- doctoral scholars.

“We are thankful and excited about the pay raise which will be beneficial to several of us,” Kim said. “The issue is we were not consulted or acknowledged in any way, and the Univer- sity’s announcement did not acknowledge our email with requests for what we deserve and need. We want fair compensation for our labor.”

Ritz said that the postdocs had received no communication from the University.

“We want to be a part of the process. There was no communication or acknowledgement [of our demands],” Ritz said.

On Jan. 30, postdocs gath- ered to march from Icahn Laboratory to Nassau Hall. The postdocs filed into Nas- sau Hall to deliver their letter to University admin- istrators personally. The protestors had hoped to meet with Dean Jarrett and Provost Prentice, but neither appeared.

When reached for comment, the University re- ferred the ‘Prince’ to the letter sent by Dean Jarrett last week, as well as the University’s Postdoc FAQ page.

In their open letter, or- ganizers referenced nation- wide campaigns advocating for increased compensation for postdocs, including for

ORL, CPS, USG review next steps on mental health, PEESA calls for improvements

By Tess Weinreich and Isabel Yip Assistant News Editor and Head News Editor

postdoc unions such as those at Mt. Sinai and Columbia.

Postdoc Eve Beaury com- mented on the widespread nature of the issue and current efforts across universities.

“This is definitely a na- tional issue, and something that's been getting attention a lot recently. In our letter to Princeton, we cited recent efforts by University of Washington, MIT, Harvard, and other universities,” Beaury said. “We’re trying to be part of that national ef- fort.”

According to Ritz, the ef- forts that culminated in the protest built on the work of postdocs in years past, but specifically began last summer.

“This started sometime last summer with a group of like-minded postdocs who came together and felt like ‘we deserve better.’” Ritz said that the compensation received by postdocs “wasn’t enough to track the skyrock- eting costs of living in and around Princeton.”

When asked about what the group hopes their ef- forts will accomplish, Ritz commented, “as a starting point, we want a modicum of dignity and respect. We want a seat at the table.”

Beaury noted that the re- cent salary increase was a positive sign, and that the group would continue work- ing to address their needs.

“Because of how rapidly this is evolving, we’re re- ally hoping that the Univer- sity is going to respond by that February 6 deadline. But we're going to keep the communication open and keep working as a postdoc group,” Beaury said.

News contributor Kayra Sen- er contributed reporting.

Sophie Glaser is a news and features contributor, as well as a copy editor for the ‘Prince.’

Please send all corrections to corrections@dailyprincetonian.com.

THE MINI CROSSWORD

By Simon Marotte Head Puzzles Editor

Content Warning: The following article includes mention of student death and suicide. University Counseling services are available at 609-2583141, and the Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7 at 988 or +1 (800) 273-TALK (8255). A Crisis Text Line is also available in the United States; text HOME to 741741. Students can contact residential college staff and the Office of Religious Life for other support and resources.

Two weeks after the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office released the completed autopsy report for the death of Misrach Ewunetie ’24, ruling it a suicide, the University continued to mourn while grappling with student mental health on campus. Ewunetie marks the most recent loss for the University, which suffered two additional undergraduate deaths in May 2022 — Jazz Chang ’23 and Justin Lim ’25 — as well as the death of a staff member in September.

The Office of Religious Life (ORL), Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS), and Undergraduate Student Government (USG) are each looking to expand mental health resources on campus. The University has made commitments to following through on suggestions to improve student wellbeing outlined by the Mental Health Resources Task Force, led by USG, Director of CPS Dr. Calvin Chin, and Vice President of Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun.

On Dec. 16, Calhoun shared an update on the status of recommendations of the working group to explore mental health resources. Of the 31 recommendations, 20 were categorized as “completed (and ongoing),” 10 are “in progress,” and one is “under review.” The next update regarding these recommendations is expected in May 2023.

Student-led initiatives, such as the USG mental health taskforce, have also driven a recent push for expanded mental health programming on campus.

“The tragedies of last year show that there is still a lot of work to be done to make Princeton a place where everyone can thrive,” wrote USG president-elect and chair of mental health taskforce Stephen Daniels ’24 in an email to The Daily Princetonian. “We will continue to use both qualitative and quantitative data including responses to this feedback form to advocate for expanding services to meet student needs.”

mental health continue. Princeton Ethiopian and Eritrean Student Association (PEESA) Co-Presidents Joachim Ambaw ’24 and Faeven Mussie ’24 call for increased diversity among CPS staff.

Ambaw noted that this can help mental health resources better serve Black students and other students of color on campus.

“Some Black students can't find therapists within CPS that are able to relate to them,” Ambaw said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “Finding somebody that they can relate to on an identity level can lead to better interactions and a better therapy process.”

Following Ewunetie’s passing, PEESA has played an important role as the community mourns. The student group organized a Candlelight Vigil and provided other resources for members.

Mussie described how the group came together to remember the life of a member of the PEESA community.

“The Eritrean Ethiopian community is a very, very tight knit community all over the world,” she said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “We always show up for each other, it’s in our culture to do so.”

Mussie expressed concern with the amount of information the University was sharing with students during the search for Ewunetie and the wait for the completed autopsy, which was released over two months after she was found dead on campus.

“I think the main frustration that we had, and students on campus too, was at the lack of information that we had when the case came out,” she said. “It was our frustration with not having any updates when it’s our safety on the line being on campus.”

A focus on ‘postvention’

Dr. Victor Schwartz, Senior Associate Dean for Wellness and Student Life at CUNY School of Medicine and longtime researcher studying higher education mental health, noted how the pandemic has reduced resources for universities everywhere.

“It’s becom[ing] harder to find places to refer students who have long-term needs, and that’s put added pressure on the system,” Schwartz said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “This was made acutely worse on the college front when, during the pandemic, people realized that it was possible to do private practice on virtual platforms.”

from the Mental Health Workgroup last summer.

In an email to the ‘Prince,’ Chin described how students can expect to see mental health resources on campus expanding over the next semester. “We will be sponsoring additional listening circles focused on healing from grief in the next several weeks,” he wrote. “[W]e continue to work on fulfilling the recommendations from the summer workgroup that met this summer on Mental Health Resources.”

Rev. Alison Boden GS ’70, Dean of Religious Life and of the Chapel spoke to the ORL’s role in supporting mental health on campus after a community loss. The office held an initial gathering on Oct. 21 in Murray-Dodge Hall, immediately after Ewunetie’s body was located, and has organized ongoing programming as more information pertaining to her death became public.

“With the most recent information about Misrach’s passing we convened another gathering (Dec. 29) to support students who were impacted by the news,” Boden wrote in a statement to the ‘Prince.’

According to Boden, all chaplains have observed increased demand for pastoral counseling this year — interest that she anticipates will only ramp up once students return to campus for the spring semester.

These services are available to all students, regardless of previous engagement with the ORL. Both one-on-one and group sessions are offered.

“We also do occasional mental health-themed programs or sponsor initiatives to support particular cohorts of students. Students tell us that our weekly and monthly meditation offerings are very helpful and healing for them, as well as our religious services,” Boden said.

“I think there are more mental health challenges for students now than in my previous years at Princeton and that the pandemic is largely responsible … I’m reminded of the year after 9/11, when students (and others) had a similar uptick in mental health challenges,” Boden said.

oft

In an email to the ‘Prince,’ Chin noted the unique difficulties that 2022 posed for the campus community. “We have had several campus tragedies over the past 6 months which have been devastating for the [U]niversity community,” he wrote. “It’s hard to compare from year-to-year, but this has certainly been a challenging year for everyone.”

Chin also outlined the work CPS has done in the wake of campus tragedies over the past year. “We reach out to students who were directly affected. We expand our drop-in availability and work with our campus partners to make sure students are aware of our services. And we provide supportive spaces for students to gather and grieve together,” he wrote.

ACROSS

1 Corporate budgetary exec.

4 Eating club alternative

5 Alan Turing and Richard Feynman vis-àvis Princeton

6 Mexican snack that can be ordered crunchy or soft

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Since 2018, demand from students for CPS services and appointments has increased by 19 percent, according to Chin. To meet this demand, CPS has hired short-term temporary counselors.

“We have hired the equivalent of three additional counselors since the Fall,” Chin wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’

Conversations surrounding

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Schwartz also commented on the many expectations students have of the universities they attend. “Students are looking to the school to be both their human services provider and to some extent, be their parent as well,” he said. “There is expectation, and maybe in some cases, there’s been overpromising what schools can provide or unrealistic expectations.”

Still, Schwartz noted the importance of effective suicide postvention — the provision of support and assistance from a University to its students in the campus healing process. In the Higher Education Mental Health Alliance (HEMHA) Postvention Guide, which Schwartz worked on, HEMHA outlines effective postvention protocols as those that “provide both immediate (i.e., within 72 hours of event) and long-term plans (e.g., anniversaries),” “secure campus safety,” and “address the complex mental health issues for individuals and groups that may arise after a student suicide.”

CPS has expanded its resources, continuing to increase access to counseling for students, according to Chin. Following Ewunetie’s passing, CPS launched the CPS Cares Line, which provides 24/7 access to counselors by phone and emerged as a recommendation

In an interview with the ‘Prince,’ Dr. Madelyn Gould GS ’74, Irving Philips Professor of Epidemiology in Psychiatry at Columbia University, who has researched youth suicide prevention and strategies, noted that mental health resources extend beyond the limits of campus, as parents should have an active role in their children’s mental health as well.

“There needs to be communication between the University and parents as well,” she said. “Parents need psychoeducation, if they’re not already getting it, with regard to the challenges that their children have and might be experiencing. They have a role in identifying these risk factors.”

Expanding on Schwartz’s research on postvention, Gould noted the importance of communication between the University and student body in coping with a campus tragedy.

“The first thing, there has to be real open communication, and then for the University to demonstrate what changes or additions they’re making to services,” she said. “There’s a big endowment at all these schools, so it’s a matter of setting priorities.”

Tess Weinreich is an Assistant News Editor and Features contributor for the ‘Prince.’

Isabel Yip is a Head News Editor who typically covers University Affairs and student life.

Please send all corrections to corrections@dailyprincetonian.com.

seat at the table.”

At SPIA event, friends reflect on the life and legacy of Maura Coursey

Content Warning: The following article contains mention of death.

University Counseling services are available at 609-258-3141, and the Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7 at 988. A Crisis Text Line is also available in the United States; text HOME to 741741. Students can contact residential college staff and the Office of Religious Life for other support and resources. For employees, Carebridge counseling services are available 24/7 by calling (800) 437-0911.

On the afternoon of Jan. 30, students, staff, and faculty gathered in Robertson Hall to commemorate the life and accomplishments of firstyear graduate student Maura Coursey. Coursey was found dead in her off-campus residence on Jan. 26.

Classmates and friends of Coursey filled nearly every chair in Arthur Lewis Auditorium as they shared heartfelt memories and stories.

The memorial was moderated by Maura’s friend and classmate Brontë Forsgren GS.

SPIA Dean Amaney Jamal began the memorial by thanking everyone for coming, expressing that the SPIA community is keeping those who knew Maura well in their hearts, and saying that Coursey was “loved by so many” and that “words can’t express this loss.” She reiterated that the University and SPIA will continue to provide support to the community in light of the loss.

Coursey’s passing is the fourth death of a Princeton stu-

dent in the past nine months.

Additionally, a University staff member died by suicide on campus in September.

Forsgren shared that she immediately connected with Maura as they both hailed from Utah. Forsgren said that she found out about their shared home state on the first day of Math Camp, when Dean Jamal asked if anyone was from a state not usually represented at SPIA and Coursey “immediately beat [her] to it.”

She shared how Coursey helped her navigate challenges as she was struggling with her own identity and described Coursey as “a safe space to land for so many.” According to Forsgren, Coursey’s sense of humor was felt by the whole Masters in Public Affairs (MPA) cohort, and said that Coursey was one to “always press send on a funny message to the group chat” and whose passion to “help others and those who are marginalized was so clear” in her work with domestic violence victims and refugees. Forsgren described her as having a “righteous but productive anger.”

Forsgren emphasized Coursey’s authenticity, explaining that Coursey was a lesbian woman from Salt Lake City, which Forsgren characterized as a place where it is not easy to be queer. Forsgren said that she “admired Maura for how proud she was of who she was.” For Forsgren, spending time together in Maura’s hometown of Salt Lake City over winter break taught her more about Coursey’s love for her family. Forsgren also mentioned Coursey’s love of Muay

Thai, saying that Coursey wanted to one day go professional.

Following Forsgren, three friends who often played music with Coursey performed “Crowded Table” by The Highwomen in front of an emotional audience. According to one of the musicians, the song had particular significance to Coursey, who grew up in a folk music community. In the designated time allotted for audience stories and sharing, two hometown friends of Coursey who knew her since middle school, Mollie Karewa and Yarden Zamir, shared that she “was a really humble person with so many hidden talents.” Karewa and Zamir said that she was fluent in French, taught boxing to people with Parkinsons, and had a beautiful voice, all of which the two only found out about years after knowing Coursey.

Coursey had expressed to Karewa and Zamir that she was excited to be around people with similar intellectual interests as her at SPIA, something she didn’t experience at home. The two thanked the SPIA community for providing her with this community. They emphasized that despite not living in the same place as Coursey since 2012, “it was so easy to connect with Maura” and they always found a way to talk, even when Coursey was studying abroad in France as an undergraduate through Skype.

A classmate of Coursey’s, Omar Elhaj GS, described their MPA class “as a symphony — when one instrument is missing, it doesn’t sound right.” He

EVP Treby Williams ’84 to depart, third recent admin departure

Executive Vice President Treby Williams ’84 announced her resignation on Tuesday, Jan. 31. She will leave her current position on June 30. Before retiring from the University, she will serve as senior advisor to President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 for one more year.

According to the University press release, Williams worked closely with Eisgruber. As executive vice president, she is the University’s third highest-ranking official, behind Eisgruber and Provost Deborah Prentice who is leaving to lead the University of Cambridge as Vice-Chancellor in March 2023. Williams is the third major administrative departure in recent months, behind Prentiss and Dean of Research Pablo Debenedetti.

As Princeton’s chief administrative officer, Williams oversaw a variety of construction projects — including Princeton’s 2026 Campus Plan and plans for the Lake Campus Development — to expand University facilities and to help Princeton reach net zero carbon emissions by 2046, as outlined in the University’s Sustainability Action Plan.

The Sustainability Action Plan was published in April 2019. It lays out key priorities, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing water use. A large part of the plan focuses on the University’s new construction initiatives and the installation of “campus-wide ground source

heat pump (geoexchange) systems.” For the two new residential colleges, Yeh College and New College West, the University is currently seeking LEED gold certifications, one standard of environmental efficiency. Geoexchange installation is under way on the lawn of Whitman College. A variety of other construction projects are in progress, to be completed over the next decade.

Additionally, Williams led initiatives to strengthen the University’s commitment to civic engagement and expand upon operations and programs run by the University. She supervised the development of Service Focus and the Learning and Education through Service, the Campus Art Steering Committee, the Nassau Fellows program, and the Office of Finance and Treasury’s Supplier Diversity Plan, among others.

In reflecting on her time at Princeton, Williams referred the Daily Princetonian to her statements in the University press release.

“The importance of the University’s mission to the nation and the world, and my spectacular colleagues have inspired me every day,” Williams said. “As executive vice president, it has been a privilege to play a leadership role in planning our campus’ future and advancing initiatives that enable students’ service experiences, focus on the wellbeing of students, faculty, and staff, and support Princeton’s teaching and research aspirations.”

“Treby Williams has

shared that Coursey’s steadfast nature would shine through in small actions, such as when she would sit outside a lecture in protest if she believed the lecture wasn’t helpful or eloquently express when she believed an important angle was missing from a precept discussion. He called on his class to embody Maura’s “productive anger” when they pursue their careers in public service.

Another classmate, Katherine Becker GS, explained that Coursey was someone people go to with the most “private, sensitive information and know that it was safe with her.” She continued to say that Coursey was a “renaissance woman” who “had so many dreams,” indulging the audience in Coursey’s fun and lighthearted desire “to take a road trip to all the lesbian bars left in the US” and her professional goal to learn Russian and work in Eastern Europe to better serve the communities she desired to serve.

Cherrita Guy GS, an MPA student in a different cohort, said that Coursey “wasn’t

afraid to dream big.” Guy explained that as part of her SPIA education, she had met a group of Afghan refugees assigned resettlement in different US states. Discovering that one was assigned to Salt Lake City, Cherrita connected the refugee with Coursey, who helped the refugee feel at home. Cherrita explained that while working at the International Rescue Committee, Coursey “went above and beyond her job title,” taking on tasks that were normally suited for top executives.

The memorial closed with a slideshow of photos compiled by Coursey’s classmates. Cherrita said, “I remember thinking, this is someone who is going to change the world.” She continued, “Maura accomplished more in her short life than most people accomplish in their lifetime.”

Abby Leibowitz is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’

Please send all corrections to corrections@dailyprincetonian. com.

U. declines to ban ChatGPT, releases faculty guidance for its usage

excelled at every dimension of a very demanding job,” Eisgruber said in the press release. “She has been a peerless and beloved captain for her talented administrative team, a valued partner to cabinet colleagues and to me, and a first-rate strategic thinker.” Appointed in November 2013, Williams has served as Princeton’s executive vice president for a decade. She graduated with a degree in history from Princeton in 1984, then earned a law degree from New York University. Beginning in 2005, Williams worked at Princeton as the director of Princeton’s Office of Development Priorities, first as the director of planning and administration in the Office of the Executive Vice President and then as the assistant vice president for safety and administrative planning.

“The talent of Princeton’s faculty, staff, and students is astounding, and I look forward to seeing their positive impacts on national and global challenges in the years to come,” Williams said. According to the press release, “Eisgruber will oversee an international search for the next executive vice president from the firm Spencer Stuart.” The University aims to find a new executive vice president by this summer.

Rebecca Cunningham is an assitant news editor and podcast contributor for the ‘Prince.’

Please send all corrections to nian.com.corrections@dailyprinceto-

Julian Hartman-Sigall Assistant News Editor

On Jan. 25, Dean of the College Jill Dolan and Dean of the Graduate School Rod Priestley sent a memo to the University faculty offering guidance for regulating the usage of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The memo outlines the University’s philosophy pertaining to the academic usage of textbased AI such as ChatGPT, a new chatbot software that can generate human-like text responses and has generated discussion on its use and academic integrity.

The University declined to establish a University-wide policy on the usage of ChatGPT. Instead, they asked instructors to determine their own policy pertaining to the use of ChatGPT in their classes. The University is not banning ChatGPT, which multiple large public school districts have.

In lieu of formal rules, Dolan and Priestley gave four recommendations for professors to include in their own policies: “Be Explicit/Avoid Misunderstandings,” “Explain Your Pedagogical Rationale,” “Design Assignments with Care,” and “Teach Your Students What AI Can and Can’t Do.” ChatGPT is described in the memo as a potentially useful tool, not as a threat to education that some observers have warned of. In the memo, Dolan and Priestley write, “AI will make higher education and the nuanced and sophisticated ways of thinking it teaches even more essential.”

The memo offers a vision of education in which ChatGPT is incorporated into lessons. Dolan and Priestley suggest that instructors have students ask ChatGPT questions about class readings in order to evaluate the merits of its answers and invite students to ask ChatGPT to draft an essay in response to a prompt on which they have already written their own essays.

Dolan and Priestley also note the limitations of ChatGPT, including its inability to cite sources, and gaps in knowledge of information behind paywalls or events after 2021.

The memo does not make any reference to AI-detecting software such as GPTZero, designed by Edward Tian ’23. While it is unknown how prevalent the use of ChatGPT is among University students, recent surveys suggest that the influence of AI can already be seen on college campuses. An article from The Stanford Daily suggests that at least “scores” of students used the AI tool on their end-ofsemester finals and assignments — “around 17% of Stanford student respondents reported using ChatGPT to assist with their fall quarter assignments and exams,” the article claims.

Dolan and Priestley included a reminder that “the undergraduate Honor Code and all campus academic integrity rules are quite clear that students must produce original work,” suggesting that while the University will not be establishing a formal policy, unsanctioned uses of it are violations of the University’s academic integrity rules.

Dolan and Priestley acknowledged the potential for languagebased AI models to become more sophisticated, presenting new challenges and opportunities. They ended their email with a call for experimentation and feedback: “We hope you’ll share your teaching suggestions with us as you experiment with this emerging technology, and keep us posted about what you’re seeing and hearing in your classrooms.”

Julian Hartman-Sigall is an Assistant News Editor and Assistant Newsletter Editor for the ‘Prince.’

Please send all corrections to corrections@dailyprincetonian.com.

Abby Leibowitz News Contributor

Rebecca Cunningham

Assistant News Editor

When’s the best time to leave Princeton for NYC or Philly? We broke it down

Ryan Konarska Assistant Data Editor

Thousands of students use rail transportation every semester to commute into New York City and Philadelphia for internships, nightlife, and other events. While the University advertises that these major metropolitan hubs are “easily accessible” by train, an analysis of schedules reveals that commuting times can vary significantly depending on the day of the week and time of day.

Princeton’s connection to the outside world comes in the form of rail transportation provided by New Jersey Transit (NJ Transit). According to NJ Transit’s Princeton Transitway Study, the Dinky had approximately 500 weekly riders connecting Princeton’s campus and the Princeton Junction station in the 2020 fiscal year. Through the Dinky, commuter rail trains to New York City, and connecting trains to Philadelphia provided by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), University community members have over 600 weekly options to and from the two metro areas within a two-hour commute.

While on the weekdays, the average commuting time to New York City is faster than that of Philadelphia, on the weekends, the average train time to Philadelphia is faster. On the weekdays, the longer commute to Philadelphia can be explained by a longer transfer time at the Trenton station. For savvy travelers, there are ways to minimize to choose an itinerary with a shorter transit time, whether through less time spent waiting at Princeton Junction or Trenton or by taking an express train with fewer stops.

To determine the fastest trains to and from New York and Philadelphia, The Daily Princetonian analyzed the schedules provided by both NJ Transit and SEPTA. We matched each Dinky to a connecting NJ Transit train to New York Penn Station. Similarly, we matched each Dinky to a pair of NJ Transit and SEPTA trains to Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station. We then performed the same analysis in reverse for return trips and differentiated between weekday and weekend schedules.

On weekdays, the fastest train to New York is the 8:09 a.m. departure from Princeton Station and the 8:20 a.m. departure from Princeton Junction, scheduled to arrive at Penn Station at 9:16 a.m. for a total travel time of 1 hour and 7 minutes. On weekdays, the average trip time between Princeton and New York is 1 hour and 25 minutes, while the average return time is 1 hour and 24 minutes. The fastest return trip from New York on weekdays is the 5:03 p.m. departure from Penn Station and its connecting 6:00 p.m. Dinky, arriving at Princeton Station at 6:05 p.m. for a total travel time of 1 hour and 2 minutes.

The connecting train to New York from the 8:09 a.m. Dinky makes no intermediate stops between Princeton Junction and Newark Penn Station. Genevieve Cox ’25 takes this route on her semi-weekly commute and mentioned her satisfaction with the train pair, remarking how “it is also rarely late and more frequently arrives earlier to Newark Penn than scheduled.”

Trips to Philadelphia generally take longer than those to New York, due to the connection to SEPTA in Trenton. On weekdays, the average trip to Philadelphia from Princeton takes 1 hour and 44 minutes, 17 minutes longer than the average trip to New York. The fastest trip to Philadelphia departs from

Princeton Station at 9:24 a.m. and arrives at 30th Street Station at 10:47 a.m. for a total travel time of 1 hour and 23 minutes. Travellers that start their journey at 4:53 a.m., however can expect to spend 2 hours and 24 minutes in transit, making it the analyzed route with the most variation. On the way back to campus, the fastest trip from Philadelphia takes 1 hour and 21 minutes, departing from 30th Street Station at 9:44 a.m. and arriving at Princeton Station at 11:05 a.m. The average return trip on weekdays takes 1 hour and 46 minutes.

The situation is reversed on weekends, with trips to Philadelphia taking 1 hour and 29 minutes on average, two minutes less than the average trip to New York. This change is a recent development brought about by new train schedules; previous NJ Transit timetables had layovers of nearly an hour in Trenton, which have since been reduced to just five minutes.

The quickest trip to Philadelphia on weekends is the 8:24 p.m. departure from Princeton Station, taking 1 hour and 17 minutes to travel to Philadelphia’s 30th Street station, while the fastest train to New York on weekends is the 3:25 p.m. Dinky, arriving at Penn Station 1 hour and 21 minutes later at 4:46 p.m. However, weekend return trips from Philadelphia — all of which clock in between 1 hour and 57 minutes and 1 hour and 59 minutes — take much longer than those from New York, which average 1 hour and 23 minutes.

As the Dinky stops running before the end of NJ Transit service on the main Northeast Corridor line, many students seeking to leave New York or Philadelphia late at night may find themselves stranded at Princeton Junction with no Dinky available to take them back to campus. Beyond identifying the fastest trips to New York and Philadelphia, the ‘Prince’ also gathered data on the last trains to leave these cities that have a matching Dinky connection.

After a late night in New York City, Nick Masters ’25 arrived at Princeton Junction around 3 a.m. and walked back to campus via the Dinky tracks.

“My phone was dead so I decided to take the route I knew would 100 [percent] get me back on campus,” Masters said. “Not a horrible experience, but not one I recommend for the easily spooked.”

On weekday evenings, the final train to depart from New York Penn Station with connecting Dinky service is the 12:14 a.m. departure, connecting with the 1:37 a.m. Dinky. On weekends, plan to leave earlier; the 11:14 p.m. departure is the final train out of New York that connects to a Dinky — in this case, the 12:35 a.m. departure from Princeton Junction. When visiting Philadelphia, plan to depart from 30th Street Station by 11:44 p.m. on weekdays and as early as 9:42 p.m. on the weekends to avoid being left at the Junction.

The simple, five-minute Dinky shuttle connects Princeton with a web of trains to New York, Philadelphia, and beyond. Analyzing the schedules can help riders choose itineraries that get them to their destinations faster — and avoid being stranded at Princeton Junction.

Ryan Konarska is an Assistant Data Editor for the ‘Prince.’ He is a sophomore majoring in public and international affairs.

Please send all corrections to corrections@dailyprincetonian.com.

CHARTS BY RYAN KONARSKA / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Hum r

Long Live Wilcox! Community members gather in memory of Wilcox dining hall

By Walker Penfield Contributing Humor Writer

The following content is purely satirical and entirely fictional.

This morning, huddled masses gathered in the University Chapel to mourn the grave loss of the Wilcox dining hall (1492–2023). Church bells rang across Central New Jersey, accompanied by a 21-gun salute by Princeton ROTC. Notable Princeton alumni, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor ’76 and actress Brooke Shields ’87, attended the memorial.

Celebrity chef Rachael Ray read a eulogy:

“Spanning generations, Princetonians have joined hands to feast in the grand Wilcox Hall, where the clinking of silverware and the murmurs of refined conversation echoed through the chamber at any given meal. Here, amidst the opulent linoleum and plush canvas seating, one can partake in a culinary experience fit for royalty (or the liberal academic elite).

“But alas, the good times cannot last forever. As Princeton students brave the start of their Spring semester, returning to an all-too-familiar hustle and bustle, Wilcox Hall lies dormant, readying

itself for its inevitable demise.

“Wilcox Hall was dedicated during the Battle of Princeton when Alexander Hamilton was fed a muffin by General Wilcox. We will always remember our institution’s history, even as this landmark is demolished to make space for a new postmodern, open-concept abstract dining hall.

“Despite its passing, Wilcox Hall’s legacy will live on. Its absence will be felt by all who knew it, and its memory will be cherished for years to come. Or at least weeks. Long live the refined Wilcox Pizza. Long live the illustrious Wilcox Salad Bar. Long live the supple Wilcox Chicken. You shall never be forgotten.

“Now, let us raise our glasses and embrace those around us as we sing goodbye:

In praise of Old Wilcox we sing, Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Our hearts will give, while we shall live, Three cheers for Old Wilcox.”

Walker Penfield is an economics concentrator and former Wilcox enjoyer from Mendon, Massachusetts. He will miss the convenient lunch spot and dreads the forthcoming protracted waits at Yeh/NCW.

Honor Committee forms subcommittee to investigate cheating in relationships

By José Pablo Fernández García Guest Contributor

The following content is purely satirical and entirely fictional.

In a wholesale approach to the cheating “epidemic” on campus, University administrators have approved a new subcommittee of the Honor Committee to investigate and punish students who cheat on their significant others.

The subcommittee was proposed by the hardline Snitches Get Babes (SGB) faction of the committee, following the release of a new study from the Anscombe Society, which claimed that those who were unfaithful in relationships were “three times more likely to cheat in academic contexts.”

“We’re proud to be advocating for a morally upstanding campus — in more ways than one,” Anscombe President Chaz Deedee ’26 told The Daily PrintsAnything.

The University gave the subcommittee power to punish offending students by requiring them to wear Dartmouth sweatshirts.

“It’s a well known fact that a Dartmouth sweater is the most effective red flag,” said Dean of the College Jill Dolan. “Hope-

fully, that will incentivize convicted students against repeated offenses.”

The first task of the subcommittee will be to determine what exactly constitutes cheating in the context of relationships.

“Some cases will be easier to adjudicate than others,” said subcommittee member Sentra Elperk ’24. “But a gray area exists in scenarios where, for example, one partner insists that they were ‘on a break.’”

Membership lists for the subcommittee obtained by The Daily Prints. Anything revealed that seven of its eight members have no prior dating experience, drawing criticism from students about how to adjudicate cases that come before them.

“You’re telling me they can punish us for having more game than them?” Slu Thera ’25 said.

“It’s not my fault that men want me and fish fear me.”

The subcommittee is set to meet this week and next in order to prepare for when it begins hearing cases on Feb. 14.

José Pablo Fernández García is a senior and head editor emeritus for The Prospect. Due to his concentration, he’s signed the honor pledge in French more times than in English.

JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN THE ENTRANCE TO THE WU-WILCOX DINING HALL, SHARED BY FIRST COLLEGE AND BUTLER COLLEGE, ON A SUNNY AFTERNOON.

S hape S hifting

By Mikaela Lavandero

ACROSS

1 Professional foodies

6 Peril 10 Eve's counterpart 14 Swampy marsh

15 Prefix for a know-it-all

16 Went by train or bus

17 Opposite of bow 18 British bathrooms 19 One in a murder 20 *Neighborhood home to Embassy Row in D.C.

55 *Extra aspect of a challenge ... or what the starred clues literally have?

59 Home of the Himalayas

60 All over again

61 Word before "the influence" or "the impression"

65 Hit, as in a snowball fight

66 Org. with out-of-thisworld feats

67 Short and to the point

68 She, in Spanish

69 Parents eventually end up with an empty one

70 "Rly," in texts

68 Say something bleepworthy

69 Lymph ___

ACROSS

1 "Love Island USA" network

2 1-Across wear a tall one

3 Watch closely

4 Beginners' book series

5 Governor of New Hampshire

6 Hershey caramel chocolate candy

7 "That's my cue!"

8 Bratty

9 You might see many of them on 2/14

10 Blair is the most famous one on campus

11 Start of a musical series

13 Sounded like a kitten

21 Half a spa treatment

22 Flannel pattern

23 Many early computers: Abbr. 24 Kind of tide

25 The Stooges, for example

29 Play pretend

30 One of the captains in "Moby Dick"

31 Hospital machinery that serves as an X-ray alternative

36 "Chicago Hope" Emmy winner

The Minis

Jaeda Woodruff Associate

By Sarah Gemmell Associate Puzzles Editor

46 Spelling of "Beverly Hills, 90210"

48 "Night" author and Peace Nobelist

49 Freely

50 2015 dance trend

51 Good phrase to hear after "bases loaded"

52 Potter's potions professor

56 Figures

57 Loch ____

58 Certain police team

62 Some characters on Grey's Anatomy, for short

63 Class that builds bilingualism: Abbr.

64 Female protagonist in "The Force Awakens"

One year later: DEI efforts within Princeton athletics have stagnated

AJ Lonski Guest Contributor

More than a year ago, I wrote an article in the Daily Princetonian about my negative experiences as a queer student-athlete on the Princeton wrestling team — experiences that ultimately contributed to my decision to take a step back from Princeton Athletics. Shortly after the article’s release, I met with John Mack ’00, Princeton’s Director of Athletics, voiced my concerns about the hostile environment that I experienced, and provided suggestions on how to ensure that future queer athletes would feel safe and supported on varsity teams. I left the meeting feeling optimistic that real change might be carried out.

I was wrong.

After a year’s worth of meetings, high-profile Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) staff hires, and push for increased DEI education and resources, the important changes to DEI policy, athletic training, and team programming that I hoped for have not come to fruition. Instead, the athletic department’s efforts have been incredibly performative, aimed at checking a box instead of actually recognizing the needs of a diverse and incredible group of marginalized athletes on Princeton’s campus.

In a perfect world, we would not need DEI efforts.

But the world is far from perfect. Given that Princeton student-athletes come from many different backgrounds, there is great diversity in expectations and views among student-athletes. If we do not take the time to dispel negative and harmful stereotypes of the LGBTQIA+ community, then we cannot “create and maintain a culture of mutual respect and unity,” to quote the job description of the University’s Associate Director for DEI. Moreover, the expansion of DEI policy and training initiatives benefits marginalized groups on campus beyond the LGBTQIA+ community, including those who need ex-

panded accessibility options or individuals who have experienced instances of interpersonal violence.

One of the core planks of DEI efforts for athletics that I hoped for is education. Besides some trainings from DEI offices on campus such as those conducted by SHARE peers like myself, athletic teams do not receive extensive training and education on topics related to building and maintaining just and inclusive communities.

In May of last year, Princeton Athletics hired Jordan “JT” Turner as the first-ever Associate Director of Athletics for DEI. I was beyond excited that Turner was joining campus and hopefully working to improve the lives and experiences of queer students. It seemed that my concerns and experiences, as well as the experiences of other queer student-athletes, like Griffin Maxwell Brooks, had been taken seriously. But, as recent coverage in the ‘Prince’ notes, after only four months, Turner left. Turner’s departure was not an isolated incident in terms of DEI across the University. Another DEI employee — Dr. Jim Scholl, who supported students like me in the SHARE office — also left, feeling a lack of support.

Speaking to the ‘Prince,’ Turner described an unsupportive culture upon starting their job, recalling how Mack informed them that “there were members of staff and alumni who didn’t even believe [their] role should exist.” The athletics department, Turner explained, “[was] pulling back on some of the promises that had been made to me.”

By insufficiently supporting DEI efforts, Princeton Athletics and other offices on campus reveal a lack of understanding of the importance of DEI and the role that DEI administrators can play in bringing about positive change on campus. Despite student leadership and advocacy, change often must come via a top-down approach. One cannot expect issues of team culture, such as those I experienced on the wrestling team, to be rectified by stu-

dents alone. They must also be made important by Princeton Athletics as a whole and addressed by administrative leaders.

Supporting DEI administrators and holding departments to their DEI commitments is absolutely essential to creating change. Firstly, administrators must make good on their promises and provide the support necessary to protect students. The contrast between the public support of DEI from the administration and the seeming lack of support shown behind closed doors make affirmations of Princeton’s commitment to DEI performative at best.

Secondly, the administration is uniquely positioned and has a responsibility to advocate for students, especially on athletic teams where power dynamics between students can make change difficult. During my time on the wrestling team, I was not always comfortable speaking up in a room full of my peers, especially when upperclassmen voiced their discomfort with the idea of a queer individual being a part of the wrestling program behind closed doors, including in the locker room as I wrote about last year.

When no one else appears to share your concerns, the power dynamics between more senior members of the team

and underclassmen become exacerbated. In these situations, it is crucial that the administration and the coaches provide support. Staff must advocate for students and policy change—advocating for marginalized team members and protecting them can only make the athletic community stronger and more inclusive.

Change is certainly possible. Take the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center (GSRC), for example. Those in leadership roles, such as the Director of the GSRC Kristopher Oliveria and the Assistant Director Eric Anglero, have, in my experience, supported students who pushed for change and the expansion of DEI efforts — students like me. Their support has allowed the GSRC to grow into a vibrant and diverse community where students can feel safe and supported. But why isn’t this kind of support universal?

Within their mission and values, the Princeton Department of Athletics affirms that their values and culture “are aligned with the University’s primary purpose of teaching, scholarship, research and service.” Similarly, the motto of the Princeton wrestling program is “a higher standard.” Let’s start to hold others, and especially ourselves, to those principles. We cannot merely hold ourselves to a selective,

athletic “higher standard.” Rather, we must apply that standard to all virtues, especially supporting those who need that support to thrive in athletics.

If we continue to act as if there is nothing wrong, then change will never happen. The issues permeating athletic culture and DEI efforts at Princeton will continue to propagate until another queer student is made to feel as if they cannot be themselves and have a successful athletic career. When Mack was asked about the departure of Turner and the issues brought up surrounding athletic culture, he declined to comment. But ignoring these issues will not make them go away. The Princeton administration must do more — athletics must do more — if they truly want to support the students that make up the community that they hold dear.

AJ Lonski is a queer-identifying senior from Franklin Lakes, N.J. majoring in neuroscience, as well as a former member of the Princeton varsity wrestling team. He is a peer educator in the GSRC and a peer in the Sexual Harassment & Assault Advising, Resources and Education (SHARE) office. He can be reached at alonski@princeton. edu.

Letter From the Editor: The Two Princetons

Rohit Narayanan Editor-In-Chief

There are two versions of Princeton, and consequently two versions of The Daily Princetonian. The first is Princeton as a national flashpoint. It’s the Princeton of contentious referenda and protests of guest lecturers. At this Princeton, nothing is more crucial than the pitched debate between the national left and the national right, discussing academic freedom and social justice. The characters are big name professors, the highest level of university administrators, and a few politically prominent students. Then there’s the other Princeton. In my view, it’s a Princeton where decades of increasing admissions pressure has created a student body that spends too much time on academics to be interested in the first Princeton and the national conversation. It’s a Princeton where the stories are about new courses or events at the eating clubs, struggles for leadership in tiny organizations, and the daily discovery of a new path blocked off because of campus construction. The characters are undergraduates and professors, postdocs and

graduate students, and lowlevel university bureaucrats far from the national news.

The version of the ‘Prince’ that covers the first Princeton is important. We at the ‘Prince’ will continue to cover the stories more likely to make the national news. We’ll try to put them into the context of our campus and present them to our readership in new and interesting ways. We’ll elevate student voices to guard against context-stripped narratives pushed by actors far from campus.

But students — most of them, at least — go to the second Princeton, the one that doesn’t make the New York Times. That Princeton deserves a campus paper too.

I love the ‘Prince’ — I love it as a staffer, and I love it as a reader. But I recognize that the ‘Prince’ has room to grow, and one of the things we must confront is our tendency to neglect the second Princeton in favor of the first. When it comes to campus happenings, there’s no story too small.

If we want to report the news from classes and clubs, students have to engage with us on these stories. To many students, it might feel odd to talk to a journalist, even a student jour-

nalist, about what happens in the second Princeton — it may feel like it’s supposed to go below the radar.

But Princeton is in an interesting place right now. The long tail of recovery from the pandemic is bringing to light truths about admissions, academics, mental health, and the concept of the University itself. Campus policy and tradition are changing quickly.

As a student here, I care about those stories. But they don’t always come with press releases.

We can only tell them through the anecdotes we hear from our peers. We’re asking the student body for a leap of faith — to engage with us on covering the little stories here on campus.

We’re also making a commitment to you. Over the course of the next year, the ‘Prince’ will ask this question of every story we publish: How does this benefit our student readers and other community members? We’re not always going to succeed. But we recognize that no matter our readership off campus, the

‘Prince’ is first and foremost a community paper. We can’t and don’t take our campus readership for granted. This paper as an institution has to prove its value in every piece that we publish. That’s our mission. We hope you’ll help us out.

Rohit Narayanan is the 147th Editor-in-Chief of the ‘Prince.’ He can be reached at eic@dailyprincetonian.com.

JULIA NGUYEN / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Fall 2022 Pride Night

vol. cxlvii

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

John G. Horan ’74

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

Expand and invest in Wintersession

Tara Shukla Staff Columnist

Since January of 2021, the University has reserved two weeks in January for Wintersession, a program that offers free classes, workshops, trips, and events to students, faculty, and staff.

Angel Kuo ’ 24

Hope Perry ’ 24

Strategic initiative directors

Archivist Gabriel Robare ’24

Education Kareena Bhakta 24

Amy Ciceu 24

Financial Stipend Program

Genrietta Churbanova 24

Mobile Reach Rowen Gesue ’24

Sections listed in alphabetical order.

head audience 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

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I have attended Wintersession for the past two years, and it has been a special and positive contribution to my Princeton experience. It is an opportunity that deserves to expand in the coming years. Wintersession’s primary objective is to “promote connection and growth beyond the resume.” In other words, it offers students and faculty the chance to learn for the sake of learning itself. During the school year, the constraint of deadlines and career and academic stressors can cause the Princeton community to work itself to the bone. However, Wintersession has offered me an invaluable opportunity to reflect on why I came to Princeton in the first place: to broaden my horizons, to connect with others, and to enjoy learning.

It is a liberating and enriching experience to attend classes with a range of ages and majors; it reminds me that I am surrounded by a supportive and curious community. Another unique strength of Wintersession is its involvement of faculty, staff, and graduate students.

“I liked how Wintersession was open to all of the Princeton community,” read one testimonial from a staff member. “It was great to teach a range of expertise and people who just wanted to learn more, particularly faculty.” Wintersession’s zero-stakes focus on education is a celebration of learning for all Princetonians.

Wintersession’s course and activity offerings provide students with the chance to explore new activities and delve into academic subjects outside of their major. It also allows students to discover interests that aren’t otherwise financially accessible to them.

“I would not get to do these things (go snowboarding, go to DC) without support from Wintersession,” read another testimonial from a graduate student .

Highlights from this year’s offerings include skiing trips and classes from blacksmithing to woodworking, to medical skills development — all activities that many college students haven’t had the chance to explore. Other courses, such as How to Have a Hobby, Adulting 101, and Financial Literacy, focus on life skills that help prepare students for their post-university lives. Some are dedicated to thesis prep and research support or even to teaching the basics of academic subjects — the

latter of which is a great way for underclassmen to explore different majors or academic paths.

This year, I personally found Introduction to Machine Learning to be a comprehensive but accessible introduction to data science. As a computer science major considering data science courses in upcoming semesters, this workshop solidified my decision to delve deeper and gave me a working foundation upon which to build more understanding.

Importantly, Wintersession offers a low-stakes way for students to ease into a new semester without the added pressure of adjusting to their classes. During winter break, students can feel disconnected from the Princeton community and might find it difficult to transition back into college life.

However, this two-week experience provides students fun opportunities to reconnect with college friends and readjust to a learning environment. Locals can commute, while students from further places can take advantage of the open housing and dining halls to settle into campus early. Reacclimation to Princeton is made easier by Wintersession’s relaxed social and educational engagements, rather than the usual rush back into classes.

With this being said, Wintersession does have room for improvement. Its primary issue is that the opportunity for students to participate in its unique and fun activities is limited by event resources and space.

In my experience, popular activities and trips fill up minutes after registration opens. I have seen waitlists stretch over 250 people long for novelty offerings like ski trips, New York City visits, or crafting activities. The University should invest in opening additional sections for sought-after courses and increase event capacities to make Wintersession more accessible to all students. Furthermore, it should make online resources for classes available to students who cannot attend due to enrollment capacity or travel constraints, where possible.

Wintersession is a unique way that the University embodies its commitment to fostering lifelong learning in its community members. For me, it has been a chance to reconnect with old friends, appreciate my community, and take interesting classes. Despite issues with high demand and low-capacity activities, this two-week event is a great opportunity for students to explore new hobbies, learn new skills, and transition back into a new semester.

Tara Shukla is a sophomore from Highland Park, N.J., studying computer science and economics. She can be reached at ts6796@princeton.edu.

chief technology officer

Deceitful statistics prop up the Princeton free speech panic

Eleanor Clemans-Cope Associate Opinion Editor

George F. Will GS

’68 recently took to the pages of the Washington Post, where he is a regular columnist, to announce to the world that wokeness at Princeton is destroying free speech. Liberal censorship on college campuses has become an obsession on the political right, a pillar of their case that conservatives are under attack. It’s absurd — and reminiscent of the Red Scare — to declare a national slide into progressive tyranny due to “wokeness” at elite universities. But beyond that, the foundational argument that Princeton is “too woke” and therefore intolerant is a lie.

Will, and others who decry progressive “intolerance” at Princeton, often cite the school’s Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) ranking: A dismal 169th out of 203 schools in 2022. Rankings, in general, are a weak tool for understanding schools’ individual characteristics — they hide nuance and context, encourage rigid thinking, and by rolling all metrics into one overall number, both reflect and obscure the biases of the list-maker. But since conservatives lean on Princeton’s FIRE ranking over and over and over and over and over

again to prop up their argument, it’s worth analyzing, and in this case, debunking.

Since FIRE publishes its methodology, the reason why the ranking doesn’t square with the experience of being a student here is clear. On four of the seven components of the ranking, Princeton is very close to the University of Chicago, FIRE’s top-ranked school for free speech: UChicago’s “tolerance for speakers” is first, Princeton’s is sixth; UChicago’s “admin support” is first, Princeton’s is second; UChicago’s “openness” was 83rd, Princeton’s was better at 52nd; UChicago’s “comfort expressing ideas” was 60th, Princeton was close at 69th.

None of these justify Princeton’s #169 ranking compared to UChicago’s #1. The reason that Princeton is near the bottom of this ranking comes from the highly dubious scoring of the last three components of the ranking.

First, Princeton’s “speech code,” the “written policies governing student speech” is considered “red” to UChicago’s “green” — even though our University’s free speech code is the Chicago Principles. In fact, we were the second school to adopt the Chicago Principles, a move celebrated by FIRE itself. Clearly, we should have full points on this component of the ranking.

Second, we were penalized for “scholar sanctions.”

Given the FIRE’s public comments on this incident, one such sanction was almost certainly the firing of Joshua Katz for sexual misconduct, which conservatives and mainstream media outlets alike have widely, but inaccurately in my view, portrayed as a reprisal for calling a student group, the Black Justice League, a “small local terrorist organization.” A brief conversation between President Eisgruber and FIRE should be sufficient to correct this misimpression and restore our score on this component.

Lastly, our “disruptive conduct” score of #192 (compared to UChicago’s #91) seems to be weighing us down. FIRE’s measure of “disruptive conduct” does not actually measure how much students are exercising their first amendment rights to civil disobedience, nor any other kind of real disruption. You have to go back five years, to the Black Justice League’s 2015 sitin in Nassau Hall to see anything like civil disobedience at Princeton, and we would improve as a community if Princeton students engaged more actively in the issues of the day, including through civil disobedience. But our poor mark on the “disruptive conduct” score is because, in FIRE’s words, “24% of students say shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus is never acceptable.”

Despite the conservative firestorm seemingly caused by this number, to my knowledge, nobody attending Princeton currently has ever “shouted down” a campus speaker. The closest we ever came to this was in 2012, when Occupy Princeton protestors attended a few big-bank recruitment events, asking questions and interrupting speakers for a few seconds to read coordinated statements — such as “we protest the campus culture that whitewashes the crooked dealings of Wall Street as a prestigious career path”— then leaving the event. They came, they protested, exercised their right to free speech, and then they left, allowing the students to continue listening to the speaker. Full points for free speech. On the way out of a Goldman Sachs event, they were booed by their peers.

Princeton’s low FIRE ranking is likely produced by misrepresented data. The FIRE rankings seem engineered to produce fodder for conservatives — UChicago on top, Princeton very low, and other elite schools like Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia within the bottom six slots. This is not to say university campuses are perfect: Many Princeton students, including conservatives, could do a better job criticizing arguments instead of the people that make them and being more accepting of

people who hold opinions they don’t agree with. But this legitimate argument that people need to be kinder to those who do not share their views is not the same as the assertion that conservatives are being systematically silenced.

Princeton’s “free speech problem” is imaginary. Conservatives have latched onto it because it sounds good and defensible — who doesn’t support free speech? — and because it allows them to cast themselves as the victims. But it’s a time-sucking distraction away from the important, real debates about ideas and problems that would truly improve our experience as a learning community. The fake free speech debate is also used as a tool to undermine legitimate progressive dissent or to condemn programs that seek to listen to the voices of oppressed groups. Free speech is alive and well at Princeton — don’t let right-wing rhetoric about its demise distract you from real problems.

Eleanor Clemans-Cope (she/ her) is a first-year from Rockville, Md. intending to study economics. She spends her time making music with Princeton University Orchestra and good trouble with Divest Princeton. She can be reached on Twitter at @eleanorjcc or by email at eleanor.cc@princeton.edu.

Why do students skip their Wintersession events?

The air is cold, the holiday decorations are coming down, and TigerHub has (finally) been updated with last semester’s final grades. It’s Wintersession, and we have a variety of events to choose from. Take a class on dog training! Go skiing! Despite the copious options, I’ve noticed that many of my classmates skip the Wintersession events that they signed up for. The freedom for exploration that Wintersession offers is poisoned by our tendency to overcommit — we feel the pressure to sign up for many events, yet skip them due to the stress generated by our tightly packed schedules.

Wintersession has a problem: Wintersession events are very hard to get into, yet few students show up. The fact that many people don’t attend the classes for which they registered makes the program a less effective learning tool than it could be.

When sign-ups open, anyone can enroll in an unlimited number of first come, first serve classes. This openness, Mira Eashwaran ’26 noted,

causes many Wintersession activities to fill up quickly.

“There were definitely more than a couple that I wanted to do, but couldn’t because they were full,” she said. The passion for signing up doesn’t always transfer to showing up, though. Eashwaran discussed Paint Your Emotions, a class she went to this year, saying that when it came time for the activity to start, “very few people actually attended.”

The Executive Director of the Office of Campus Engagement, Judy Jarvis, confirmed that there are inconsistencies between sign-up and attendance numbers, ones that are widespread enough to be covered in Wintersession facilitator training. “We say, ‘if you want to have 15 people attend, we suggest making your cap around 20-22,’” she explained.

Poor attendance in Wintersession events devalues the effort put in by facilitators. Undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty spend significant amounts of time and energy dreaming up innovative Wintersession classes on niche subjects. Many instructors I had this year mentioned that they chose their Wintersession topic because it had a

deeply personal connection to their lives outside of Princeton. If students aren’t planning to attend, the option to cancel their registration is always on the table — a much preferable alternative to simply no-showing. But, more importantly, students shouldn’t sign up for classes that they’re not genuinely interested in. Nobody forced us to sign up for these classes. Gina Holland, the Undergraduate Program Manager for the Department of Economics, taught a Wintersession course this year called The (Queer?) Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson. She confirmed that facilitators must be prepared for “a certain percentage of attrition.” Despite knowing that no-shows frequently occur, instructors are still affected by the sight of a sparsely populated classroom.

“If it was an arts and crafts session, or something with limited spots,” Holland said, “I can see how an instructor would be a little disappointed.”

Signing up for classes and then skipping them is not just unfair to instructors; it is similarly disrespectful to fellow students. I, like Eashwaran, missed out on several exciting opportunities because

they filled up on the website immediately after sign-ups opened. The fact that many seats presumably went empty heightens the disappointment for those who didn’t get into certain courses themselves.

Finally, it’s disrespectful to ourselves. The purpose of Wintersession is joyful learning, unencumbered by grades, distribution requirements, or exams. We won’t reach this goal until we limit ourselves to signing up for classes we will actually go to and enjoy.

Why is this skipping phenomenon so widespread? Why do so many Princeton students book a far greater number of classes than they will ever reasonably attend? The answer lies in the culture of (over-)productivity that runs rampant through campus. It seems that when students see the huge list of classes, they feel the pressure to take advantage of free hours during Wintersession, and proceed to sign up for too many classes. Students may feel they should always be productive at the expense of free time and their mental health. Wintersession is meant to be a time to rest and recharge by exercising our intellectual curiosity without the stress of a real class. Instead, we consider an hour set aside for no particular purpose to be an hour wasted, and so we keep signing up, even for classes we’re not interested in. By overpopulating our Google Calendars, even during a break, we imply that a fully booked schedule is more valuable than one that leaves space for relaxation. That kind of lifestyle isn’t sustainable. I believe that the stress of overcommitting is why so many people skip their Wintersession undertakings. With such a full schedule, driven by productivity culture, students that may have gone to three Wintersession events otherwise may go to none in the face of the 17 they’ve signed up for.

Ironically, ditching our pursuits doesn’t alleviate the stress of a packed schedule. In fact, it just multiplies it. We feel even worse once we’ve skipped a class, vow to do better, and add yet more to our planners. Rinse, repeat. It’s a vicious cycle that feels inescapable. Accepting that we need to cut back on anything — from extracurriculars, to jobs, to Wintersession offerings — feels tantamount to admitting defeat. Many of us secretly fear that nobody else has the same struggle and that paring down our schedules will mean falling behind our fellow students. Yet, comparing ourselves to others steals our opportunity for joy. How can we find happiness in the incredible opportunities offered during Wintersession if we are unable to separate our desire to learn from our desire to outperform everyone around us?

Holland champions the original idea of Wintersession classes: education for education’s sake. “Whether that’s learning about Emily Dickinson, or about learning to beatbox, it’s just about learning something new,” she argues. “We get so stressed about achieving the grade and achieving the status and the outcome, that we forget about what it should take to get to the outcome, which is the love of learning.”

When the next Wintersession rolls around, we should focus on only signing up for classes we will realistically attend — and ones we are compelled to take by our love of learning. It will benefit everyone, instructors and students alike. If we give ourselves the grace of rest, we may find that the burden of work is lighter and the reward, greater.

Anna Ferris is a freshman from Pittsburgh, PA who intends to concentrate in English. She can be reached at annaferris@princeton. edu.

line, “Discover a hobby. Meet other Princetonians. Learn something new,” seemed to resonate with the student body.

The sponsors’ pilot goal was for 200 students to sign up. When they launched it via a school-wide email, Du said, the numbers “were just so immediate and then they kept climbing. We had roughly 20% of the student body sign up to be involved.”

Du shared that the freedom to explore without being assessed on performance was key to the pilot’s success, particularly given the context of grade deflation.

“Everyone who goes to Princeton is so self motivated — that’s part of how everyone got there. You just want to make sure that along the way, you don’t lose that joy of learning as well.”

Following widespread community satisfaction from the first event, Wintersession became an ongoing USG project through 2020.

“It wasn’t controversial, you know,” Clifton added. “I don’t remember there being institutional pushback.”

Calendar conversations

Amid complaints about the timing of fall semester final exams, the University’s Task Force on General Education issued a report featuring recommendations on restructuring the academic calendar in October 2016.

In an email to the ‘Prince,’ Deputy Dean of the College Elizabeth Colagiuri GS ’99 shared that the Task Force “initially suggested creating a ‘J-term’ that would offer creditbearing courses.”

Colagiuri staffed the Ad Hoc Committee on Calendar Reform, which met from March 2017 to March 2018, as well as a calendar reform steering committee tasked with implementing the reforms between 2018 and 2020. Restructuring the schedule of fall final exams and axing the one-week Intersession period “created the space for a twoweek Wintersession” at the end of winter break, Colagiuri noted.

“There was a question of, well, what do we do in this new period?” OCE Executive Director Judy Jarvis explained in an interview with the ‘Prince.’

As part of this work, the subcommittee conducted surveys and held focus groups among the Princeton community. OCE states “almost two-thirds of undergraduates and over half of graduate students polled during calendar reform research report[ed] that they might or definitely would participate in a two-week Wintersession.”

“It was pretty clear that faculty, undergraduate students and graduate students [overwhelmingly] did not want something graded [or] something mandatory,” Jarvis said.

While there was originally no institutional pushback to Wintersesssion, some faculty had concerns over pushing forward the academic year’s start date — the ‘Prince’ reported in 2018 that Professor Elizabeth Harman said the Wintersession model would be “a huge loss to faculty productivity.”

Nonetheless, a majority of University faculty voted to approve the calendar reform proposal on April 23, 2018, with calendar changes taking effect the 2020–2021 academic year.

A new office for Wintersession

To institute this programming on a University-wide scale, OCE (previously named the Office of Wintersession and Campus Engagement) was instituted in 2019 with “the core goals of designing and launching the new Wintersession initiative, as well as offering other avenues for meaningful cross-campus engagement” such as Princeton Research Day.

Multiple USG members favored this transition, including Andres Larrieu ’23, who led the administra-

tive and logistical programming for USG Wintersession 2020.

“The idea for Wintersession is wonderful. Unfortunately, you’re leaving it in the hands of overstressed undergraduate students. Some of us can be really good at organizing, but we still have our attention split in many different directions,” Larrieu said.

By housing Wintersession within a campus office, the program gained access to expanded University resources along with a staff of dedicated professionals. OCE is headed by Jarvis, who had experience directing the LGBT Center (now Gender + Sexuality Resource Center). In addition to Jarvis, the office is led by 3 full-time staff and supported by five Campus Engagement Student Fellows.

“When I was hired [in] September 2019, I had sort of the sketch: it’s going to be two weeks, it’s going to be free, it’s going to be non-mandatory, it’s going to be non-graded. Go! It was actually really wonderful to have the freedom to figure out through further research working with students, staff and faculty — what shape did we want? So we had the kind of parameters, but what shape did we want it to be?” Jarvis explained.

OCE research took the form of site visits in 2020 to peer institutions including Amherst College and MIT. On campus, OCE worked closely to learn from leaders of Wintersession 2019 and 2020 while also hosting focus groups.

The first Wintersession Advisory Committee, which Larrieu participated in, also met to steer the transition process and continues to oversee programming across the Proposals, Evening Events, and Trips teams. Their work amounted to a smooth changeover of leadership from USG to OCE.

The mission of Wintersession is today listed online as the creation of “shared experiences for all undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and staff to step away from their day-to-day and explore intriguing opportunities that promote connection and growth beyond the resume.”

“Maybe some specific features are new, but at its core, [Wintersession’s] mission statement hasn’t really changed,” Larrieu said.

Impact of COVID-19

University-wide Wintersession efforts, much like other programming on campus, have been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, Wintersession’s programming was entirely virtual. The following year was impacted by the rise of the Omicron variant and was shifted to a hybrid model, where 41 percent of offerings were virtual.

In the wake of two impacted years, Wintersession 2023 will, in many ways, serve as a test run for annual programming in years to come. For the first time, the vast

majority (93 percent) of offerings will be in person.

“This is the first Wintersession we’re going to have that’s going to follow the vision exactly, because of less COVID restraints and everything,” OCE Student Fellow Gil Joseph ’25 explained. “So, we are betting a lot on this year’s edition to see if people are as excited as we are about the idea.”

Mutemwa Masheke ’23 has been working at OCE since 2021. His passion for Wintersession lies in its opportunity for entrepreneurship and its celebration of Princeton’s diverse student body.

“Since the pandemic, to be honest, I feel like Princeton has gotten a little boring. There were a lot of events and cultural things that the student body had pre-COVID that were lost along the way by spending a year and a half away from campus,” Masheke shared.

Choice of programming

According to Jarvis, Wintersession 2023 will include about 517 total offerings, “a significant increase from the 414 offerings last year,” led by 404 unique facilitators. As of Jan. 23, 4,328 people have registered to participate in these sessions.

OCE-led keynote events are a new feature of the University-wide Wintersession. One such offering during Wintersession 2023 includes “Beyond the Resume with Michaela Coel,” moderated by Masheke. In alignment with Wintersession’s mission, the conversation will feature the Emmy and BAFTA-winning actress and writer’s thoughts on defining oneself apart from their professional identities.

Though many workshops offered throughout the two-week period are, in fact, ‘How-to’ courses in beginner- and intermediate-level hobbies, skills, and niche interest areas, OCE offers practical and educational courses as well. These professional growth options include programming exercises in Python and R and senior thesis boot camps.

“The idea isn’t that Wintersession is only joy and silliness,” Jarvis added. “The idea is that it’s ‘choose your own adventure.’”

Larrieu agreed, emphasizing that these opportunities are still conducive to a healthy, exploratory Wintersession experience. “You’re not going to spend 16 hours coding straight. You’re going to spend maybe two or three hours a day, and then you’re going to go do something else,” he said.

Wintersession’s mission aims to “remix campus in a different way,” Jarvis explained. “It doesn’t have to be, ‘Well the person with the PhD is going to be at the front of the classroom.’”

Financial accessibility as a goal

“Our goal is never to get 100 percent participation. Our goal is for the people who want to do Wintersession, can they do it and do they have a good time?” Jarvis explained.

To do this, Jarvis explained that

the team has “tried to make Wintersession work for every single population of people. It was loud and clear from the research that people wanted a really flexible Wintersession.”

Despite many changes to Wintersession’s programming over the years, it has remained free for all participants. Nemo Newman ’23, OCE’s first student hire, commented on the importance of this openness.

“As an FLI [first-generation, lower-income] student, that’s also a factor in why I like Wintersession so much, because it gives everybody equal access, regardless of background,” they explained. “Everything’s free. You can propose a trip or an event that you want to see happen, and you’ll get funding for it. I think that it’s really impactful because there is no barrier to entry in any of the experiences or opportunities that we have. If you want to go on this thing, you sign up.”

Including graduate students

While Clifton and Du explained that USG Wintersession was open from the beginning to graduate students, their participation was often limited due to the nature of advertising, which took place primarily through emails sent by the USG President. As Wintersession has continued to develop, expanding graduate student participation has been a priority.

Deepika Bhatnagar, a Ph.D. candidate in molecular biology, has served on the Wintersession Advisory Committee since March 2022. Though Bhatnagar was late to find out about last year’s Wintersession, she was able to sign-up for a few events at the last minute, including “Dumplings for Dinner” taught by award-winning Chef Melissa King. Impressed by the offerings, Bhatnagar attended an OCE focus group to see how she could get more involved with Wintersession programming.

“People generally know that Wintersession is an opportunity that’s available to them as a graduate student,” said Bhatnagar. “But, I think since it’s relatively new, not all grad students are aware of the extent to which they can participate.”

Former Graduate Student Government (GSG) President Andrew Finn echoed Bhatnagar’s assessment of the graduate student response to programming.

As another member of the Wintersession Advisory Committee, he also highlighted the importance of advertising to graduate students as a specific demographic, noting that they are often siloed within their departments. Ongoing collaborations between OCE and GSG, including efforts to publicize the availability of free food for participants, are beginning to shift Wintersession into the space of graduate conversations.

“Now, so many people I talk to are really looking forward to it,” Finn said. “They’re refreshing the

page to sign up right away for a lot of sessions, and they’re just really excited by all the offerings.”

What’s next for Wintersession?

As Wintersession becomes a more established program on campus, OCE hopes to continue evolving in line with the office’s entrepreneurial spirit.

“I’m hoping that the ‘Beyond the Resume’ event that we’re currently planning will be a template for many more student partnerships and keynote events, where different student organizations can submit proposals for speakers relevant to their community,” Masheke explained.

While the number of registration slots per offering is limited based on facilitators’ comfort, the team hopes to continue expanding the number of trips, which have been among the most popular offerings.

“I’ve had some academic departments reach out over the year and say that they may want to put some trips, including international trips, into this time period,” Jarvis noted. “I think, increasingly, you will see trips that go further afield — there just has to be more planning, more people involved.”

Finn said he hopes to see other institutions look to Wintersession as a model for creating greater worklife balance among graduate students. Additionally, he encourages more graduate students to step into a facilitator role to share their diverse interests and “[step] outside of what they’ll do in a typical day to day.”

For Newman, building upon collaborations with community partners such as the Princeton Arts Council is an important next step. While they acknowledged that the campus-centric mission of Wintersession means that those not directly affiliated with the University will likely never be the core demographic, there are untapped opportunities to integrate the two groups.

“Doing more to wash away the lines between Princeton University and Princeton town is something that I really hope continues to occur during the years to come,” they said.

Regardless of potential changes, Wintersession organizers reflected on the unique experience it provides — both as a program that sets Princeton apart from other institutions and as a novel learning opportunity within the University.

“I usually describe it as the Princeton I wanted to join,” said Joseph. “I think everyone should be obsessed with Wintersession, honestly.”

Sejal Goud is the associate Features editor for the ‘Prince.’

Gia Musselwhite is an assistant Features editor for the ‘Prince.’

Please direct any correction requests to corrections@dailyprincetonian.com.

Larrieu: “Maybe some specific features are new, but at its core, its mission statement hasn't really changed”

COURTESY OF TORI REPP/FOTOBUDDY

An ice sculpture on Cannon Green marks the kick-off of Wintersession 2023

the PROSPECT.

Clinging on to Lunar New Year

You are reading the words of someone who has celebrated Christmas Eve in a McDonald’s and New Year’s Eve in bed before 10 p.m. These are the words of someone who spent Thanksgiving online shopping for five hours in a fit of mild delirium and Independence Day frowning at the American tourist who yelled “Happy Fourth of July!” in the middle of the seventh arrondissement of Paris last summer.

In other words, I am not someone who makes a big fuss over most holidays. There’s no hostility on my part toward New Years, Christmas, Thanksgiving, or the rest. It’s simply that, like many other immigrants, my parents only made halfhearted attempts to celebrate American holidays throughout my childhood. As I grew up, holidays inevitably blurred into one another, often passing by without comment or notice.

There’s just one exception to this rule.

For as long as I can remember, each year, every year, around the end of January or the beginning of February, my family makes a Herculean effort to celebrate Lunar New Year. In years past, we’ve put up red posters with carefully calligraphed gold characters proclaiming joy and luck on windows, rolled out enough dough to make dozens and dozens of dumplings from scratch, and brewed “laozao,” a sweet, fermented rice wine concoction.

Celebrations begin two nights before the New Year when my mom fills our kitchen with all the ingredients we’ll need for the days ahead: dried mushrooms, diced ginger and minced garlic, a plethora of fragrant sauces and spices, and bowls and bowls of raw pork and poultry.

The eve of the New Year passes at a frenetic pace: hour after hour, my family cooks, cleans, and prepares for the evening’s festivities. The stove runs nonstop for hours as we constantly adjust oven racks to get everything baked on time. One by one, we prepare traditional dishes like lotus root, eggplant, rice cakes, and “shuizhu” — thin-sliced meat poached in boiling water.

By 7 p.m., the hard work is done. Together, we gather around the dining table, dig in, and watch “chunwan,” the annual New Year’s Eve Gala broadcast. Over toasts of champagne and apple cider, we wish each other good fortune for the year ahead. Our extended family across the Pacific sends us voice messages and festive emojis via WeChat.

Over the years, I’ve often questioned why my family continues to celebrate Lunar New Year, especially when we’ve mostly given up on every other holiday.

The answer to these questions isn’t simple.

It feels too reductive to view my family traditions as a way to keep in touch with our Chinese heritage. It’s too simple to say that when my family hangs up brightred paper lanterns and cooks Sichuan cuisine, we are mooring ourselves to a country that we no longer call our own.

Because the truth is, if this is the reason why we persist in our celebrations, we’ve done an awfully poor job of mooring ourselves to anything at all. The traditions of Lunar New Year dictate

that we head back to my parents’ rural hometowns in the Sichuan province, gather with all of our extended family, and set off firecrackers to scare off the mythical, evil beasts that prowl on New Year’s Eve. Obviously, none of this is possible when we are an entire continent away from our relatives and when the local county code prohibits firecrackers of any kind (California has an issue with wildfires).

Even the traditions that are easier to follow — older relatives giving out red envelopes stuffed with cash to children, eating noodles and dumplings on New Year’s Eve, pulling an all-nighter to auspiciously bring in the new year — have been eschewed by my family. Instead, when my family celebrates Lunar New Year, our celebrations are a mixture of American and Chinese influences, of new and old.

When my grandparents across the Pacific send me red envelopes, they do so over the internet, and the money goes straight into my digital wallet. When my family plans the menu for our New Year’s Eve dinner, we incorporate decidedly non-traditional items such as cheesecake, champagne, and dinner rolls. And, because I nearly always had school the following day when I celebrated New Year’s growing up, I never quite managed to pull off that all-nighter.

All of this is to say that nearly every way in which my family celebrates Lunar New Year has been shaped and modified by our time in America. Plus, after two decades in California, my parents can hardly moor my family to the traditions of a country that they left in the 20th century, because that country has moved on, too.

The lack of a solid foundation behind our celebration of this holiday worries me sometimes. Some part of me fears that once I graduate and no longer have an abnormally long winter break to spend at home, Lunar New Year will be consigned to the same scrap heap of obscurity that Thanksgiving and Christmas currently occupy in my mind. The philosophy ma -

jor in me also wonders whether, after my family has changed and modified all the traditions of the Lunar New Year, the celebration will even be considered the Lunar New Year.

But maybe, I’m overthinking this too much.

I write this essay on the last day of the old year, on a cold afternoon in the middle of winter. From the door of my childhood bedroom, I can hear the clanging of pots and pans as the rest of my family prepares the meal for tonight. In a moment, I will close my laptop, grab a knife, and start chopping up vegetables for the soup. I think I’ll stay up late tonight, maybe even pull an allnighter, because why not? It’s not like I have school tomorrow.

I don’t know what the years ahead will bring, whether I’ll continue receiving red envelopes from my relatives and watching the New Year’s Eve Gala, or whether Lunar New Year will still occupy the same place in my life.

Regardless, right now I am simply thinking of this: my mother and father were the only two people out of my large, extended family that chose to immigrate to America. Here in California, we are a solitary immigrant family. We only have each other on this vast, vast continent. And in spite of that fact — or because of that fact — we’ve managed to cling on to Lunar New Year, even if the holiday doesn’t really exist anywhere else like it does for us.

Maybe that’s good.

Maybe that’s enough.

Joshua Yang is an associate editor for The Prospect at the ‘Prince.’ He can be reached at joshuayang@ princeton.edu or on Twitter at @ joshuaqyang.

Self essays at The Prospect give our writers and guest contributors the opportunity to share their perspectives. This essay reflects the views and lived experiences of the author. If you would like to submit a Self essay, contact us at prospect@dailyprincetonian.com.

JOSHUA YANG / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Street Decorations for Lunar New Year

Joshua Yang

Associate Prospect Editor

Suffocating defense propels women’s basketball to massive win over Yale, 79–30

By Isabel Rodrigues Staff Sports Writer

On Saturday, Jan. 28, the women’s basketball team (14–5 overall, 5–2 Ivy League) solidified their place as the best scoring defense in the Ivy League, defeating Yale (10–10, 4–3) by a 49-point margin, 79–30. The Bulldogs’ 30 points was their lowest-scoring game since 2005 and the lowest final score by an Ivy League team, in or out of season, since 2020.

“The defensive piece was more like the Princeton defense that we’ve been working on," head coach Carla Berube told The Daily Princetonian postgame. “We show it in practice every day, we work really hard at it. So it’s good to see it shown in the game today.”

First-year guard Madison St. Rose followed up back-to-back Ivy League Rookie of the Week awards by leading the Tigers in scoring for a third straight game, posting 17 points, including three three-pointers, and two rebounds. St. Rose has scored more than 15 points in five of her last six games. Junior forward Ellie Mitchell was unstoppable on the boards, hauling in 12 rebounds, along with eight points, two assists, and one emphatic block.

The Tigers initially traded baskets with the Bulldogs through the opening minutes of the first quarter, but a threepointer from senior guard-forward Grace Stone initiated an 8–1 run for the Tigers. Though the Tigers shot 40 percent from the field in the quarter, their defense helped them to a 14–9 advantage at the end of the first quarter.

Junior guard Kaitlyn Chen and sophomore center Paige Morton teamed up on defense extensively, managing to corner Yale point guard Jenna Clark to force Yale’s sixth turnover in just seven minutes. One possession later, Morton set a solid screen for Chen, putting her defender a step behind. Chen took the ball all the way to the basket, getting the runaway layup and a trip to the foul line.

In the second quarter, the Tigers outscored the Bulldogs 22–4, as Chen continued to weave her way into the paint, while senior guard Julia Cunningham sank a couple of three-pointers. Continuing their strong defensive display, sophomore center Parker Hill snagged back-to-back steals and pushed the ball up the court to Mitchell, who cashed in the paint. Come to the end of the quarter, the Tigers were leading by 23 points, despite having no scorers in doubledigits.

Mitchell’s offensive activity has been steadily increasing over the last five games, and now she says she's being more intentional about going after her own shots.

“I’m trying to take my time when I've got the opportunity,” Mitchell told the ‘Prince’ after the game. “Just focus, slow down, and look for myself.”

Mitchell has added a couple more put-backs off of her rebounds each match, and it has paid off. Saturday afternoon, she became the first Ivy League player since Bella Alarie ’20 to log at least eight points and 12 rebounds in less than 22 minutes on the court, per Her

Hoop Stats. St. Rose would take the reins in the second half, scoring back-to-back three-pointers in the mid-third quarter to boost Princeton’s lead to 30. St. Rose would score 15 of her 17 points in the second half on 58 percent shooting.

Senior point guard Maggie Connolly was a key connection between the more experienced and younger Princeton units, skillfully breaking Yale’s attempts at a full-court press throughout the game. Connolly’s ability to work with and between sets of teammates is a skill Berube says has been key to maintaining stability.

“[Connolly] knows what to run and who to run it for,” Berube said. “That’s what she gives us. It’s stability, it’s making the right decisions, and [making]

smart plays.”

As the fourth quarter rolled in, the Tigers held a 59–25 advantage and both teams had sent in their benches and younger players. Sophomore guard Adaora Nwokeji had her first conference points of the season, as she sank a mid-range jump shot late in the game while surrounded by Yale jerseys.

The Tigers’ rout of Yale was their most convincing win of the season, as they posted both their second-highest final score and allowed the fewest points they had in any game this year. Princeton improved to 5–2 in conference play, sitting in a three-way tie for third place with Penn (13–7, 5–2) and Harvard (12–7, 5–2).

The Tigers will have one more opportunity to fine tune

when they take on Cornell (9–11, 2–5) on Friday, Feb. 3. The following day, they are off to New York City for a highly anticipated rematch with league leaders Columbia (17–3, 6–1), who handed the Tigers their second loss of the season earlier this month.

Princeton will tip off against Cornell at 6 p.m. and against Columbia at 4 p.m. Both games will be available to stream on ESPN+.

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

Please direct any corrections requests to corrections@dailyprincetonian.com.

Grant Wahl ’96 to receive Colin Jose award for ‘significant, long-term contribution’ to American soccer

By Wilson Conn Head Sports Editor

Last week, the National Soccer Hall of Fame announced that Grant Wahl ’96 will be given the 2023 Colin Jose Media Award. Named after the Hall’s historian emeritus, the honor is bestowed upon “journalists whose careers have made significant

long-term contributions to soccer in the United States,” per the Hall’s press release.

Wahl covered soccer for Sports Illustrated (SI) for over two decades before leaving the company in 2021 and pursuing a career as a writer on Substack. He passed in December 2022 of an ascending aortic aneurysm while covering the

FIFA Men’s World Cup in Qatar.

After graduating from Princeton, where he served as a sports editor and writer for The Daily Princetonian, Wahl briefly interned for The Miami Herald before joining SI as a factchecker. He gained notoriety in the early 2000s for a number of popular stories, including a 2002

cover story about LeBron James, who was a high school basketball phenom at the time. Wahl also covered his first Men’s FIFA World Cup for SI in France in 1998 and did not miss one for the rest of his life.

“During his legendary career, Wahl was an ubiquitous presence at World Cups, Women’s World Cups and Olympics, providing a passionate, unique perspective on the sport at its highest levels,” the Hall press release read.

Wahl made the switch to covering soccer fulltime for SI in advance of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. He was noted for his tremendous influence on the growth of the game in America, as well as for his attention to pervasive inequalities and discrimination in the sport. Indeed, Wahl attentively covered the U.S. Women’s National Team’s quest for equal pay and reported on the human rights abuses

taking place in Qatar during this past year’s World Cup.

“I think there’s one individual that is credited with the growth and popularity of soccer in the United States,” said Chris Long ’97, one of the owners of National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) club Kansas City Current. “It’s Grant Wahl.”

“He was a force for good in both our sport and our society,” added Jim Barlow ’91, head coach of Princeton’s men’s soccer team, shortly after Wahl’s passing.

Wahl will be given the award posthumously at this year’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony on May 6 in Frisco, Texas.

Wilson Conn is a head editor for the sports section at the ‘Prince.’

Please direct any corrections requests to corrections@dailyprincetonian. com.

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Junior forward Ellie Mitchell (00) grabbed 12 rebounds in Saturday's win.

Miles Smith Jr. appointed as new Associate Director of Athletics for DEI

By Dana Serea Contributing Sports Writer

On Jan. 11, Princeton Athletics announced the hiring of Miles Smith Jr. as the University’s new Associate Director of Athletics for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Prior to this position, Smith served as Associate Director of Athletics for Compliance and Student Development at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ).

“We are thrilled to welcome Miles and his family to Princeton Athletics,” Director of Athletics John Mack ’00 stated in the press release. “The experience Miles has as both a DEI practitioner and an administrator, combined with his passion for student-athletes, makes him a perfect fit for our team.”

"I am extremely excited and humbled to be joining the Princeton Athletics family. I would like to thank Director of Athletics John Mack for recognizing the importance of

this work and investing in inclusive excellence,” Smith said in the same statement. Smith’s hiring comes about four months after the resignation of the former Associate Director of Athletics of DEI, Jordan “JT” Turner, who left the position in Sept. 2022. An investigation by The Daily Princetonian revealed that Turner was one of three DEI staff members to have resigned from the University since Sept. 2021. All three alleged “a lack of structural support and understanding from the University” and “insufficient thought in designing the roles they were hired to fulfill,” the ‘Prince’ reported in December 2022.

“The more I push[ed] for policy change, the more resistant the leadership became. It was a highly macro-aggressive environment,” Turner told the ‘Prince.’ “I couldn’t take the necessary steps that were needed to lay the groundwork for innovative equity work in

the department.”

“It didn’t feel like the intention was for me to be fully supported in my role,” they added.

In the press release by Princeton Athletics, Smith did not reference the resignation of his predecessor and focused on the future of the position.

“I envisioned this role as an educational expedition developing into more than just an inclusive athletic department, but becoming an innovative leader in college athletics for Inclusive Excellence,” Smith said in the Athletics statement on his approach to the role.

“I look forward to leading and serving in this fundamental role, while working alongside student-athletes, coaches, alumni and administrators to create lifelong impact while ensuring that Princeton Athletics is a place where all can grow as inclusive leaders," he added.

Smith graduated from Northern Vermont University-

Johnson in 2009, where he later served as both head coach of the men’s basketball team and Assistant Director of Athletics for Compliance. Smith also served on the NCAA Regional Advisory Committee and Coaches Chair for Men’s Basketball in the NAC and in 2015, was named the North Atlantic Conference Coach of the Year.

During his time at TCNJ, Smith was the college’s Athletic Diversity Inclusion Designee and the assistant coach for the men’s basketball team.

Both Mack and Smith declined multiple requests to speak with the ‘Prince’ on the subject of Smith’s hiring, citing a need for Smith to first settle into his new role.

Dana Serea is a staff writer for the Sports section at the ‘Prince.’ Please direct any corrections requests to corrections@dailyprincetonian.com.

Men’s basketball suffers loss to Yale, 87–65

By Matt Drapkin Assistant Sports Editor

In a marquee matchup between two long-standing rivals, men’s basketball (14–6 overall, 5–2 Ivy League) seemed poised to steal a win on Yale’s home court. However, a rough patch for the Tigers in the second half gave space for a grand comeback for Yale (14–6, 4–3), which sent Princeton packing with an 87–65 loss. The 22-point difference makes for the worst loss of the season yet for the Tigers.

As a part of the Coaches vs. Cancer program, a collaboration between the American Cancer Society and the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), the coaching staff from both sides donned suits and sneakers during the game to participate in the #SuitUp initiative.

According to the American Cancer Society, “coaches and their staff across the nation wear sneakers with their suits during games to raise awareness, helping to save lives by raising funds and encouraging people to educate themselves about cancer prevention,

screening, and early detection.”

Senior forward Tosan Evbuomwan took the lead for Princeton.

First, he maneuvered his way into the paint for a layup that gave the Tigers their first bucket. Then, he showed off his playmaking with a bounce-pass dime to senior guard Ryan Langborg on a backdoor cut.

Langborg scored an easy layup.

Five minutes into the game, the Tigers led 7–3, but the game remained close. The lead never extended past five points for either team, and there were over 10 lead changes in the first half alone. The back-and-forth battle continued until the end of the half, when Princeton led by one, 36–35.

To start the second half, Evbuomwan once again made his mark for the Tigers by swatting away an inside Yale layup attempt. Then, turning defense into offense, he grabbed the rebound and pushed the pace down the floor. He found senior forward Keeshawn Kellman inside, and Kellman dropped in a layup for the first bucket of the half. With 16:10 remaining, sophomore guard Blake Peters hit a big three-pointer to give the Tigers

their biggest lead of the half, 49–44.

Then, the Bulldogs finally woke up.

Yale forward Matt Knowling found guard John Poulakidas on back-to-back plays around the perimeter, making an extra pass for Poulakidas to drop in two consecutive three-pointers. Then, Bulldogs forward E.J. Jarvis joined the club and knocked down a three of his own. Finally, Knowling found an opening inside for a dunk that gave the Bulldogs a 55–51 lead.

After a quick nine-point swing, the Tigers called a timeout to try and stop the bleeding.

First-year guard Xaivian Lee came off the bench for Princeton. With 12:35 remaining, he swished a three to cut the deficit to one, 57–56. That would be Princeton’s last bucket for the next six minutes.

It seemed as though everything was working for Yale at this point. The Bulldogs were in a groove on offense, hitting jumpers and finding cutters inside. On defense, they locked down the Tigers, forcing misses from all over. Yale guard Isaiah Kelly’s emphatic put-

back slam helped rally the crowd watching in New Haven.

The beat-down did not let up throughout the rest of the game, and, losing by 20 with three minutes remaining, Princeton took their starters out.

“Yale played great, and they made big shots at the key moment in the game,” head coach Mitch Henderson ’98 told The Daily Princetonian.

As a team, Yale dominated the offensive statistics, managing to shoot almost 60 percent from the field and 67 percent from the three-point line.

Yale also saw five different scorers reach double-figures. The Bulldogs were led by Poulakidas, who dropped 19 points on five-for-six three-point shooting. Guard August Mahoney added 15 points, Knowling contributed 12 points and nine rebounds, and guards Bez Mbeng and Kelly each put up 11 points.

For Princeton, Evbuomwan led with 15 points, five rebounds, and six assists on an efficient sevenfor-nine from the field. Peters also added 15 points, all from threepointers.

“It’s key that we look at what happened, and then we need to move on with a big weekend ahead,” Henderson said.

The weekend ahead will consist of back-to-back games in Jadwin Gymnasium. On Friday, Feb. 3, Princeton will host the Cornell Big Red (15–5, 5–2) in a matchup between the two top teams in the Ivy League. The two last met on Jan. 7 in Ithaca, where Princeton won 75–68.

Then, on Saturday, Feb. 4, Princeton will face Columbia (6–16, 1–6). Columbia currently sits on the bottom of the conference standings. The last time the Tigers faced Columbia, just three weeks ago, Princeton crushed the Lions in a 68–49 victory. However, the Lions are not to be overlooked, as they topped Yale earlier this season.

Matt Drapkin is an assistant editor for the Sports section at the ‘Prince.’

Please direct any corrections requests to corrections@dailyprincetonian.com.

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