Thursday May 19, 2022 vol. CXLVI no. 12 Special Reunions Issue Founded 1876 daily since 1892 online since 1998 www. dailyprincetonian .com{ } Twitter: @princetonian Facebook: The Daily Princetonian YouTube: The Daily Princetonian Instagram: @dailyprincetonian welcomethreeAfteryears,backto the Best Old Place of All
page 2 Thursday May 19, 2022The Daily Princetonian
For the first time in three years, alumni have gath ered to celebrate the Princeton community and walk in the footsteps of their younger selves — and we’re proud to be here, covering your story.AtThe Daily Princetonian, we’ve worked to compile an issue that gives you all a glimpse into the issues that have animated campus life and current Tigers’ struggles and achievements over the course of the past year. In a “best of” issue, we present you with the best student journalism of our current staff. In the past year, we’ve investigated how the Honor Code was ap plied during the pandemic, and told the stories of students who have felt harmed by the system. We’ve covered historic campus expansion, rallies in solidarity with Ukraine, and protests against the leaked Su preme Court decision penned by Justice Samuel Alito ’72 that would overturn Roe v. Wade. In our opinion pages, we’ve devoted space to a column by a student survivor of sexual assault who argued the University’s system failed her, an argument for embracing failure amid an overabundance of success, and a call for Princeton to end its endowment’s holdings in fossil fuels. Thank you to those of you who stick with the ‘Prince’ year round and support us by subscribing to our daily e-newsletter at subscribe. dailyprincetonian.com. Your contributions and readership are what allows our work to continue. We’re honored to continue serving this campus and all those who care about Princeton from beyond it.
Marie-RoseBest, Sheinerman Marie-Rose Sheinerman is the 146th Editor in Chief of the ‘Prince’; she can be reached at eic@dailyprincetonian.com.
Dear WelcomeReaders,back!
Marie-Rose Sheinerman Editor-In-Chief
Letter from the
Editor
MR: This is a wonderful break. My life is like a roller coaster. Really, really high highs and really low lows. No bel Prize, getting jailed, get ting arrested, and then losing your freedom ... it could be worse. So I shouldn’t com plain. But it was incredible. This is worth it.
MR: The Woodrow Wilson Award is better than a Nobel, for Princeton. But I fought re ally hard to come because of these two experiences. And [University Spokesperson] Ben [Chang] actually was the one who thought about my high school. I just wanted to come back to Princeton. I wanted to come back, and I really had to fight because we had to file for court approval.
stead of “what if you reward explanations, or connections, or real engagement: redefine what engagement is?” You’ve heard the phrase, “code is opinion.” It’s like a dicta tor has come and changed the entire world’s incentive scheme — and it is the entire world. It goes all the way to governance. How does your generation think? It’s harder to think; it is harder to find meaning.
- Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa ’86
The Daily Princetonian: What does it mean to you to speak at your former high school and have the audito rium named after you in a few months? Maria Ressa: It’s surreal — I like going back to Princ eton because you walk in the steps of your old self. So this is a much younger, more inse cure person whose shoes that I walked into. When I was try ing to decide what I was going to do — I was tired of breaking news — I went back for a Ferris [Professor of Journalism posi tion]. So coming back to high school was like stepping in the shoes of my high school self, when I was trying to figure out what to do with my life, and now coming back at 58 is kind of cool. DP: Coming back to Princ eton, and the Woodrow Wil son award... what does it mean to you to be back for Alumni Day?
DP: You said in your No bel speech that hate and fear and misinformation is what’s profitable right now. So how can journalists both work against that and work within that kind of framework and still put out meaningful, quality journalism?
DP: How do you think we can use social media for good? Is there a way to use social me dia algorithms for good? MR: Yes, you can, but it has to be completely redesigned. Right now, the design of social media rewards the incentives because they make money from it. So it’s, “how long can they keep you scrolling?” in
DP: Do you ever take a break?
Q&A with Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa ’86
page 3Thursday May 19, 2022 The Daily Princetonian
I have seven charges, and I knew it was going to go to the last minute. I was supposed to leave on a Wednesday. On the Monday, I’m going, “I don’t know whether I can go or not.” This is where the pro cess is the torture. My friends were asking me, “Are you go ing?” Princeton was already acting like I was a done deal. And I said, “I don’t have the last approval yet.” And then Wednesday, I get a court or der that is a non-denial denial. Immediately, I filed a motion for reconsideration, and then thankfully, they granted it the next day. So it was like you can give up, which is what everyone thought — no one thought I’d be able to come. But we had a Zoom trial. And the Office of the Solicitor Gen eral was nasty, but my lawyer argued really well. And then at 5 p.m. — like 10 minutes before five, before the courts close — I get it granted. The flight leaves at like seven; I had an hour to pack and an hour to get to the air port. And I got on the plane. I really wanted to come. But then the other part is I’m still running a company. And we’re 80 days before elections, and we’re rolling out tech. So I was working when I was on the plane.
‘We’re creating what the world is’:
DP: What message do you think was sent to both fellow journalists and to govern ments around the world who are suppressing free press by you receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?
MR: That we’re not alone. For journalists globally, it re ally was a lift. For the Philip pines and for Rappler, it’s vin dication because we’ve been lambasted so much. Really, we’ve weathered a lot of at tacks. For me, I wouldn’t call it vindication as much as it was a global acknowledgement that there’s something funda mentally wrong with our in formation ecosystem. And then, when I looked and saw that the last time a journalist got it was Norman Angell, and he was in a con centration camp, I was like, “Oh, my God, the parallels are too big.” I had friends calling me, journalists, who were cry ing because it’s been so hard. Fighting for the facts and for the truth is not just the jour nalist’s job. You can’t leave us alone. If this matters to you, you need to jump in. I hope that’s the message.
By Katherine Dailey Head News Editor
COURTESY OF BEN CHANG Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa ’86 (right) discusses her work with Head News Editor Katherine Dailey ’24 (left).
“When you are rewarded for bad behavior, when you are rewarded for splintering people apart, for creating ‘us against them,’ what kind of leadership are you creating? That’s the incentive scheme for leadership today.”
MR: First, before I answer: when you are rewarded for bad behavior, when you are re warded for splintering people apart, for creating “us against them,” what kind of leader ship are you creating? That’s the incentive scheme for lead ership today. And so how do journalists work in this environment? I think the commoditization of news began with the inter net, when you began to give rewards for page views. A re ally good investigative piece doesn’t get read as much as the crappiest sensationalist piece, or the conspiracy theory that you heard and you can bolster it. So here’s the other part: the person is never objective. One person sees the world from where they sit, so all of our views are different, but what makes the journalism objec tive is the process of a news room that makes sure that it is comprehensive and objective — there should be a new word. It’s not objective, but that pro cess is expensive, and that’s the part that’s getting killed by social media’s model. So what does that do? Bad journalism is rewarded. That’s what spreads fastest on social media. The mission of jour nalism, I think, has been eroded because the incentive schemes are wrong, just like the incentive schemes for leadership.
DP: How do you stay so hopeful and so driven in the face of such adversity and fear?
Maria Ressa ’86 is the CEO of Rappler, a news organization in the Philippines that has been lauded by journalists across the world for its incisive and criti cal reporting on the corruption of the President Rodrigo Duterte ad ministration. Ressa has endured continued persecution in the Phil ippines, including currently fac ing seven counts of cyber libel. In 2021, she was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. On Saturday, Feb. 19, she was honored at Princeton Alumni Day with the Woodrow Wilson Award, the highest award an un dergraduate alumni can receive. She had previously been nearly prevented from arriving to cam pus to receive the award by a court order in the Philippines. On Feb. 18, the day prior to the cere mony, Ressa took a trip to her for mer high school, Toms River High School North, in a visit coordi nated by the University Office of Communications. A reporter for The Daily Princetonian accompa nied her during the visit and sat down with her for an interview in the car ride back to Princeton. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
MR: I went home and after college, I applied to jobs — most of my classmates became consultants or bankers, and I went and got a fellowship back to the Philippines. And I did that for a year. I never moved back to the States. So I fell into journalism because I wanted to learn about the Philippines. And it was an incredible time to be in the Philippines; it was right after the People Power Revolt. And then slow ly, you realize you’re not re ally formed. Even though we have a senior thesis, we’re still growing up and you don’t know who you are. You live your way into the answers. And being a journalist was the best way that I learned be cause I was constantly learn ing. And I love that I can ask anyone questions and they answer.
MR: Because we’re creating what the world is and what it can become now. What we did in the Philippines was form a pyramid, right — four layers of how we’re going to protect the facts. And keep in mind, facts don’t spread on social media. Layer one is fact check ers. So for the first time, 14 or 15 news organizations are working together, doing fact checks that can be repurposed by every news group, and then sharing each other’s content on social media. The second layer, we call it the “mesh.” That’s civil society, NGOs, church, [and] business groups. We have a tech platform cut ting through, so the data goes through all four layers. The third layer was patterned after the election integrity partner ship in the U.S. but these are research groups — seven re search groups that every week will come out with, “This is how you’re being manipulat ed this week.” We’re calling it #BreakTheTrend.Thefourthlayer is law — that’s long been absent, right? The biggest thing wrong with the internet today is the im punity on the internet, the lack of rule of law. So that’s what the fourth layer is, stra tegic litigation and tactical litigation. Our fact checkers need help. Some of them are already getting subpoenaed. Volunteer lawyers are helping and the lawyers go from the left to the right — from cor porate law, the Philippine Bar Association, the integrated bar in the Philippines, to the free legal assistance group. So, that’s how we’re going to try to protect the facts. Will it work? Who knows. Should we try? Of course. Our democracy is at stake. It’s an existential moment. DP: How as your status as a woman impacted both how you grew as a journalist and how you handle all of this ad versity and oppression? MR: I think it’s about how you think of strength. What is strength? It’s the oak ver sus the bamboo. So the oak looks so sturdy and strong. And then the bamboo looks flimsy and sways with each wind. But when you have a cy clone or a typhoon, [the oak’s] roots aren’t as strong. And so when a good cyclone comes, it’s ripped out. The bamboo has an extensive root system and sways with the wind. And it looks like it’s about to break, but it doesn’t break. And it just goes with the wind and springs right back up. I think about that sometimes as American and Asian. I mean, because the American idea of strength is like standing up in a forceful manner. But in countries like ours, it’s funny, I haven’t been aggressively pushing. I’ve just been claim ing our rights and been hold ing the line. So I’m kind of like bamboo.Ithink it’s because I’m a woman. I think it’s because I’m Asian. For me as a leader, it’s more about making everyone in your team feel like they are making the same decisions. Like here’s our North Star, and everyone will find their way to it. So to me, it’s about power. So being a woman is part of it. Like people think it’s a posi tion of weakness, [and] it isn’t. It’s actually a great position of strength because empathy is everything. And I think it goes to these ideas that being a woman is a powerful gender — I think more powerful. DP: Where have you expe rienced gendered violence [or] gendered discrimination in your work? MR: Online. UNESCO came out with a report called “The Chilling” last year where they did a big data study. I really was relentlessly attacked, like 90 hate messages per hour. You either let it get to you, or you analyze it, and I analyze it; that was my way of coping with it. So it is gendered dis information at scale, in a way that you cannot humanly deal with. And I’m not alone. Carole Cadwalladr is under extreme attack in the U.K. because she broke the Cambridge Ana lytica story [and] because she challenges power. So it’s a set back [for] women journalists, womenMadeleinepoliticians.Albright at the [National Democratic Insti tute] six years ago was point ing out that women politi cians in the United States were getting attacked so much that they were opting out. So you’re losing female jour nalists, you’re losing female politicians, because of social media. Here’s the other part: because of the incentive struc tures of social media, it brings out the worst of human nature including sexism, racism, mi sogyny. That is not normal, but it is encouraged. It is like throwing fuel to the fire. So your generation has your work cut out for you. DP: What advice would you have for student journalists right now? MR: Your advantage over the old journalists like me is that you’re digital natives. You have to learn. You have to understand that and look at the best of what it can be and then avoid the worst. Your challenge is going to be to stick to the standards of ethics of journalism, to the mission. Journalists need to learn technology; it needs to go hand in hand. This is one of my biggest challenges even inside Rappler. If news organizations were able to do half of the stuff that [tech platforms] could, we would do it better because at least we’d have standards — we wouldn’t allow the lies. Our greed wouldn’t be as large as the tech platforms. The chal lenge is there. But you know, crisis is op portunity. Journalists have a great opportunity to rise to this challenge. I hate it when people call us content creators because the key trait of a jour nalist is courage. The mission is to hold power to account. And power doesn’t just smile when you ask them questions they don’t like. That’s why I think journalists are special.
DP: What inspired you to get started as a journalist all those years ago?
page 4 Thursday May 19, 2022The Daily Princetonian
By Marie-Rose Sheinerman and Claire Silberman News Editor Emerita
Jen, who told the ‘Prince’ she suffers from diagnosed anxi ety, said she asked the investi gators to postpone the initial meeting. After they refused, she said she joined a Zoom meeting with investigators in a hotel room between practices — and almost immediately felt that something was off. At the meeting, the inves tigators repeatedly challenged her story, Jen said, recalling how they asked questions like “You really expect me to believe that?” in response to her ac count of how she had studied for the exam. Eventually, she said she started “visibly show ing signs of distress.” After having a panic attack, Jen left the“Itmeeting.bothered me that they didn’t recognize those signs before it built up to this point where I couldn’t handle it any more,” she said. “They kept pushing me further and fur ther.”Chen Shueh maintains that this account does not represent the way University investiga tors typically conduct inter views. While the investigators’ questions may feel adversarial, “it is necessary for the inves tigator to obtain a detailed account of the student’s re sponses to the questions and concerns, clarify any inconsis tencies, and review the infor mation they have provided.” She added that throughout the process, students are pro vided breaks if needed and that “if students with disabilities ask for accommodations dur ing the process,” her office works with the Office of Dis ability Services “to make rea sonable accommodations.” (Jen said she did not reach out to ODS, nor did the Committee of fer her the option of doing so in their initial communication.) In the days that followed, Jen said she received a slew of emails — and then text mes sages — asking her to sched ule another meeting. When she didn’t respond, she said she discovered her coach had been informed of the accusations against her. (Asked about this claim, Chen Shueh said that “if a student is not responsive to a request to meet,” ODUS deans may reach out “to the coach to determine whether it is pos sible for the student to be avail able for the interview.”) At the eventual hearing, Jen felt as though the investigators leveraged her mental health episode at the initial meeting as evidence of her guilt. “They almost used the first meeting against me,” Jen said. “They said, like, ‘she couldn’t answer these questions, which is really Meanwhile,suspect.’”across the At lantic, Sophie was video-con ferencing into the same hear ing from home — scheduled from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. in her time zone, despite her objections. Sophie was on a strict train ing schedule and would start a workout at 6:30 a.m later that same day. “It was a bit of a nightmare for me,” she told the ‘Prince.’ “How do you literally sit here and defend your place at the University, when you know we didn’t do anything wrong — at three in the morning?” Chen Shueh said that last year the Honor Committee “encountered challenges with scheduling hearings when par ticipants were in multiple time zones,” but that accused stu dents were allowed to indicate a “preferred time” and that the hearing “would not have pro ceeded if the student did not propose or agree to a particular timeUltimately,slot.” Jen and Sophie, like Leo, were found not re sponsible. And, according to Chen Shueh, “the overwhelm ing majority of students who are suspended as a result of academic integrity violations return to campus and success fully complete their studies.” But for Jen, Sophie, Leo, and the five other accused students the ‘Prince’ interviewed, the impact of their hearings lasted well beyond their final meet ings with the Committee. Most reported that their experience permanently changed the way they approach their time at Princeton.“Iwould definitely say it put kind of a stain on my view of here,” Jen said. “I was kind of stressed out to come back [to Princeton] just because I went through this agonizing time.” Jen doesn’t study with team mates anymore, “which is sad, because I want to study with people, because that’s how I learn best,” she said. Similarly, Leo says he has “a lot of anxiety and fear” each time he turns in an assignment or an exam. “It kind of soured my love of work and of school,” he told the ‘Prince’ around 10 months after the incident. “I’ve been in kind of an academic funk since then that I haven’t been able to break.” In part because he’s now “weary of the math department” and reluctant to take its courses, his trajectory at the University and plans for after graduation have changed. This was an excerpt of a nearly 5,000 word investiga tion into the enforcement of the Honor Code during the time of COVID-19. For the remainder of the published piece, please visit cusation/.tion-princeton-life-after-accom/honor-code-investigaprojects.dailyprincetonian.https://
Life after accusation: Inside Princeton’s Honor Code
To handle the increase in cases, and in light of ongoing implementation of 2019 re forms, the honor system saw new protocols. Historically, two students have been as signed to investigate each case before the initial hearing. But according to Peer Representa tives Co-Chair Isra Thange ’22, the University’s Office of the Dean of the College (ODOC) be gan relying on private inves tigators — trained legal pro fessionals — to help lead the evidence-gathering process during the fall of 2020. These private investigators could open students’ Canvas records and IT files, accord ing to Grace Masback ’21, the former co-chair of the Peer Representatives. Chen Shueh confirmed that investigators can “request information from instructors or OIT [Office of In formation Technology] about students’ use of Blackboard or Canvas,” but cannot access stu dents’ “documents located on their laptops unless a student is present and agrees to access theirThedocuments.”majorityof cases during the COVID-19 semesters, in cluding Leo’s, involved either accusations of collaboration or “use of unallowed notes.” But the virtual year proved chal lenging for collecting hard evidence. Without student witnesses in the “exam room,” the Honor Committee relied heavily on professor testimo ny. According to Masback, who oversaw or personally served as Peer Representative for most cases, professor accusations were often grounded in a sus picion that answers were too similar to come from different students — even as students insisted that the similarity stemmed from them having studied together, a permissible and even encouraged practice.
ANGEL KUO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Morrison Hall houses administrators’ offices who oversee the Honor Committee.
Four days before last Christ mas, a first-year student sat in a corner booth of the Mexican restaurant where his parents work, waiting to be admit ted into a Zoom meeting that would stretch over seven hours. The meeting would mark the end of what he would later call “the hardest four weeks of my life.”The student, who spoke with The Daily Princetonian on the condition of anonymity and will be referred to in this story as Leo, began his college career in the fall of 2020 as one of just around 300 undergraduates who met the University’s crite ria for emergency on-campus housing. For the Latin Ameri can immigrant, whose fam ily earns around a third of the University’s tuition cost in a year, the semester’s virtual for mat amplified the pre-existing challenges of entering Princ eton as a first-generation lowincome (FLI) student. Prior to a summer at the University’s Freshman Schol ars Institute, the highest level of math Leo had access to was precalculus. In the fall, he en rolled in an introductory math course. “I was doing okay in the class,” Leo said. “I was doing well on the problem sets.” But in early December, his experience with the class took a turn. After the semester’s third exam, he received an email at around 5 p.m. from a member of the Honor Committee, in forming him that he was un der investigation and would be required to meet with the Committee that same night. Six hours later, at 11 p.m., he had his first meeting with the student investigators and learned he had been accused by his professor of collaborating with other students. In a Zoom breakout room, a Peer Representative — a stu dent volunteer charged with helping accused students through the process — told Leo not to speak too much. Any thing Leo said could be used against him in a future trial, the student explained. “I was very nervous,” Leo said. “I was having a little bit of a panic attack.” After the ini tial meeting, he was told by the Honor Committee members that his case would be moving forward.Onacampus populated by only six percent of the student body and constrained by social distancing regulations, the remainder of Leo’s semester would be colored by feelings of isolation, hopelessness, and shame, he told the ‘Prince.’ “I spent a lot of time locked in my dorm — sleeping, trying to gather evidence, crying,” he said. Most of Leo’s days were spent pouring over his notes for the class, doing and redoing the problems for which he was accused, and collecting screenshots that could help prove his innocence. “I was los ing my appetite,” he said. “I was having a hard time engaging with people or talking to other people.” With finals and paper deadlines around the corner, he was left with “really no en ergy or Throughoutmotivation.”theentire affair, Leo felt he could not confide in anyone about the situation, least of all his parents. “College was the one way to help my parents and my fam ily,” he said. “So to tell my mom that I might be suspended and I might not be able to come back to the school that I worked so hard to get into — I couldn’t doWithit.” the constant fear of a suspension hanging over him, Leo said he began to have sui cidalThosethoughts.thoughts followed him home, nearly three weeks after the initial email, to that restaurant booth on Dec. 21. Leo’s parents, a cook and wait ress who lived in a mobile home at the time, had asked their em ployer if their son could use a booth and WiFi at the res taurant for an important meet ing. They wouldn’t know what the meeting was about until it was over at 11 p.m. that night, when Leo was found “not re sponsible.”Theaccusation Leo faced was one that dozens of Princeton ians face each year — a violation of the Honor Code. Established in 1893, the code is outlined by University’s Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities handbook as an agreement between faculty and students to preserve aca demic integrity. In exchange for unproc tored examinations, students pledge their honor to refrain from giving or receiving unfair advantages. Under the Honor Code, students are also bound to report any alleged violations to the Honor Committee. All reported academic integrity violations for in-class exams are adjudicated by 15 students, some elected to class govern ment and others appointed to serve by existing members. Notably, the Honor Committee is distinct from the Commit tee on Discipline, which evalu ates academic integrity viola tions committed outside of the classroom, like plagiarism on papers.Although the Honor Code has impacted generations of students at Princeton, the number of cases tripled dur ing the COVID-19 pandemic compared to a typical year, ac cording to Honor Committee Chair Wells Carson ’22. With the spike in cases came new challenges. The impact of accu sations on student well-being was amplified by the isolating nature of the pandemic — and in the eyes of some students involved with the process, the Honor Code’s purported core principle of peer-to-peer re sponsibility was eroded by in creased professor and admin istratorAccordingintervention.toCarson, all the incidents during the pandemic were reported by professors, marking a shift from the nor mal processes in which cases are primarily reported by fel low students. Almost all the cases came from economics, mathematics, or computer sci ence courses, he said. Despite the Code’s far-rang ing impact on the course of students’ academic careers, the process regulating it remains murky to the vast majority who have never experienced it first hand.The ‘Prince’ spoke to eight students who have been through the disciplinary pro cess (five of whom were accused during the virtual semesters), as well as the previous and cur rent Honor Committee chairs, the Committee student clerk, two faculty members, two ad ministrators, six past or cur rent Peer Representatives, four alumni, and other individuals involved with the process. The ‘Prince’ also reviewed emails and documents provided by theMoststudents.ofthe accused students spoke to the ‘Prince’ anony mously, expressing fear of con sequences and stigma around honor violations. Nearly all re ported experiencing a system that they felt presumed their guilt, severely harmed their mental health, and created long-lasting damage to their relationships with both the University and academia. Asked about the impact of the Honor Code system on stu dent well-being, Senior Asso ciate Dean of Undergraduate Students Joyce Chen Shueh told the ‘Prince’ that the University takes care to connect students going through the process to mental health resources, in cluding Counseling and Psy chological Services (CPS), the Office of Religious Life, and their residential college staff. While the Honor Committee highlights University mental health resources in their initial email to students, Leo and oth ers interviewed for this piece refrained from contacting CPS, due to lack familiarity with mental health supports and lack of trust in the University in the wake of their accusation. Students “are expected to abide by our rules of conduct, both behavioral and academic,” Chen Shueh said in a lengthy statement. “While these are necessarily difficult conversa tions and processes, we strive to ensure that they are respect ful, sensitive and fair.” Chen Shueh claimed that violations looked different as a result of virtual learning, a trend many have pointed to across the country, given that “opportunities to seek help or input from others or to look at one’s notes or at internet re sources (when not permitted) were available in ways they normally are not during an inperson exam.”
‘Past my breaking point’ For two students — referred to as Jen and Sophie through out this story — an accusation of collaboration from a profes sor would lead to a hotel room panic attack, a 3 a.m. Zoom hearing, and what Jen would later call her “breaking point.” Jen and Sophie are under class students, friends, and varsity teammates. As firstyears in the spring of 2021, the pair said they studied together for the final exam of their in troductory economics course, using the same flashcards and quizzing each other as prepara tion. But shortly after finals, just as they were about to com pete in a high-stakes athletic event, Jen and Sophie received word from an honor investiga tor that they had been accused of collaboration on the exam.
Princeton students fundraise, petition, express
By Kalena Blake Associate News Editor MARK DODICI / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Princeton students and town members came together in front of Nassau Hall to protest Russia’s invasionUkraine.of
By Hope Perry Staff News Writer
solidarity with Ukraine following Russian invasion
CANDACE DO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
On Dec. 14, an exhibit dedicated to Jewish Ameri can artists in the late nine teenth century was canceled because it would feature the works of two soldiers in the Confederate army: sculp tor Moses Jacob Ezekiel and painter Theodore Moise. The exhibit was funded by Leonard Milberg ’53, who as of 2019 had gifted well over 13,000 items to Princeton. The University had agreed to organize the exhibit last summer to complement Milberg’s fifteenth publica tion, a collection of essays tentatively titled “Yearning to Breathe Free” and slated to be printed in 2022. It was coedited by historians Adam Mendelsohn and Jonathan D. Sarna.Milberg had previously or ganized an exhibit at Prince ton entitled “By Dawn’s Early Light: Jewish Contributions to American Culture from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War” which opened in Feb. 2016. Given that the art museum is currently under going renovations, Milberg had hoped to arrange this new exhibit in the Firestone Gallery.According to an article in Religion News Service, prob lems with the exhibit began to emerge in the fall of 2021.
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professor Mark Beissinger, an expert on the post-Soviet states, told the ‘Prince’ that an independent poll found that approxi mately half of the Russian population supports the war. “Which is actually pretty as tounding,” he said of the poll. “When a country goes to war and only half of your citizens support it, that’s not really a very good degree of support from the public.” He noted that the poll also showed that about a quarter of Russians firmly oppose the“But,war.what I think is inter esting is [that] a lot of people in Russia — a significant number of people who sup port the war — don’t really know why the war is taking place,” he said. Liza Rozenberg ’22, anoth er organizer of the letter and a Russian citizen, shared her frustration with her govern ment, but emphasized the importance of individuals like her taking action. “I guess the one thing that we can do is use our voice and the freedom of speech that we have here that people back home don’t have,” Rozenberg said.The same group of students has also launched an orga nization called “02.24.2022,” named after the date of the invasion. As of March 17, they received enough signatures necessary to be recognized as a student organization by the Office of the Dean of Un dergraduate Students. The student group’s goal, according to the students, is to provide accurate and re liably sourced information about the war to Princeton students and to organize fu ture acts of solidarity. Also on campus, the Center for Jewish Life (CJL) took action to fundraise for Ukraine during the holiday of Purim on March 16 and 17. The holiday of Purim tradi tionally emphasizes giving and generosity; it is a cus tom to gift bags of treats to friends and family, and do nate to charity. In the days leading up to Purim, CJL student leaders sold gift bags in both Frist Campus Center and in the CJL to students. They also took donations via Venmo. The money raised from the gift bags and donations went to the Hillel International Emergency Relief Fund. “We’re part of a worldwide network of more than 550 Hillels around the world, five of which are in Ukraine, one of which was bombed by the Russians,” CJL Executive Director Rabbi Julie Roth told the ‘Prince.’ The Hillel chap ter in Kharkiv was destroyed amid the war on March 3. Roth also spoke about how Hillel organizations across Europe are assisting refu gees.“Students who are in volved in the Hillel in Po land are running a daycare, basically, for the children of refugees,” she said. “The Hil lel organizations aren’t just helping students and profes sionals who work at Hillels in Ukraine, but they’re taking in all kinds of refugees, not just Jewish refugees.” Sarah Bock ’24, a student leader at the CJL, told the ‘Prince’ that the fundraiser was a success. “Because it’s such a universal issue on campus — at least I felt like — when we were in Frist, we got a lot of attention that I don’t think we necessarily would have with a different cause,” Bock said. As of March 17, the CJL had raised more than $600, ac cording to an email to the ‘Prince’ from Roth, and the Princeton Orthodox Union Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus had also separately raised over $1,100 to directly support Ukrainian people, according to Rabbi Mati Kahn in a statement to the University.TheScharf Family Chabad House of Princeton had also independently raised at that time over $3,000 to send to Ukraine, according to the group’s Instagram story.
The centerpiece of the exhibit, which included ap proximately 50 objects, was a marble copy of a figure called “Faith.” Sculpted by Moses Jacob Ezekiel, “Faith” is a “64inch marble sculpture of a boy grasping a flaming lamp in one hand as he raises his other hand to the heavens,” according to Religion News Service. During the Battle of New Market, Ezekiel fought as a member of the Confed erate Army. Ezekiel is best known for his 32-foot Con federate Memorial at the Ar lington cemetery. Another painter in the exhibit, Theo dore Moise, attained the rank of major in the Confederate Army.Inexplaining why the ex hibit was canceled, Anne Jarvis, the Robert H. Taylor 1930 University Librarian, deferred to the University for comment.TheUniversity held that it was honoring the academic freedom of the librarians to decide what was appropriate for the gallery. “It is the Library that speaks through its galleries, and the Library is respon sible for the messages con veyed there,” wrote Deputy University spokesperson Mi chael Hotchkiss in an email to The Daily Princetonian. “The Librarian and her se nior staff have a duty to ensure that any materials exhibited are presented, ex plained, and contextualized in a manner consistent with the Library’s educational and researchHotchkissmission.”stated that the exhibition was ultimately canceled by the donor, not the library or the University, following disagreements be tween the library and Mil berg on the show’s composi tion.In an email comment to the ‘Prince,’ the show’s cura tor Samantha Baskind, a pro fessor of art history at Cleve land State University, relayed a different “Princetonnarrative.asserts that the University has the right to decide what to include or not include in the exhibit and that it was not Princeton that canceled the show but the donor,” said Baskind. “The latter is a semantical dance. That Princeton effectively canceled the show after the donor pulled out because Princeton canceled the art, is probably the best way to putTheit.” official policy listed on the Princeton Universi ty alumni gift page is that “gifts to the University must respect the University’s fun damental commitment to academic freedom and the rigorous and independent pursuit of truth.” Baskind and Milberg, the organizers of the planned exhibit, separately expressed their disappointment with the University’s decision. “Removing the artists with Confederate ties re writes art history. Art histo rians examine the meaning of art in its own time as well as how it’s perceived in the current moment. We need to inform and discuss the past, not bury it,” Baskind wrote in an email statement to the ‘Prince.’When asked about what the general reaction has been in the art community, Milberg claimed he had not heard of one person who agrees with the library’s decision. Milberg, a former class president, also remarked that the University’s decision made him reconsider his per sonal“It’sties.certainly something that has set me back. I was really stunned by the Uni versity taking this position. I hope we return the way it was, but I was so hurt by the way it was done,” he said. Baskind and Milberg both said they saw the gallery as serving an educational pur pose within the University, while also acknowledging the checkered history of its contributors.Milbergremarked that the exhibit was “groundbreak ing” in that it featured works for an underrepresented pe riod of Jewish-American his tory and had received consid erable praise for recognizing what Milberg called “a lost part of American history.” According to Baskind and Milberg, the gallery served to instigate conversation on the complex topic of JewishAmerican involvement in the CivilBothWar.Baskind and Milberg held that while none of the works directly related to the Confederacy, the exhibit did not attempt to cover up the artist’s affiliations with the Confederacy. According to Milberg, it was very clearly stated that Moise and Ezekiel were Confederate soldiers. Baskind noted that the signage and wall labels that accompanied the works had the goal of starting conver sations for the students and the larger community on these challenging topics. Milberg echoed this in tent.“I’m interested in bringing knowledge and learning,” he said.Referring to professor ships he endowed at the Uni versity, Milberg explained that his passion for learning is “why I brought two chairs, to learn, and I don’t want to tell them what to believe. Once you start canceling things, it never ends.” He continued this message by emphasizing that instead of erasing history, we have to learn from it. Baskind also contextual ized the University’s decision within the broader “cancel culture” movement, calling the University’s censorship “an unfortunate anti-intel lectual surrender to cancel culture.”Inher statement to the ‘Prince,’ Baskind referenced a recent New York Times opin ion article written by Marga ret Renkl, which argued “It’s Possible to Learn the Right Thing From the Wrong Per son.”“Perhaps even more impor tant, we profoundly misun derstand the very nature of art when we think we know in advance what readers — or audience members or gallery visitors — will derive from it. Or, worse, when we pre sume to tell them what they should derive from it,” Renkl wrote.
In the weeks following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many members of the Princeton community have sought out avenues to express solidarity with the Ukrainian people. On Feb. 25 — just a day after the initial assault be gan on Feb. 24 — students, faculty, and local residents gathered outside of Nassau Hall for a rally. In the days that followed, community members have raised funds for humanitarian organiza tions working in the region, signed onto petitions of sup port, and formed new cam pus groups centered on the conflict.OnFeb. 28, a group of Rus sian students circulated a Letter of Solidarity with Ukraine on University email listservs; the letter was lat er published in The Daily Princetonian.Inaninterview with the ‘Prince,’ Kate Ivshina ’23 said that the idea to write the let ter came to her as she felt “very helpless” while reading the“Inews.felt that not enough people on campus care about this right now, or like, not enough of this information [is] shared here,” Ivshina said. “And so we decided [that] the first step could be writ ing a letter showing that we support Ukraine.” The letter called on University Presi dent Christopher Eisgruber ’83 to publicly support the people of Ukraine and con demn the Russian invasion. A few hours after the let ter was sent out, Eisgruber issued a statement about the war. Another organizer be hind the letter, Nadya Fish chenko ’24, said that she ap preciated that the president’s statement was not anti-Rus sian.“It is very important for us to differentiate this war from our nation and our home country,” Fishchenko, a Rus sian citizen, said. “Because, yes, the Russian army invad ed Ukraine, but we — and a lot of Russian people, both in Russia and abroad — are againstPoliticsit.”
Firestone exhibition of Jewish American artists featuring works from Confederate soldiers canceled
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“You don’t talk. You lis ten,” she Walenskysaid.also gave ad vice to current seniors. She urged them to persist through failure, to sur round themselves with people who make them better, and to think big. “Ask the big questions. Ask the really big ques tions,” Walensky contin ued. “Because that’s how you’re going to make a dif ference and know when to go after those questions. They’re gonna be hard, and there’s gonna be failure, but those are the ones that you guys can tackle and we need you to do so.” The conversation took place in McCosh Hall 10 on March 24 at 4:30 p.m. as part of the Last Lectures series.
Latke triumphs over Hamantaschen in ‘debate of the year’
On March 24, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Dr. Rochelle Walen sky sat down with Presi dent Emerita and Professor of Molecular Biology Shir ley Tilghman to discuss her career in public health, the CDC’s approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to give advice for current seniors as they chart their path after Princeton. The CDC has been a focal point of political contro versy for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and its emphasis on individual responsibility. Walensky stood by the agency, but emphasized throughout the talk the ways in which the agency can improve for future pandemic response. Responding to Tilgh man’s statement that Walensky “inherited a CDC that was underfund ed, that was demoralized, that was underprepared for the pandemic,” Walen sky emphasized that in the history of the CDC, this is the first instance in which the organization has been in existence during a pan demic.“The infrastructure of public health in this coun try is frail,” Walensky said. Additionally, during the pandemic, the CDC — along with other govern ment public health agen cies — has come under fire for not communicating the science behind decisionmaking effectively to the general public. Walensky responded to a question about this criticism by ex plaining that the nature of scientific communication presents a challenge amid consistently emerging knowledge.“Inmyacademic world, I have gotten really accus tomed to presenting sci ence to an informed audi ence on the subject,” she said. “And now we present data to the American peo ple in two-minute snap shots on the nightly news.” Walensky said that what makes addressing CO VID-19 so difficult is the necessity for policies to be applicable to a number of different environments. “As we make our public health guidance, our guid ance has to be relevant and appropriate in Manhat tan, in Cherokee Nation, in Guam, and in rural Mon tana,” Walensky said. The CDC, according to Walensky, was unpre pared to deal with a wide spread public health crisis like COVID-19. Through out the history of pub lic health threats in the United States, including SARS, Zika, and Ebola, 60,000 public health jobs have been lost. And case counts before COVID-19 have “never been report able at the rate of a million cases a day,” according to Walensky.Walensky said the CDC is taking steps to prevent another crisis like CO VID-19 from happening again. However, she said, the limitations of collect ing data are ever-present obstacles to the CDC. “We’re now doing ge nomic sequencing of tens of thousands of sequences from every single state, commercial lab every week at CDC and in collabora tion,” she said. “But does every state have a genomic epidemiologist? Does ev ery state have a lab? But can you do genetic se quencing?”Walensky also noted her work surrounding HIV/ AIDS. She has previously served as the Chair-elect of the HIV Medical Associa tion as well as an advisor to the World Health Organi zation (WHO) and the joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS. Walensky attributed her passion for public health to her work on the HIV/AIDS epidemic when she was an intern out of medical school.
On March 15 in the Whig Sen ate chamber, Princeton students congregated for “the debate of the year” — at least according to ad vertising ahead of the event by the Center for Jewish Life (CJL), which worked with Whig-Clio and Fuzzy Dice to pull it off. The event was the annual LatkeHamantaschen debate, which pits students and faculty against each other to determine which Jewish food reigns supreme, according to Madeleine LeBeau ’24, student vice president for programming at the “TonightCJL. we embark on our an nual quest to resolve the profound and weighty — well … depending on your recipe — question as to which reigns supreme: the latke or the hamantaschen,” LeBeau said.LeBeau is a News Contributor for The Daily Princetonian. The debate was moderated by Dean of the College Jill Dolan, who could hardly be expected to be impartial in arbitrating since she advocated in 2015 on the side of the latke. “As you can imagine, the stakes are very high,” Dolan told the ‘Prince,’ explaining why she found moderating “much easier.” “As a moderator, I just tried to keep it fair, keep it honest, and keep it “Somethinggood.” quite remarkable about this debate is that it began at the University of Chicago in 1946 and has taken place on the Chicago
“Sure, let’s go with that,” said Lopkin.Theaudience was requested to vote via a QR code, and Dolan read out the result by interpreting an excel graph. In an Academy Awards-esque blunder, Dolan accidentally an nounced that Hamantaschen had won the debate before correcting her mistake, announcing instead the Latkes as the true victor. “I have trouble reading graphs at times,” Dolan said. In an interview with the ‘Prince’ asking why they chose to defend their respective delicacies, Steingo, Zhakevich, and Lopkin each responded: “Because we were assigned.”
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky addresses Class of 2022 with University President Emeritus Shirley Tilghman
AIDAN IACOBUCCI / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN John Ehling ’24 and Professor Gavin Steingo induct the audience into the “Cult of Hamantaschen.” Shirley down with Director Rochelle Walensky.
PUZZLES & PASTRIES F R I D A Y M A Y 2 0 T H 1 1 : 0 0 A M 1 2 : 3 0 P M STUDIOLAB FINE HALL B08 c o m e m e e t t h e C S T t e a m e n j o y s o m e t r e a t s a n d t a k e h o m e y o u r o w n t i g e r p u z z l e m a d e o n t h e l a s e r c u t t e r ! C S T P R I N C E T O N E D Uscan for more info ANGEL KUO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
“I never thought I was going to be an infectious disease doctor,” she said. “I never thought I was going to study HIV/AIDS. When I was training in inner-city Baltimore, we were learn ing so much about it … We didn’t have a lot for them.” Walensky later recalled the moment in time when the first drug cocktails to treat HIV/AIDS — a series of 14 pills taken three times a day — became available. “People were thrilled — there was finally some thing that gave people hope,” she Walenskysaid.reflected on the progression from her past work on the HIV/AIDS epidemic to her current work on COVID-19. “So now fast forward to where we are with CO VID-19: We have many im munocompromised people in resource-limited set tings, and we really need to vaccinate them. And the same challenges that have happened here are hap pening around the world in terms of trust in vaccine delivery,” she said. When it comes to vac cine hesitancy, Walensky stressed the importance of listening and empathy in understanding an indi vidual’s reasoning.
By Aidan Iacobucci Staff News Writer
By Anika Buch Associate News Editor
CDC
Tilghman, president emerita of the University, sat
“I am glad that is not the case for us,” Dolan added to general laughter from the crowd. Representing the Haman taschen were Professor of Music Gavin Steingo and Fuzzy Dice’s John Ehling ’24. The Latke team consisted of Lecturer of Near East ern Studies Philip Zhakevich and Fuzzy Dice’s Molly Lopkin ’25. The Latke team won the opening coin toss and opted to go second in theirSteingodefense.opened the debate with his “Three Theses of the Ha mantashen.”“Thefirst thesis that I present is that the hamantaschen has the superior form conforming to the Golden Ratio,” Steingo said. “The second thesis is that the sound of the word is superior.” In an effort to corroborate this statement, Steingo presented a “study” that was conducted to see babies’ reaction to the respective words.“When Dean Dolan whispered the word ‘hamantaschen’ in the ears of 30 6-month-old babies, they smiled so beautifully and their breathing was relaxed. When the word ‘latke’ was said, there was a palpable sense of dis pleasure,” Steingo said to the au dience’s amusement. His third thesis was that it in spired advancements of music and art, such as with Susannah Perlman’s “Hamentaschen Song.” The “Latke Team” presented next, and Zhakevich employed a largely etymological approach to defending the “Hamantaschenlatke.contain flour, said. “One of the main ingredients in frying latkes, oil, appears 193 times in 26 books. So clearly, it appears more because they were using it to fry latkes.” Ehling presented the second hamantaschen defense pointing to its linguistic superiority. “Iambic pentameter has been used in various famous quotes like ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’ and ‘We hold these truths to be self evident’ and ‘The hamantaschen is better than the latke,” Ehling said. He then recited a slightly al taschen creeps in this petty place of hamantaschen to the last syl lable of hamantaschen and all our hamantaschen-laden fools the way to hamantaschen. In haman taschen, the latkes are but a walk ing shadow, a whore pancake that struts and frets his hour on the plate and then is eaten no more. It is a fool, eaten by an idiot, full of empty calories, signifying noth ing,” Ehling recited. Then, Ehling and Steingo, clad in cloaks under dimmed lights, inducted the audience into the “Cult of the Hamantaschen” by reenacting the “O Captain, My Cap tain” scene in Dead Poet’s Society. Fuzzy Dice’s Lopkin then pre sented a slam poem and diss track on behalf of the Latke, contradict ing Ehling’s assertion that the hamantaschen was better for its conformity to iambic pentameter.
“Your sides are one, two, three, we got the whole diameter/You’re lucky I didn’t say this rap in iam bic pentameter,” Lopkin said. After the debate, the audience was allowed to direct questions to the“Howpanelists.does the hamantaschen team respond to their associa tion with genocide,” an audience member asked, referring to the story of the Jewish holiday of Pu rim.Ehling responded: “We are very sorry.”The next question, directed to Lopkin, asked if she came up with the previous rap-rebuttal after hearing the hamantaschen’s pre sentation on iambic pentameter.
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A spokesperson for Rep. Terri Sewell ’86 (D-Al.) directed the ‘Prince’ to the public statement Sewell made after news of the draft opinion was first re leased.“The draft opinion by the Supreme Court is a devastating blow to women’s reproductive rights. A woman’s person al health care decisions should be made between her and her doctor,” Sewell said in the statement. “The Senate must pass the Women’s Health Protection Act so that women everywhere can access a full range of reproductive health care services.”Alumni Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, celebrated the likely deci sion. Sen. Ted Cruz ’92 (R-Tx.) commend ed the Alito draft. “Sen. Cruz has said that if the Su preme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, it is nothing short of a massive victory for life and will save the lives of millions of innocent babies,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’ The spokesperson for Cruz expressed the Senator’s anger over the opinion leak.“Sen. Cruz believes the leak is an unprecedented breach of the trust that every clerk, justice, and employee of the Supreme Court owes to the institution,” they wrote. “It’s impossible to overstate the gravity of this ethical, and possible legal, violation. The wound to the in dependence and integrity of the Court may well be one from which the Court never fully recovers.” On May 11, Cruz voted against the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would enshrine abortion access in fed eral“Sen.law. Cruz has said that if the Su preme Court decides to overturn Roe, it won’t mean abortion will be illegal. It will mean that people all across the country get a say in what their state’s abortion policy will be, which is how our democratic process should work,” the spokesperson wrote. Rep. Ken Buck ’81 (R-Co.) called the leak “a very serious attack on the judi cial process” in an email to the ‘Prince’. He also expressed his hope that the Su preme Court would overturn the case as the draft opinion appears poised to do.
By Naomi Hess and Lia Opperman Associate News Editor Emerita and Assistant News Editor
“If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, its decision would end nearly 50 years of precedent guaranteeing the constitutional right to abortion,” he wrote.“This would be a dangerous attack on women’s health despite broad public support for affordable, accessible abor tion care. I will continue to fight for passage of the Women’s Health Protec tion Act to codify abortion rights for all Americans regardless of where they live,” he added.
Olivia Lin, a friend of Joshua’s in high school, shared a note he had writ ten to her as she was about to begin her senior year at her high school in Morgantown.
In an email to the ‘Prince,’ Rep. John Sarbanes ’84 (D-Md.) called the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade a “danger ous attack on women’s health.”
Abraham Joshua ’21, a recent gradu ate of the chemistry department, died on March 2 in San Francisco, Calif. due to a collision between his electric scooter and a semi-truck. Joshua was a science teacher at Mission Preparatory School and was on his way to work. He was 23 years old. Joshua, known affectionately among loved ones as “Abe,” was born on Nov. 25, 1998 in Texas to parents Elizabeth Kidane and Dr. Eyassu Hailemichael. After moving to Washington, D.C., the family eventually settled in Morgan town, W.Va., where Joshua grew up with his brother, Samson. Always an avid reader and intellec tually curious student, Joshua attended Suncrest Middle School in the gifted program. One of his classmates, James Deng, reflected on the impression that Joshua had on him at such a young age. “What made Abe really important to my life was that he was a compas sionate person who always had time for me and always made me feel included,” he said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian.Joshualater enrolled at Morgan town High School, where he and Deng remained friends, with Deng fondly recalling studying for the SAT and “playing hundreds of hours of League of Legends” with him. At Morgantown, Joshua found a pas sion for chemistry and an outlet in sing ing, competing in the school quiz bowl and performing in the show choir. Sidd Subramanyam, with whom Joshua won the 2016 state Science Bowl competition, recalled the impact his friend“Abehad.was a kind and brilliant soul who bettered the lives of everyone he met. His selflessness and care for ordi nary people and his friends motivated him every day of his life,” he said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “I will for ever cherish the time we spent laugh ing, learning, competing, and playing.” Joshua also had an interest in writ ing and, while in high school, he cre ated an anthology of his thoughts on various subjects entitled “Reflections.” In it, he discusses his interest in study ing chemistry, stating that for him, it was a way of “seeing the truth.” He also expressed his interest in having his writing published in the future. Joshua would sing at school talent shows, and his friends described him as a skilled dancer. He would continue performing at Princeton, joining Old NasSoul and the Black Arts Company. Kateryn McReynolds ’20 became ac quainted with Joshua over the years in her capacity as a singer in the Princeton Tigerlilies.“Abewas one of the best men I’ve known, a true class-act, with a humor that could arrest anybody and a mind and heart that didn’t shy from dark ness, but sought to [illuminate] truth and goodness from every situation,” she said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “He had a gift for making anyone feel at ease and familiar to him,“ she added. “I’m blessed to have been a friend of Abe.”OnMarch 3, Old NasSoul and a num ber of other University acapella groups held an arch sing in memory of Joshua. During his time at the University, Joshua concentrated in chemistry and earned a certificate in Materials Science and Engineering. The Department of Chemistry sent a letter to Joshua’s fam ily in wake of the tragedy. In an email to the ‘Prince,’ Profes sor Michael Kelly GS ’97, with whom Joshua took a thermodynamics class, remarked on his experience with him as a“Thermodynamicsstudent. is often consid ered a dry subject, but I had more fun teaching that class with Abe than per haps any other student. With Abe, there was this natural synergy that allowed us to inject funny stories, humorous anecdotes, bad jokes, and terrible puns into the discussion. I never had a stu dent like him. We shook hands at the end of the semester. He said it was his favorite course, but I told him the plea sure was all mine,” he said. “Abe was special and I loved him for it,” Kelly Joshuasaid.completed his senior thesis with Professor Rodney Priestley. His project focused on polymer chemistry, and he hoped his research could have applications in the design of new kinds of materials.Priestleyrecalled mentoring Joshua in an email statement to the ‘Prince.’ “It was truly an honor to be Abe’s senior thesis advisor. He was a very dedicated and talented researcher. But more importantly, he was a joy to be around and someone that always brought warmth and energy to the lab,” PriestleyProfessorsaid.Susan VanderKam GS ’99, who Joshua credited in his thesis for listening to his “periodic complaints,” also shared her memories of working with her former student. “We had an ongoing dialogue last spring about his research, and I was al most as excited as he was when the proj ect started generating good results,” she said in an email to the ‘Prince.’ “Abe was everything we could have asked for in a role model — dedicated, gifted, and enthusiastic — and he will be greatly missed.”After graduating, Joshua found work with Teach for America, and he moved to San Francisco to teach science at Mission Preparatory School. In his anthology “Reflections,“ he wrote that eventually he hoped to go to medical school, a goal of his since high school. Cynthia Jerez, executive director of the Mission Preparatory School, shared her experience working with Joshua in a written statement sent to the ‘Prince.’ “His contributions to our commu nity went beyond the high rigor and creativity he brought to his science classroom,” she said. “Mr. Joshua could be found at all sports practices for boys and girls varsity and JV, giving up a prep period to support the school com munity with staff shortages during the Omicron variant in January, quietly serving as a mentor and big brother to our youth in our buddy program.” Joshua’s students left a number of cards and flowers at a roadside memo rial to commemorate their teacher. “We love you so much Mr. Joshua. You were an amazing teacher. You didn’t deserve to pass away like this, but I hope you read this one day in heaven,” said one note left at the memorial. Karla Gandiaga, Head of ARISE high school in Oakland, Calif. and a friend of Jerez, organized a GoFundMe along side Joshua’s family to raise money for a scholarship in Joshua’s name. In the 11 days since it was started, the fund raiser has garnered more than $44,000 in donations.“Abewillcontinue to be an inspira tion, as those who knew him remember all he achieved and contributed during his short life,” his family stated in an announcement introducing the schol arship.Joshua’s mentor Erica Worthington remarked on Joshua’s commitment to his students in the same statement. “Walking around the school, Abe was always dancing or laughing,” she wrote. “He embraced every challenge with a positive attitude and always pushed himself to reflect and improve hisJoshua’spractice.”funeral was held on March 10 in Camp Springs, Md. His friends, scattered all across the country, attend ed via Zoom. They also shared memo ries of Joshua in a Discord channel.
Conor Vance ’20, Joshua’s roommate in his freshman and sophomore years, sent pictures in the channel and reflect ed on Joshua’s character in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “He was one of the most individually sensitive, consistent, and empathetic people I’ve ever known, the kind to liter ally give someone the shirt off his back (it’s happened) or the bed he needed to sleep in,” he said.
“I once told you that my deepest fear is that those I truly care about will for get me, so I hope this helps. Some of these photos are downright terribile, but it isn’t picture quality that gives them value,“ Joshua wrote. Joshua was a year older than Lin, so he left her the message and a few photographs before he graduated and left for college. In an interview with the ‘Prince,’ Lin described her reaction upon reading the note after learning of Joshua’s passing. “When I found it, the note hit me so hard because I had only remembered him giving me pictures. I didn’t remem ber that note. So when I read it, it just shook me because it’s exactly what I needed to read at this time. Abe and I sort of lost touch over the past few years since we both moved away. But I could never forget how special our friendship was in high school,” she said. “And it’s clear with all the people in that Discord and on the Zoom for his funeral that he made an impact on so many people and could never be forgot ten,” she Joshuasaid.issurvived by his mother, Elizabeth Kidane; his father, Eyassu Hailemichael; and his brother, Samson Joshua.
By Sandeep Mangat Associate News Editor
Politics professor Robert P. George and University of Notre Dame law pro fessor John Finnis filed an amicus cur iae brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that is cited in the draft. George did not respond to repeat ed requests for comment.
“Roe v. Wade was a mistake,” he wrote. “The Supreme Court tried to leg islate on a difficult moral issue to unify the country and failed miserably. The draft opinion is a victory for mothers, babies, and federalism. We are very close to a day when the power to decide this vital moral question will be where it belongs: with the people.” In his email, Buck also stressed his opposition to abortion rights. “It is barbaric to deny that an unborn baby with ten toes, ten fingers, a beating heart, a pain capable central nervous system and a viable life outside of the womb is not entitled to the basic human right to live,” he added. “Laws regarding reproductive rights for all Americans must be applied to protect the life of the mother and the unborn child.” In an email to the ‘Prince,’ Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi ’95 (D-Il.) said that Roe v. Wade is a “fundamental pillar of re productive freedom as well as personal liberty.”“Through this ruling, Justice Alito, with the apparent backing of four other justices, would be demolishing an en tire body of vital law while citing legal precedents which appear to demon strate his sheer contempt for the rights of women,” he wrote. “I find this ruling indefensible in legal or human terms.” Krishnamoorthi encouraged those upset about the potential overturning of Roe to engage in political activism. “That’s why this is also a political call to arms for everyone who cares about the right to choose, the rights of wom en, or individual rights more broadly as this may only be the beginning [of] the court’s radical Constitutional revision ism,” he wrote. “The only way to counter that is for all those who support the right to choose to fight for it at the local, state, and federal levels.” Sen. Jeff Merkley GS ’82 (D-Or.) and Rep. Mike Gallagher ’06 (R-Wi.) did not respond to a request for comment.
Family, friends mourn the loss of Abraham Joshua ’21
Politics professor Keith Whitting ton, another expert on American con stitutional law, declined a request for comment. Alumni in Congress express different views in light of leaked draft
COURTESY OF JAMISON MERCURIO Abraham Joshua ’21.
On a ‘post-Roe era’: Princeton professors, alumni in Congress react to leaked SCOTUS opinion draft
On May 2, Politico published a leaked draft majority opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization written by Justice Samuel Alito ’72. The opinion would overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminate national legal protection for abortion, and restore reproductive rights to the states. As the nation grapples with the fall out of the leak, The Daily Princetonian spoke with professors in the history and politics departments and the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), as well as alumni serving in Congress, about their opinions on the draft leak. Views of alumni currently serving in the U.S. Congress fell generally along party lines, with Democrats opposing the overturning of Roe v. Wade and Re publicans supporting it. History pro fessors at the University who spoke to the ‘Prince’ expressed concern about the potential decision. Professors advocate for reproductive rights For history lecturer Melissa Reyn olds, who recently wrote that the rea soning in Alito’s opinion draft read as absurd and ahistorical, reflected on how the initial news of the leak came as a shock.“Supreme Court experts [and] legal experts for several months had sort of assumed that we would see an opin ion overturning Roe v. Wade,” Reynolds said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “[However,] it’s shocking that the leak happened at all.” (She previously served as a faculty columnist for the ‘Prince.’) As a historian who focuses on premodern reproductive history and as a specialist in the history of early modern England, Reynolds found the historical precedent Alito cited to be inaccurate. “The premise of Alito’s draft opinion right now is that this historical prec edent was an egregious decision that goes against what was a long estab lished precedent, both in Common Law and American Law in which abortion was unlawful,” Reynolds said. “At every stage, that is not true and that precedent is not correct.” “Abortion was not unlawful at ev ery stage. The original decision in Roe v. Wade gets the history more correct,” ReynoldsStanleyadded.Katz, a professor emeritus in SPIA, emphasized that the draft is a “very radical act” that is “likely to dam age the Court,” in an interview with the ‘Prince.’“Itconfirms the fears that most wellinformed people have, which is, with the Trump majority on the Court, there’s a high probability that Roe would be over turned,” said Katz, a decorated scholar of American legal history. “Although, in my darkest dreams, I would have never imagined an opinion like this.” Katz explained how citizens need to prepare for a “post-Roe era.” “I grew up in a pre-Roe era, and I was actively advocating for state laws [in Illinois] that would have made abor tion legal,” Katz said. “It looks as though people like me are going to have to start worrying about this again.” History professor Kevin Kruse said that the impact of the draft opinion can be extended further than only Roe v. Wade.“[The draft] does suggest that there’s a lot more to come in this direction should the Court strike down Roe and Casey [v. Planned Parenthood], as it seems they will, but a lot of other things on the chopping block, [from] gay mar riage to birth control,” Kruse told the ‘Prince.’ “There’s a larger willingness on the part of the Court to overturn all kinds of Kruseprecedent.”urgedpeople to get involved in state and local politics. “One thing people can do if they are upset about this is get more involved, politically speaking,” said Kruse, an ex pert on 20th century America. “Not just in terms of voting at the national level [for] presidents and senators who can have a say on Supreme Court justices, but really get involved in state politics.” “We live in an era in which people are constantly telling folks not to get alarmed, because certainly it won’t go to this extreme, and we keep going to the extremes,” he added. “There’s a lot to worry about, and I don’t think that people are Historyoverreacting.”professorLaura Edwards, who focuses on the history of women in the law, explained how Roe v. Wade does not establish the right to an abortion, but is based on the right to privacy in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “What we’re seeing is the reassertion of the notion that states have the right to regulate women’s bodies,” Edwards said. “That has always been a real prob lem, because [it] essentially says that women do not have bodily integrity that they can control themselves.” “[The draft opinion] puts states in conflict with each other in ways that I think is going to have incredible rami fications,” Edwards added. SPIA lecturer Lynda Dodd further discussed how abortion rights have played into the broader conversation on reproductive“Reproductivejustice.justice is a concept used to describe a broader, less litiga tion-centered agenda that Black femi nists have developed and organized around for decades,” Dodd wrote. “These leaders have emphasized that ‘pro-choice’ arguments and the consti tutional privacy doctrine do very little for marginalized people who do not have access to birth control options, af fordable health insurance, or reproduc tive health care services.” Dodd said she believes advocates for gender-equality and reproductive jus tice likely have a long fight ahead of them. She encouraged citizens to “call for real gender equality. Support and empower the most marginalized in the U.S. and around the world.” “This goes beyond partisan politics or constitutional law,” Dodd added. “For me, this is about what loving your neighbor should inspire and what pro moting life should mean.”
page 8 Thursday May 19, 2022The Daily Princetonian
Princeton sees new construction across campus in 2021-22 academic year, more to begin this summer
According to Fanning, the lo cation and depth of these brown stone veins vary throughout campus, so they cannot always be anticipated and “may cause de lays to a Accordingproject.”to Dave, a con struction worker at the Lewis Li brary site, laying the hot water distribution system is a precise job, requiring the proper align ment of carbon steel pipes. Large amounts of sand aggregate are then trucked in to fill the trench, followed by topsoil to complete the dig.
Amidst current construction projects around campus, several new projects are due to begin over the summer. According to a Uni versity presentation, five projects will commence in summer 2022. These include the expansions to Dillon Gymnasium, additional UHS facilities, a temporary din ing hall for Butler College, and demolition of First College. Parts of Dillon Gym will be demolished and surrounding ar eas will be excavated in prepara tion for its expansion. Construc tion on the facility will extend through Q1 of 2025. Work on Hobson College will also begin over the summer, in cluding the demolition of First College and site leveling for ad ditional geo-exchange bores. This phase of the project is projected to be completed by Q2 of 2023, at which point construction on the new buildings will begin. This project will consume all of First and parts of Butler Colleges, ex tending from Goheen Walk in the South to 1937 Hall in the north, and from Elm Drive in the west to Guyot Hall in the east. Adjacent to this site, the University will construct an interim dining hall for Butler College intended to re place the demolished Wilcox din ing Hall; this project will extend through the second half of 2022. Across Elm Drive, the Universi ty will establish another new geoexchange bore field on the lawn of Whitman College, in front of Community and 1981 halls. The majority of this excavation, in cluding the boring of the wells, will occur over the summer of 2022. By fall 2022, the lawn will be regraded and reseeded.
As the University undergoes “one of the most extensive build ing programs in its history,” large portions of central and east cam pus are being fenced off and ex cavated.Many of these sites are for the University’s conversion to hot water heating. But many other locations under current or fu ture development are for the construction of new buildings, including the new School of En gineering and Applied Science (SEAS) neighborhood, Princeton University Art Museum, Roberts Stadium, and East Garage. Construction is due to expand over the summer, including a new University Health Services (UHS) center, a temporary din ing hall for Butler College, and an additional geo-exchange field in front of Whitman College.
Hot Water Distribution
By Paige Cromley, Katherine Dailey, & Annie Rupertus Senior News Writer, Head News Editor, and Staff News Writer
Another construction site, lo cated adjacent to the SEAS Neigh borhood, is a small construction site at the corner of Ivy Lane and Washington Road. This site largely blocks the second-floor entrance of the Lewis Library, and is circumvented by a new asphalt path extending from Go heenAccordingWalk. to one construction worker working at the SEAS site who spoke with the ‘Prince,’ the excavation in front of Lewis Li brary will make way for several hot water distribution pipes, as well as chilled water pipes, and sewerFanningmains.added that “there are specialized services that are being coordinated for the ES & SEAS project that are more sci ence-specific than a humanities or residential building.”
Lastly, work will begin this summer on a new UHS facility, located where 1938 Hall, Eno Hall, and the Rock Magnetism Labo ratory is now; the demolition of these buildings is anticipated to be completed by fall 2022, and the project, an expansion and reno vation of Eno Hall, will be tenta tively completed by Q2 of 2024.
By Sullivan Meyer Staff News Writer
The most extensive of these construction projects is the Uni versity’s new hot water distribu tion system, which will replace steam as the chief method for dis tributing heat on campus. In an email to The Daily Princetonian, University Project Communication Manager Karen Fanning explained that this is a multi-step process, involving “hot water upgrades to the exist ing central plant, installing new geo-exchange bore-fields, run ning new distribution piping throughout campus; and build ing the Thermally Integrated Geo-Exchange Resource (TIGER) facility and hotjorityhavetoaveinstionexcavator.rock,FanninghaveCommencementexpectedThetoular,LaboratoryroscienceLaboratory,andtheseandthecordinghothavesibility.sitebeen“temporaryinGoheenHall.andsoonWalkCenter.systemquad,thesitelasttionarepusfromrestoringcompletedtoofing.butiononFieldGoheensouthcampus,smallerissystem.”storageequipmentheatfacility,UtilityGeo-ExchangeThermally-IntegratedResourceCentralBuilding(TIGER-CUB)whichwillhousethepumps,aswellaselectricalandthermalenergytanksthatwillruntheThenewdistributionpipingresponsibleformanyofthefencedoffsitesaroundsuchastheexcavationofProspectGardens,alongWalk,betweenClarkandPrincetonStadium,andPoeandPardeefields.ManyofthehotwaterdistrisiteswillsoonbeevolvForinstance,theworksouthProspectGarden,accordingFanning,is“anticipatedtobebytheendofMarch,”accesstothepathwayFeinbergHalltoFristCamCenter.However,becausethesesitesforlayingpipes,newexcavawilloftenpickupwheretheleftoff.TheProspectGardenwillleadtonewexcavationonsoutherncornerofthesameinorderforthehotwatertoreachMcCoshHealthTheexcavationalongGoheeninfrontofScullyHallwillextendtoYoseloff,Wilcox,WuHalls,andlater,to1976Fanningwrotethatthesite“willbecompletedearlyApril.”Intheinterim,aasphaltpathway”hasconstructedadjacenttotheinordertomaintainaccesPoeandPardeefieldscurrentlysomeofthemostextensivewaterdistributionsites.ActoRon,anemployeeofUniversityCivilEngineeringConstructiondepartment,pipeswillserveYehCollegeNewCollegeWest,CarlIcahnandPrincetonNeuInstitute(PNI).IcahnandthePNI,inparticwillrequirenewfence-linesbeerectedacrossPardeeField.PoeandPardeefieldsiteistobecompletedbefore2022.Mostofthehotwatersitesoccurredonshale,whichdescribedasa“rippable”asitcanbedugupwithanRonreportedthatconstruccrewshaveencounteredofbrownstonethatrequirehydraulichammerorblastinggetthrough.Theseproceduresbeenresponsibleforthemaofthenoiseproducedbythewatersites.
A week after voting closed on student body referenda, the Un dergraduate Student Government (USG) Senate announced in an email to students that in an Ex ecutive Session on April 18, the body decided to uphold an appeal against the actions of USG Chief Elections Manager Brian Li ’24 in a 15–5 vote with four members ab staining.While upholding the appeal, USG also said in the email that by the rules of the USG Constitution, the referendum, which called on the University to boycott Caterpil lar equipment, passes. “Under the provisions of the USG Constitution, with a major ity of student votes, Referendum 3 passes,” the Wednesday, April 20 email read, “however, the USG Senate voted to uphold the appeal as detailed above and has voted on the substance of this paper as a remedy.”Referendum No. 3, the last Spring 2022 result to be certi fied, was sponsored by Princeton Committee on Palestine (PCP) President Eric Periman ’23 and calls upon the University to halt its use of Caterpillar construc tion machinery in campus con struction, “Given the violent role that Caterpillar machinery has played in the mass demolition of Palestinian homes, the murder of Palestinians and other innocent people, and the promotion of the prison-industrial complex.” Preliminary results showed that the referendum had passed with a 52 percent majority of the votes, according to USG Consti tution that states that referenda must receive a majority of votes for or against, excluding absten tions. But in an appeal initiated by USG Treasurer Adam Hoffman ’23 cited communications between Li and Tigers for Israel (TFI) Presi dent Jared Stone ’24, which im plied that abstentions would be counted in the total number of votes cast, thus theoretically giv ing the referendum 44 percent of the vote if abstentions were count ed in the Hoffmantotal.is the former vice president of TFI. In upholding the appeal, the Senate took a number of steps as remedies to the appeal. The first was to develop a Paper on Referen dum 3, which will be sent to Uni versity officials to demonstrate the will of the student body.
USG Senate says Caterpillar referendum ‘passes’ under bylaws but ‘upholds the appeal’ on election process
“It is disappointing to see the USG act in violation and contra diction of the USG constitution by not declaring a clear winner in this referendum election,” Periman wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’ “Nevertheless, PCP is in credibly enthusiastic by our victo rious result and we intend to use the clear will of the undergradu ate student body and the momen tum generated by our campaign to continue to pressure the Uni versity administration to halt all usage of Caterpillar construction machinery.”PCPcelebrated the referendum election results in an Instagram story following the announce ment“Weemail.want to thank EVERYONE who put their passion, time, and energy into this campaign and allowed us to create real change and promote real conversations about Palestinian liberation on campus,” the PCP post said. “This is not the end but just the begin ning.”Myles McKnight ’23, a member of the opposition to the referen dum, wrote in an email to the ‘Prince,’ “In upholding our objec tion, the USG Senate declared its own election unfair. That was the right call, and we are very pleased.” The official opposition state ment, published on @prince ton_tigers_united on Instagram, shared similar sentiments, writ ing, “We are pleased the USG Sen ate has overwhelmingly found that the counting of votes in the Caterpillar referendum was not conducted fairly and effectively nullified the results.” The Senate also expressed plans to amend the Constitution to clarify “constitutional guidance on abstentions,” to consider ap pointing a deputy chief elections manager and a co-chief elections manager, and to review the Con stitution and Elections Handbook with the consideration of amend ments by the end of the summer. The announcement included a condemnation of “harassment, dissemination of personal infor mation, and targeted claims of bias and corruption” against Li, as well as of discrimination and harassment more broadly. “We stand with each and every mem ber of our community — includ ing our peers of Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian, and Israeli identities,” they wrote. “I would like to echo the state ments by my colleagues that our Chief Elections Manager deserves so much better than he has re ceived,” CCA Chair Isabella Shutt ’24 wrote in a message to the ‘Prince.’ “His character, dedica tion, and passion for the demo cratic process have and continue to impress me.” Li wrote to the ‘Prince’ in re gards to the election, “I’m hoping that the student body will have a clearer picture of how the events unfolded and what has been done aboutThethem.”Paper included the text of the referendum, as well as the ap peal submitted by Hoffman and co-signed by Sustainability Chair Audrey Zhang ’25, U-Councilor Carlisle Imperial ’25, and Class of 2025 Senator Ned Dockery ’25. Reid Zlotky ’23, the official op position leader to the referendum, could not be immediately reached at the time of publication. The vote followed a special meeting of the Senate on Mon day, April 18 during which USG members heard statements from co-signatories of the appeal, the referendum sponsor, and a repre sentative of the opposition leader before heading into a closed meet ing to discuss and vote on wheth er to accept an appeal. USG President Mayu Takeu chi ’23 noted in a message to the ‘Prince’ that the meeting lasted over three hours. Both the meeting and the an nouncement follow a week of heated campus discourse over the election results for the referen dumAcademicsballot. Chair Austin Da vis ’23, Hoffman, USLC Chair Avi Attar ’25, Zhang, Class of 2024 Senator Mariam Latif ’24, Class of 2023 Senators Gisell Curbelo ’23 and Kanishkh Kanodia ’23, UCouncil Chair Riley Martinez ’23, U-Councilors Stephen Daniels ’24, Imperial, Mohamed Jishi ’24, Alen Palic ’23, Anna Sivaraj ’23, Eric Sklanka ’23, Vian Wagatsuma ’23, and Jiwon Yun ’22, did not respond to requests for comment from the ‘Prince,’ nor did they disclose their votes, prior to publication. Kapoor, Social Chair Madison Linton ’24, Class of 2024 Senator Sean Bradley ’24, Class of 2025 Sen ator Walker Penfield ’25, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Chair Braid en Aaronson ’25, and Takeuchi de clined to disclose their votes. In a message to the ‘Prince,’ Takeuchi explained this choice, writing, “I won’t disclose my votes out of respect for the Constitu tional procedures of the Execu tive Session, which are designed as closed sessions so voting Senate members can fully and honestly deliberate without any external pressures, and out of respect for my fellow members of the Senate.” Dockery expressed the same sentiments to the ‘Prince.’
East Campus This hot water distribution system will be fed by new geo-ex change bore fields, which are ar rays of 650 to 800-foot boreholes. These holes will circulate water from the distribution system deep into the earth, where, de pending on the weather, they can either deposit or retrieve heat for the campus. One such bore field is being drilled on East Campus, below East Garage and Roberts Stadium, both of which are also under construction. In order to regulate the hot water system, as well as campus energy at large, the University is also building the TIGER above the geo-exchange on East Cam pus. Along with the machinery needed to regulate flow to the boreholes, TIGER will feature heat recovery chillers, backup hybrid coolers, and massive heating and chilled water storage tanks. The sites for East Garage and Roberts Stadium are located adja cent to TIGER, forming one con tinuous construction zone from FitzRandolph Road to Princeton Stadium. According to Univer sity maps, access to Lot 21 and its surrounding facilities will be preserved via Faculty Road. The hot and chilled water generated on East Campus will be carried to areas in central campus via pipes laid between Princeton Stadium and Clark Field. While this site currently limits access to campus athletic facili ties, Fanning told the ‘Prince’ that East Stadium Drive — the road between Clark Field and Princ eton Stadium — “is anticipated to re-open in fall 2022.” One of the more significant projects is located between Pros pect Avenue and Ivy Lane, behind the eating clubs. Staff lots four, five, and 25, as well as the old Computing Center, are currently in the process of being demol ished. 91 Prospect, formerly the home for the Dean for Research, is being moved across Prospect Avenue.Thissite will become the SEAS Neighborhood, a four-building complex that will house the de partments of Environmental Sciences, Bioengineering, and Chemical and Biological Engi neering, as well as the Engineer ingCommentingCommons. on the future fate of the existing Engineering Quad and the departments within it, Fanning told the ‘Prince’ that the University “continues to evaluate future engineering needs, but no final decisions [regarding their use] have been made at this time.” According to recent Univer sity press releases, the new SEAS neighborhood will be terraced into the hillside, with “entrances at the Prospect Avenue level as well as the Ivy Lane level.” Because of these plans, the con struction requires an immense amount of dirt to be removed from the location. According to construction workers on-site, the stream of trucks exiting the site from Ivy Lane is, in large part, carrying the dirt and rubble pro duced by the project.
The construction adjacent to Lewis Library has faced various challenges and delays in the past month, including the weather. The construction worker elabo rated on this, telling the ‘Prince’ that a combination of snow, rain, and ice has made the ground dif ficult to work with, especially in areas where the sun does not reach.According to Fanning, the pipes laid in front of Lewis Li brary are now largely complete, so excavation will now advance across Ivy Lane. While planning for this maneuver, however, con tractors ran into wires for the building’s backup generator. To bypass those wires, contractors had to wait for permission from the University; as of last week, they were still waiting for electri cians to work on the wires. In order to maintain access to the construction site, contractors have installed a by-pass road in front of Lewis Library. According to Fanning, this by-pass road will be the main way for construction vehicles to access the SEAS site and will remain open until the project is completed in spring 2025. In the meantime, Western Way will re-open to traffic in fall 2022.Fanning told the ‘Prince’ that, due to this by-pass road, “the con struction fence-line will remain in front of Lewis Library, limiting access to Lewis [Library] directly from Ivy “HoweverLane.[the University is] looking for opportunities to cre ate a more direct temporary path way from the east sidewalk along Washington Road to the front of Lewis Library,” Fanning said. “Flaggers will remain in place on either side of the by-pass road to monitor and help direct pedes trians.”
Future Construction
“The USG will not make a state ment on behalf of the student body in favor of or against the referendum,” the announcement stated.USG Vice President Hannah Kapoor ’23 wrote in a message to The Daily Princetonian, “Though there was indeed disagreement surrounding the outcome, the conclusion was reached by fair and democratic procedure.”
On the morning of April 11, sopho mores watched the sunrise together to commemorate the beginning of their last two years of college.
page 9Thursday May 19, 2022 The Daily Princetonian Spring Days on Campus
By Candace Do, Abby de Riel, Zoe Berman, Guanyi Cao, Angel Kuo, and Zoha Enver Photography Staff
Students line up in front of Rolling Yatai during TruckFest on Saturday,April16.
Magnolias on the south side of campus. Students attend an arch sing on a Friday night.
The Class of 2026 and some of their parents got a gimpse of campus life during the first in-person Princeton Preview since 2019. Students and community members come together to break their fast in the month of Ramadan.
The sun sets besides Blair Arch the night before Sophomore Sunrise.
Have 69.6% of respondents said they had.
you ever had sex?
Welcome to The Daily Princetonian’s inaugu ral survey of the senior class. The data within these pages — compiled and verified through months of planning, analysis, and outreach — tell the story of the Great Class of 2022, the last graduating cohort to enjoy a full academic year prior to the COV ID-19Ourpandemic.far-reaching proj ect seeks to better un derstand the diverse intricacies of the Univer sity’s departing under graduates. Though Nas sau Hall publicly reports some specifics on demo graphics and academ ics, other data — such as respondents’ experi ences with alcohol and the Honor Code — are difficult, if not impossi ble, to find. The majority of statistics within this project represent figures to which the wider Uni versity community has never been privy. Five hundred and six teen students, compris ing 41.4 percent of the Class of 2022, respond ed to our inquiries. We compiled the survey’s 130+ questions in a Google Form and dis tributed them via email. The form remained open from March 14 to March 29,We’ve2022. placed a few of the survey’s highlights below, but one may browse over 200 interac tive charts and graphs online, including de tails on GPA, income, political views, and more. This defineandtudesthatofpoints,60,000synthesizedinformation,fromoverindividualdatarevealsaportraitourcommunity:ataleexploresthemultiofourUniversity,thestudentswhoit.
Did you ever violate the Honor said36%reportingwhotothose(EvaluatedCode?byaddingwhoadmittedcheatingandthoseadmittedtonotapeer).ofrespondentsthattheyhad.Whatisyour If you could go back in time, would you still have chosen to attend88.9%Princeton?ofseniorssaidthattheywouldchoosePrincetonagainifgiventheopportunity.
By Daily Princetonian Staff
Senior Survey
page 10 Thursday May 19, 2022The Daily Princetonian
sexual orientation?
only gets to deposit in one place,” he Durso-Finleyexplained.said that this phenomenon can cause a ripple effect across the admissions ecosys tem. He illustrated the concept through a hypo thetical: “A school has a ton of cross-admits in the northeast with Harvard, say. And all of the sudden they get some news that Harvard’s going in for 100 kids. Tufts is freaking out … a big number of those kids might come from their“So,class.”allof [a] sudden,” he continued. “Tufts now has to go in to reflect what they lose to Harvard. Okay, now there’s another school down the chain that’s going to as well … the waitlist numbers are not specific to the insti tution because how they vary is also affected from otherDatainstitutions.”fromthis year’s survey of incoming Uni versity first-years indi cates that at least 39 per cent of respondents were also admitted to at least one other Ivy League insti tution, demonstrating the heavy admissions overlap at peer themitunder-enrollsaid.itsoflistswidelyadmissionsprospectivecrasiesDespiteinstitutions.theiridiosynandchallengesforstudentsandofficesalike,agreedthatwaitareanecessarypartthecollegeprocess.“Acollegeneedstomeetnumbers,”Graham“Theydon’twanttoandnotadenoughstudents,butotherthingataplace
“ ”
By Sam Kagan Head Data Editor
Jeffrey Durso-Finley, co-director of college counseling at the Lawrenceville High School
page 11Thursday May 19, 2022 The Daily Princetonian
In 2017, Princeton ac cepted 101 undergraduate students from its waitlist. In 2018, that number dropped to zero. Waitlist acceptance rates — the percentage of waitlisted students to whom a school offers admission — have var ied greatly at the Univer sity and many of its peer institutions in recent years. Waitlist sizes have remained largely un changed. This phenom enon contrasts sharply with overall undergrad uate acceptance rates, which have consistently trended down for decades. Utilizing data from the Common Data Set, a col laborative data-sharing project among institu tions of higher education, The Daily Princetonian analyzed trends in under graduate waitlist admis sions at a collection of the country’s most selective colleges and universities. When available, the ‘Prince’ examined data on waitlist admissions from Princeton, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Georgetown Uni versity, Northwestern University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford Univer sity, and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). Due to inconsistencies in the Common Data Set, the ‘Prince’ collected vari ous depths of admissions information. All of the data continues up to 2020, but data from Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, MIT, and Northwestern begins in 2003, data from Stan ford begins in 2008, and data from Georgetown and Penn begins in 2009. Sarah Graham ’03, the director of college coun seling at Princeton Day School, a local pre-K to 12 private school, pointed to the randomness of stu dent choice as a key factor in the variation. “All the predictive mod els in the world, some times, can’t necessarily capture the decision-mak ing of teenagers,” Graham said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ She served as an admission officer at the University from 2003 to 2005. “I see that play out year after year too … sometimes it’s really ran dom how teenagers make decisions.”Jeffrey Durso-Finley, the co-director of college counseling at the Law renceville School, a lo cal boarding high school, and a former admission officer at Brown, agreed: “You’re dealing with the natural variation of the inclination of 18-year-old kids. There’s a little bit of randomness to it.” From 2003 to 2020, Princeton offered a spot on the waitlist to an aver age of 1,153 undergraduate applicants. On average, 823 applicants accepted this offer. Both of these number rarely shifted dramatically — 75 percent of Princeton waitlists that the ‘Prince’ analyzed in cluded between 789 and 906 students. In 2020, the most re cent year for which data is available, Princeton, Cor nell, Dartmouth, George town, Northwestern, MIT, Penn, and Stanford re ceived a combined total of over 270,000 undergradu ate applications. While the number of applica tions continues to rise, the size of waitlists has not significantly changed from year to year. According to DursoFinley, the University’s waitlist tendencies mirror those of its peer institu tions.“Idon’t find the way Princeton operates their waitlist to be substan tively different from any of the other hyper-selec tive schools,” said DursoFinley, who has worked at Lawrenceville for over two decades. “Their appli cant pool is so strong and their matriculation rate is so high, they don’t often need to go to the waiting list because they make their class based on the modeling they use.” In a statement to the ‘Prince,’ Deputy Universi ty Spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss ultimatelythemanypeerlow-incomepartnersvisingaingcolleges.multipledentsthatlectedforliststudentscontrast,exceptgreaterwaitlist,twoalwaysGeorgetown,consistentlywaitlisttedtionslectedwhichindentstherehebutionswouldterestinghighlyyearstrongarerobusthighlightingDurso-Finley’semphasizedclaim,theschool’sapplicantpool.“Wefortunatetohaveaapplicantpooleachthatincludesmanyqualifiedandinstudentswhomakegreatcontritothecampus,”wrote.“Andeachyear,aremoresuchstuthanwehaveseatstheclass.”Duringtheperiodforthe‘Prince’coldata,afewinstituseemtohaveadmitstudentsfromtheirslightlymorethanothers.forexample,acceptedatleaststudentsfromthewelcoming50orduringeveryyearfortwo.MIT,byadmittedzerofromtheirwaitinathirdoftheyearswhichthe‘Prince’coldata.BrianLi’24,explainedoftenthesamestuarewaitlistedathighlyselectiveLiisaheadadvisfellowforMatriculate,volunteercollege-adorganizationthathigh-achieving,studentswithcollegecounselors.“Oftentimesyou’llhavecollegesvyingforsamecandidateandthestudent
that’s a residential com munity is you can’t overenroll … the waitlist helps make sure that they can kind of manage that en rollment.”Hotchkiss further con firmed this practice. “Once we know how many of the admitted students plan to enroll,” he wrote in an email to the ‘Prince,’ “we turn to the waitlist to ensure that all seats in a class are Beyondfilled.”simply filling seats, waitlists can also help schools address de mographic or interestbased deficiencies in their admission pool, allow ing admissions officers to balance the incoming class across demographics and“They’reinterests.using the wait list to tweak, to fashion it a little bit more in the way in which they’re target ing,” Durso-Finley said. He later continued, “If a hyper-selective school thinks they’re going to go in for 25 kids and they do the analysis of their class and they are over-enrolled in what they predicted the engineering population to be and you’re a kid on the waiting list who’s an engineer, they’re probably not going to go to you.” When examining trends across highly selective in stitutions, one might be wise to aggregate their data, given that these schools likely draw simi lar applicant pools. This practice results in notice ably more consistent yearto-year waitlist admission patterns.Variation remains, but it is less regular and less dramatic. Although ag gregating data can smooth trends, this change is also likely driven by the fact that a number of the list ed institutions have con siderable overlap in their waitlist pools. The University declined to comment on the spe cific details of its waitlist process and the data the ‘Prince’ acquired cannot fully explain the myriad factors behind waitlist admission. The Com mon Data Set rarely indi cates how many students choose to enroll in a given school after being admit ted from the waitlist, and there is no publicly acces sible way to precisely as sess the overlap between various waitlist pools.
Resting at the conflu ence of overwhelming quantity and unpredict able decision-making, waitlist acceptance rates at highly selective col leges and universities are subject to significant variation. The processes that govern waitlist ac ceptances are a combina tion of secretive and ran dom, creating scattershot results that buck conven tional admission trends.
“You’re dealing with the natural variation of the inclination of 18-year-old kids. There’s a little bit of randomness to it.”
We looked at waitlist acceptance rates for Princeton and seven highly selective schools. Here’s what we found.
| Head Puzzles Editor
By Gabriel Robare
page 12 Thursday May 19, 2022The Daily Princetonian ACROSS 1 “Dear Mama” rapper 6 Immune componentsystem 11 A sharp equivalent 16 Word on Chipolte menus 17 The magic number 18 “A room without ___ is like a body without a soul”: Cicero 19 Abbr. on a food wrapper 20 Poet who wrote “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” 21 Talk like a toad 22 “One locomotive for the ___!” 25 Down-under hopper 26 One of Katniss’s love interests in “The Hunger Games” 27 Trick 30 Bad thing to tear: Abbr. 33 Fashion monogram 35 Locomotive part #1 38 “Still ___”: 1999 hit featuring Snoop Dogg 39 ___ Mater (“Cars” character voiced by Larry the Cable Guy) 41 Animal with an average speed of 0.1 mph 42 Racket 43 A dyeing art? 45 Believer in Jah 46 Locomotive part #2 51 ___ colony 52 “Beat that!” 53 Soft toss 55 Having three copies of each chromosome, like watermelonsseedless (but not seeded watermelons!) 59 Co. whose jingle is an easy way to remember a major sixth 60 Anonymous last name 61 Locomotive part #3 63 Effeminate type, in modern speak, with 69-Across 65 Qty. 66 Put a stop to? 67 X-Games star White 69 See 63-Across 71 Locomotive part #4 77 Johnny who used to cry “Come on down!” 80 Powerful bloodline? 81 Product of un pollo 82 TV doctor 83 Pliny the ___ 84 ___ space 85 He speaks for the trees 86 Like some conversions, in computer science 87 ___ in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian: H. L. DOWNMencken 1 Golden Age Chinese dynasty 2 Power ___ 3 Fancy spread 4 Coke v. Pepsi, e.g. 5 Ball of yarn, maybe 6 “Until anon,” in a text 7 Like talk, they say 8 Rubber 9 “Bon appetit!” 10 Largest country totally surrounded by another country 11 First channel to air “Great British Bake Off” 12 Table ___ 13 Head across the pond? 14 Alias abbreviation 15 For shame! 23 Popular app for astrology fans 24 M*A*S*H co-star Jamie 27 Patient wife in a Chaucer tale 28 White House reception locale 29 Which train to take to find the quickest way to Harlem, in song 30 + 31 Standards 32 Ideology of the Russian Revolution 34 N.F.L. RonnieHall-of-Famer 36 Sunlit spaces 37 Romance novelist Tammi 40 ___ Sports (video game) 43 Casus ___ (cause of war) 44 Onetime Putin org. 47 Lacunae 48 Reeeeeeeally long time 49 Steals 50 Baseball’s record-holder for all-time highest average (.366)h 51 V.A. concern, for short` 54 “Let’s do it” 56 ___ buco 57 Third word of “Moby-Dick” 58 Toy consisting of a spool on a string 62 Tarot card suit 64 Chocolate milk brand 68 Something to take when you pay attention 70 Provocative late-night text 71 Beverage that comes with a wide straw 72 Jet-black gem 73 Pietà figure 74 Portion 75 Declare 76 Wedding ring? 77 Wise one 78 Sign of summer? 79 Camera variety The Best Old Place of All
Princeton is a high-intensity environment. Classes demand a lot of our time and energy. Extracurricular commitments can approximate part-time or full-time jobs. Planning for post-graduation plans or careers is often a four-yearlong project. We need activi ties to defuse stress from our academic and non-academic ‘work’ lives. The answer is of ten partying: we match the intensity of our work lives with equally intense social lives that can become centered around ‘pregaming’ or going to the Street. While Princeton is far from a party school, these types of activities be come a psychological necessity for many. We wait in hourslong lines, sometimes being pushed by other students or reprimanded by bouncers, to get into a club because we may feel that it is our only chance to escape the pressures of life here.What if we took more pro active steps for our mental health? We could set aside blocks of time during the week for ourselves, make time for friends, be conscious about how much work classes will require when selecting cours es, and develop active hobbies. Julia Chaffers writes, “Don’t be afraid to hit pause and gather yourself. You can only enjoy all that Princeton has to offer if you do so.” While more intense social activities like partying can be a part of our lives, they shouldn’t be our only relief from stress or replace actual self-care.TheUniversity also has a role to play. Princeton experi enced a mental health crisis on an unprecedented scale in the spring as students faced the academic expectations of a typical semester without meaningful opportunities to destress: spring break lasted two days and gatherings were heavily restricted. As a result, we saw the highest-ever re corded utilization of Counsel ing and Psychological Services and forceful calls by students for professors to adjust their expectations of students. If the University sets high aca demic standards and restric tions on student activities, it must also take responsibil ity for our mental health. This semester, that could mean providing more robust social programming for first-years and sophomores, whose op portunities to meet each other are still restricted compared to past years, or providing extra support to clubs whose plans have been disrupted by travel restrictions.Theintensity of life at Princ eton and relative isolation of campus can be stifling, and it may feel that the only escape is a pregame or a night out. However, if students and the University do more to priori tize well-being, it doesn’t have to be that way.
What ‘party culture’ reveals about our mental health
Opinion
JON ORT / Eating clubs line Prospect Avenue.
The opening of the ‘Street’ each year al most feels like a ritual: students wait in long lines to enter the clubs, some times for the first time, mingle over cheap beer on crowded dance floors, and occasion ally end the night at McCosh. This year’s reopening, while delayed, was no exception. Hordes of students lined up outside of Colonial and Quad over the past two weekends. Some were lucky enough to get in, while others waited — pos sibly for hours — before giving up or being asked to leave.
I found something deeply problematic about the scene outside of Colonial as I watched from across the street. It wasn’t the crowd itself or the excite ment surrounding the Street’s reopening. Rather, I was dis turbed by the desperation I saw. I believe this desperation is the product of a campus cul ture that does not prioritize mental health and well-being.
page 13 www. dailyprincetonian .com }{
Allen Liu Senior Columnist
THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
Abigail Rabieh Columnist Why won’t anyone teach me math?
Thursday May 19, 2022 vol. editor-in-chiefcxlvi Marie-Rose Sheinerman ’23 business manager Benjamin Cai ’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 Marie-Rose Sheinerman ’23 Benjamin Cai ’24 146TH MANAGING BOARD managing editors head audience editor Rowen Gesue ’24 associateeditorsaudience Meryl Liu ’25 Sai Rachumalla ’24 head cartoon editors Inci Karaaslan ’24 Ambri Ma ’24 associate cartoon editor Ariana Borromeo ’24 head copy editors Alexandra Hong ’23 Nathalie Verlinde ’24 associate copy editors Catie Parker ’23 Cecilia Zubler ’23 head web design editors Anika Maskara ’23 Brian Tieu ’23 associate web design editor Ananya Grover ’24 head graphics editors Ashley Chung ’23 Noreen Hosny ’25 print design editor Juliana Wojtenko ’23 special issues editor Evelyn Doskoch ’23 head data editor Sam Kagan ’24 head features editors Alex Gjaja ’23 Rachel Sturley ’23 associateeditorfeatures Sydney Eck ’24 head news editors Katherine Dailey ’24 Andrew Somerville ’24 associate news editors Kalena Blake ’24 Anika Buch ’24 Miguel Gracia-Zhang ’23 Sandeep Mangat ’24 newsletter editors Kareena Bhakta ’24 Amy Ciceu ’24 Aditi Desai ’24 head opinion editor Genrietta Churbanova ’24 community editor Rohit A. Narayanan ’24 associate opinion editors Won-Jae Chang ’24 head photo editor Candace Do ’24 associate photo editor Angel Kuo ’24 Isabel Richardson ’24 head podcast editor Hope Perry ’24 associate podcast editors Jack Anderson ’24 Eden Teshome ’25 head prospect editors José Pablo Fernández García ’23 Aster Zhang ’24 associate prospect editors Molly Cutler ’23 Cathleen Weng ’24 head puzzles editors Gabriel Robare ’24 Owen Travis ’24 associate puzzles editors Juliet Corless ’24 Joah Macosko ’25 Cole Vandenberg ’24 head satire editor Claire Silberman ’23 associate satire editors Spencer Bauman ’25 Daniel Viorica ’25 head sports editors Wilson Conn ’25 Julia Nguyen ’24 associate sports editor Ben Burns ’23 Elizabeth Evanko ’23 associate video editors Daniel Drake ’24 Marko Petrovic ’24 146TH BUSINESS BOARD assistantmanagerbusiness Shirley Ren ’24 business directors David Akpokiere ’24 Samantha Lee ’24 Ananya Parashar ’24 Gloria Wang ’24 project managers Anika Agarwal ’25 John Cardwell ’25 Jack Curtin ’25 Diya Dalia ’24 Jonathan Lee ’24 Juliana Li ’24 Emma Limor ’25 Justin Ong ’23 Xabier Sardina ’24 business associate Jasmine Zhang ’24 THIS PRINT ISSUE WAS DESIGNED BY Dimitar Chakarov ’24 Accessibility Isabel Rodrigues ’23 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Melat Bekele ’24 Auhjanae McGee ’23 Education Evelyn Doskoch ’23 José Pablo Fernández García ’23 Financial Stipend Program Rooya Rahin ’23 Sections listed in alphabetical order. Omar Farah ’23 Caitlin Limestahl ’23 Tanvi Nibhanupudi ’23 Zachariah Wirtschafter Sippy ’23 Strategic initiative directors
146TH TECHNOLOGY BOARD chiefofficertechnology Pranav Avva ’24 leadengineerssoftware Roma Bhattacharjee ’25 Joanna Tang ’24 software engineers Eugenie Choi ’24 Giao Vu Dinh ’24 Daniel Hu ’25 Dwaipayan Saha ’24 Kohei Sanno ’25
Last July, I decided I want ed to take math in col lege. My heart was set on it. Did I have any desire to major in math? Absolutely not. Did I need a math class to fulfill a requirement? Nope, I wanted to be a history ma jor. But I enjoyed math in high school, and I wanted to con tinue to explore the field. I had previously taken classes up to linear algebra, so I selected MAT 202 from the Math Department website.Itook math because I desired to learn. One would think a student like me would thrive in this class, especially at a uni versity that prides itself on en abling students “to pursue mul tiple interests rigorously and deeply,” as President Eisgruber says on the University website. Unfortunately, it is difficult for students pursuing humanities and social science degrees to explore classes within STEM departments due to the inacces sibility of introductory courses. Though I passed MAT 202 class just fine, my experience in it was miserable. The way the course was run did not at all set up students to succeed — or even learn math. For example, though we were provided with practice problems to prepare for our exams, we were never given solutions. My class consistently begged my professor for these, yet all he could say was that not providing them was depart mental policy, and it was out of hisThiscontrol.begs the question: what interest does a department have in making it impossible to study? Study materials are given so that students can learn the course material and pre pare adequately for the exam. Solution sets are part of this: to properly learn, one needs to be able to identify their mistakes and understand why they are wrong. By not supporting stu dents who are making an effort to study, it becomes both ex tremely difficult to learn mate rial, and demoralizing to even try. This struggle was reflected in our exam averages, which were, respectively, in the 50s, the 60s, and the 30s. I am far from the only per son who felt this way about my class. MAT 202 has an abysmal rating of 2.71 on princeton courses.com during the spring 2020-2021 semester. The evalua tions on the Office of the Regis trar’s website are no better. Stu dents described the course as “disheartening” and said they “lost a lot of respect for the Math department after taking this course.” The advice that came up again and again in many re views was: “Don’t take this class unless you have to.” MAT 202 is not a course that math majors typically take, but rather for underclassmen who are majoring in engineer ing or sciences. Because of this, the priority of the class should be teaching students as much as possible about math so that they will remember and utilize the discipline in classes and majors that are not focused on that realm — something that would be equally interesting, if not as useful, for humanities majors. Is this not what intro ductory classes are all about? Princeton promises students a “liberal arts education,” and defines that as an education of fering “expansive intellectual grounding in all kinds of hu manistic inquiry.” Yet as a humanities student, it feels extremely difficult to ex plore STEM fields. I wanted to learn some introductory phys ics in college because I had an awful experience with it in high school, but I’ve been dissuaded my experience in math — not to mention that the most recent average rating of the four intro ductory physics courses (PHY 101, 102, 103, 104) is a 3.2, and the comments repeatedly have told me to only take this class if I haveWeto.are often told of engineer ing or STEM students explor ing the humanities to their heart’s content, but I feel that we rarely hear of students in the humanities being encouraged to take scientific or quantitative classes. The University website assures readers that “Students who elect to major in the natu ral sciences or engineering, for example, also take classes in history, languages, philosophy, [and] the arts,” but I don’t see any inspiration for those of us who really want to learn math, or physics, or chemistry, but just don’t want to focus on it for 4 years.Onface value, 100 and 200 level classes appear approach able for students who simply want an introduction to a field. I wanted to learn linear alge bra! I had the correct prerequi site knowledge to do it. So why didn’t the math department encourage me in this pursuit? I understand that profes sors and departments have an obligation to teach a certain amount of material and main tain a certain pace, but there are ways to teach that focus more on developing an understand ing of a field rather than beating down students’ self-confidence and making problems so hard that learning at all is difficult. I would think that departments want students to fall in love with their subjects. But though I entered the semester with a love for math, I left with the cer tainty that I would never take a math class again, and a lack of desire to explore other scientific fields for fear that I would have a similar experience.
ANGEL KUO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Divest Princeton Stand-in at CPUC on March 21. Students hold signs including “No more dirty $.”
Signatories include: Women of ’72 Susan
Daryl
Opinion
AmandaKatherineElizabethMaryEllenSusanMaryBarbaraCarolJerriSherryLarissaAngenetteHelenaVeraAnnaYaffaAnnMegganDianaAliceBarbaraClaudiaJacquelineHollyHeleneJoanJudithEnglishWhiteMatthewsFrommLovejoyAriailM.TesoroJuliusKelikianFosterMoorheadSeaseMonoyiosVentura-BeckBairdChittyMarcusNovakovaDuffyMeaneyBrownPeltzLeiwantDonovanRahnGellerWatkinsBrownstoneEigMorieceRomeBaldwinHoughtonOttVerburgEggertStukenber
Nate Howard Guest Contributor May 8, 2022
page 14 www. dailyprincetonian .com }{ Thursday May 19, 2022
Princeton in the service of fossil fuels
We, the undersigned Princeton women of ’72, have been deeply shocked by the leaked Supreme Court draft authored byour classmate Justice Samuel Alito ’72. We are about to celebrate our 50th reunion – half a century since we graduated from Princeton. As a pioneeringclass of Princeton women, we find it bitter indeed to see the draft Supreme Court opinion reverse the strides we thought we were making, as part of oneof the first classes of Princeton women, towards a world of equity and fairnessfor women of all races and social and economic positions.We ask our classmates, and the com munity of Princeton, to protest the logic that ties us to a constitutional original ism which resists any movement toward justice but, rather, moves us backwards. As Jill Lepore so aptly put it in The New Yorker, “Women are indeed missing from the Constitution. That’s a problem to remedy, not a precedent to honor.”Instead, we want to call attention to this urgent truth: We hang on a precipice, balanced between the draft opin ion and the final Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade. The right to manage one’s own health and most intimate per sonal and family decisions without out side interference is at risk right now and should be preserved to ensure social justice for ourselves, for our classmates, and for the world Princeton purports to serve. M. Squier
“ Princeton in the na tion’s service and the service of humani ty.” Every year, thou sands of students apply ing to the University are asked to explain how this motto fits with their lives. But does Princeton live up to this standard? Surpris ingly, the University has finally and very quietly revealed information to help answer this question. Unsurprisingly, the Uni versity’s investments, re search funding, and cor porate recruitment events don’t intersect with those ideals; they are in direct opposition to the Univer sity’s values of service and civic engagement. At the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meet ing on March 21, we were finally told how much of Princeton’s endowment is invested in fossil fuel companies. $1.7 billion. Billion. 4.5 percent of the entire endowment. That’s more than twice as much as Harvard has invested in fossil fuels, and their endowment is even larger than Princeton’s! To put this in context, Princeton invests the equivalent of over $200,000 per student in fossil fuels. In addition to being the industry re sponsible for the destruc tion of the planet, the volatile and risky fossil fuel industry is no longer a prudent dentspaniesmately”Furthermore,investment.“approxi50fossilfuelcomactivelyrecruitstuoncampus.There should be “approximate ly” zero fossil fuel com panies actively recruiting on campus. Students are free to work for whomever they want to, but inviting those companies to cam pus is an endorsement. Princeton career fairs should be the start of stu dents’ careers “in the ser vice of humanity,” not a recruitment opportunity for climate deniers look ing to hire future liars. Finally, Princeton re searchers have received 26 million dollars in funding from 11 fossil fuel com panies over the past five years, with large amounts from BP and Exxon, some of the most infamous companies to lie to Con gress and the world. This is only about five million dollars of research fund ing per year. To put that in perspective, the An nual Giving campaign last year alone raised over 68 million dollars. Princeton doesn’t need these part nerships, but you know who does? Fossil fuel companies trying to gre enwash their reputations. Would Princeton allow to bacco companies to fund lung cancer research? No. So why should we allow fossil fuel companies to fund “sustainability” projects?“Princeton has a long standing commitment to service and civic engage ment” is part of the sup plemental essay question about service. Let’s cor rect the record. Princeton has a longstanding com mitment to serving the fossil fuel industry and enabling the companies that are destroying our planet. But it’s not too late for the University. That essay question includes a caveat, asking an appli cant of a University that hasn’t met that ideal in the past how they “will in tersect with these ideals” in the future. Princeton, it’s time to divest in the service of humanity.
Friends of the women of ’72: Christine LaLonde Robinson ’73 Mara Melum ’73 Carol Obertubbesing ’73 Macie Green Hall VanRensselaer ’73 Beth N. Rom-Rymer ’73 Nancy Teaff ’73 Ellen Hymowitz ’73 Barbara Dash ’73 Alice Fahs ’73
Letter from women of Class of ‘72 on their classmate Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked opinion on abortion
page 15 www. dailyprincetonian .com }{ Thursday May 19, 2022
**
By creating a narrow and limited window for report ing sexual assault, the Uni versity ignores commonly delayed reporting times, at times exacerbated by the complexity of interperson al Therelationships.morning after my assault, I woke up on the floor of my perpetrator’s bedroom. Lying in the morning light, I slowly came to the inconceivable realization that my bra, leggings, and underwear were all missing from my body. Searching my dazed brain, I could find no con crete memory explain ing when exactly they had come off. As I continued to regain consciousness, I realized that I had passed out dur ing the night in a puddle of my own vomit. Raising my head, I numbly picked out grains of regurgitated rice from my long hair. At that moment, I was still so mentally and physically disoriented that I didn’t have enough time to get dressed before stumbling to his bathroom to throw up yet again. A toilet, no underwear, alone. On that cold February night, while I had lain there on the floor un clothed and covered in vomit, my perpetrator had climbed directly above me to sleep soundly in his bed, cocooned in warmth. I shared with the University all these details (and many more) nine months after they occurred, only for them to brush off my pleas for support and a shred of justice.Ican’t adequately ex press the anguish and re gret I feel for not report ing sooner, when there was still enough time to bind the University to the re sponsibility of investigat ing. If I had reported in the immediate days following the assault, I would have still had a chance at a hear ing before my perpetrator’s graduation freed him from anyButaccountability.thereasons I didn’t immediately come for ward aren’t uncommon. In the classic “rape myth,” strangers emerge from shadowy alleyways and hold victims at knifepoint to commit assaults. This narrative clouds the real ity that most assailants are familiar individuals in our everyday lives, just as my perpetrator was. He re mained in my life until he graduated — the day the University granted him a free pass from all of his ac tions toward Throughoutme.our entire relationship, I was not yet in a position to face certain realities, and was nowhere near a position to report or even acknowledge what had happened to me that night. When I was finally able to say something a se mester later, it broke me to report someone who had once consumed so much of my life. And it broke me even further to be dis missed by an institution that had claimed to exist for my Tragically,benefit.my experi ence is not an uncommon one on this campus. Ac cording to the 2017 We Speak survey, 27 percent of female undergraduates at Princeton were sexually harassed or assaulted in a single academic year. We are all around campus: in your precepts, extracur riculars, eating clubs, and zee groups. And it’s cru cial to recognize that for every survivor, a perpetra tor exists among us: in our friends, hook-ups, fraterni ties, student leaders. This hard truth demands us all to reflect critically on our own actions and on the ac tions of those we choose to include in our lives.
in power “know better.”
Sadie Guest Contributor
The University is skirt ing accountability when it denies students an investi gation of graduating stu dents, exiting faculty, and alumni.Thedismissal of my re port was justified by one bullet point line from the University Sexual Miscon duct policy. “At any time prior to the hearing, the University may dismiss a formal complaint if,” the policy states, “The respon dent is no longer enrolled or employed by the Uni versity.”According to my ini tial consultation with the Office of Gender Equity and Title IX Administra tion, the hearing process can last for as many as six months. Effectively, any student harassed or as saulted in the six months before a perpetrator gradu ates may not have enough time to see their case to a conclusion before the Uni versity washes its hands of theThismatter.same exemption also applies to those no longer “employed by the University.” Princeton claims to hire faculty and staff who educate and up lift students. It’s absurd that professors may not face any consequences if they have sex with their students, as long as they do it during their last se mester working at the Uni versity.The danger of sexual misconduct at the hands of alumni also lurks omi nously below joyous cel ebrations and gatherings. During Reunions, le gions of older adults come to campus and mingle with young undergradu ates while being supplied with copious amounts of alcohol, creating the per fect environment for an in creased number of sexual assaults. “Reunions are a significant time of con cern,” one Sexual Harass ment/Assault Advising, Resources and Education (SHARE) office staff per son told me. “They bring with them a multitude of risk factors for sexual mis conduct.” Since Princeton doesn’t investigate cases where the perpetrator is no longer enrolled, the University skirts liability if an enrolled student is assaulted by an alum dur ing Reunions. This school disturbingly invites back alumni in grandiose revel ry, yet refuses to hold them responsible for the harm that they cause.**
Princeton failed me as a sexual assault survivor. University policy needs to change.
An anonymous student recounts their personal experiences attempting to seek justice after an assault and the ways in which she feels the University failed her.
** “Don’t wear reveal ing clothing.” “Don’t get drunk.” “Don’t go out alone.”Ontop of a misogynis tic culture that puts the onus completely on femi nine and femme students to “prevent themselves from being assaulted,” the University implicitly sends students this ludicrous message: it’s your own re sponsibility to make sure that your rapist is an un derclassman or a junior, not a senior. Because if it’s the latter, you’re on your own.The Sexual Misconduct policies, separate from Ti tle IX, are completely con structed by the University. Princeton has every power to amend them to allow for the investigation of re cently graduated students. They’re simply choosing not to. ** Sadie is a pseudonym used by a current Princeton under graduate student. The ‘Prince’ made the decision to publish this guest op-ed anonymously due to privacy and safety con cerns for the author.
By exempting older stu dents, the University ne glects the very factor that makes sexual misconduct so common in the first place: the power that those in positions of authority hold on campus. I first met my perpetra tor at a recruitment event for his eating club. Already intimidated by the seniori ty of the older students, my perpetrator loomed even larger to me as a member I had to make a good im pression on. At the time, I was impressed by his leadership as a senior and flattered when he started talking to me – a lost soph omore still finding her place on campus, having yet to have had a full aca demic year in-person. As a campus leader, it had been my sumenotItoalcoholwasmyIonbecamecoholintojudgment,constantlyassault.ofappropriatelyresponsibilityversity,trainingceivedhadalcohol.dents,theresponsibilityperpetrator’stoensuresafetyofyoungerstuespeciallyaroundAssomeonewhoalsoostensiblyreadditionalSHAREfromtheUniithadbeenhistorespondtoinstancessexualharassmentandBecauseofthis,Ideferredtohisbelievinghimbemoreknowledgeableanythinginvolvingalandconsent.WhenIheavilyintoxicatedthenightofmyassault,deduceditwassomehowownfaultthatmybodyunabletohandlethehehadcontinuedfeedme.Inhindsight,wishIcouldtellmyselftoautomaticallyasthatthoseolderand
The words failed to sink in. I read the section again, and then again, before a vague meaning began to coalesce: after the excru ciating process of report ing my sexual assault, my case was being dismissed by the University. Despite categorizing my allegation as a violation, Princeton refused to investigate be cause my perpetrator had alreadyFilinggraduated.areporthad been my desperate attempt at feeling safe on my own campus. A hearing was the only avenue available to me to have my perpetrator banned from University grounds until I graduated. I simply wished to walk to class without fearing that I might see him on one of his campus visits. To meal swap with classmates without finding him at his old eating club. To go to the Street without running into him with his friends. After I filed my initial report, the Department of Public Safety instituted a short-term Persona Non Grata, notifying my perpe trator that he would be ar rested for trespassing if he set foot on campus. How ever, this only lasted for 90 days, as a longer Persona Non Grata could only be granted by University ad ministration after a hear ing.I am not attempting to try my case in the court of public opinion. I deserved to be heard and taken seri ously with a chance at jus tice through a University investigation. I was denied that opportunity because of an unjustifiable loop hole. No one else should have the same thing hap pen to them.**
Content warning: The fol lowing article contains de scriptions of sexual assault. T rembling with an ticipation, my eyes darted across the phone screen as I tried to remember how to read. “Based on my ini tial assessment, I have de termined that the alleged conduct, if substantiated by a preponderance of the evidence, would constitute Sexual Assault under the University Sexual Miscon duct policy. However, pur suant to section IV of the University Sexual Miscon duct policy, given that the Respondent is no longer enrolled at the University, your formal complaint is being dismissed.”
/ THE
ABBY DE RIEL DAILY PRINCETONIAN
Opinion
Editor’s Note: In the process of publishing this piece, the ‘Prince’ took several steps to corroborate the author’s ac count of her interactions with the University, including re viewing the author’s writ ten communications with Department of Public Safety, Title IX, and SHARE admin istrators. The ‘Prince’ did not independently verify Sadie’s allegations of sexual assault.
Center for the Arts.
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JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83. During my short-lived stint as a staff writer for a literary magazine on campus, I went to a meeting to decide which pieces would be published in the fall is sue. I was mildly surprised to find that most of the decisions had al ready been made by pre-appointed staff readers. I wondered about the pieces that were declined before most of the staff saw them. I end ed up leaving the meeting early after raising a point about a story’s uncritical inclusion of a character that replicated the Mammy ste reotype. The room went silent for a moment before someone asked if anyone had any “positive” com ments about the story. This has been my experience in most creative writing class rooms and extracurricular spaces on campus. There is a veneer of “wokeness” and inclusivity: the proud proclamation that every one is welcome in the space, no matter their background. Yet un derneath this veneer, there is con tinued exclusivity. The Program in Creative Writing still requires applications for all of its classes, including introductory ones, and most of the literary publications on campus require applications as well. There is also this stark white reality, both figuratively and often demographically: creative writing at Princeton is pretentious and centered on ways of writing that descend from Western “high art” traditions construed as objective ly superior to all other forms. I wanted to find a home in the creative writing department, which is likely what prevented me from seeing its flaws for so long. Additionally, I greatly enjoyed working with all of the professors I encountered, and I felt invigo rated by some of the workshops I participated in. But my positive memories min gle with persistent memories of invalidation. In my experience, I was typically the only or one of two Black students in the room.
MARK DODICI PRINCETONIAN Lewis
“What is art?” is a question that will never be conclusively answered. How I feel right now, though, is that art is a form of ex pression intended for an audience. There isn’t a right or wrong way to go about it: a child makes a fin gerpainting for their parent, a Re naissance artist made a painting for their patrons. A lot of my art is, at its earliest stages, for myself. “Craft” and “technique” can be learned — though they are hardly the objective and singular con cepts they are made out to be. In other words, there are numerous ways to teach them and numer ous versions of them that can be learned. Put shortly, art is for ev eryone. Or at least it should be: everyone should be able to access spaces where they can comfort ably learn, experiment, and create. This is not the case at Princeton. Part of the trouble with creative writing spaces on campus stems from their relationship with his tory — their failure to acknowl edge the inherent white suprem acy of the University in general and the ever dustier and crustier Western white canon in particu lar. This problem permeates cur riculums and extracurriculars across campus. The University is not “post-racial” or post-any form of oppression based on capitalist ascriptions of whose life is valu able and whose is not. Ultimately, the creative writing spaces at the University shouldn’t derive such pleasure from having existed since the 19th and 20th centuries. They should instead re duce or eliminate barriers to par ticipation and make radical, foun dational changes to create a more meaningfully diverse, inclusive, and equitable future. They should aim to become spaces where art ists subject to marginalization can flourish on their own terms.
Gaslight, gatekeep: Creative writing at Princeton
Rohit A. Narayanan Community Opinion Editor
Opinion
My work was often met with si lence; sometimes, when it was not, silence would have been pre ferred. An example that still rings in my mind was when a classmate suggested that I whiten a young adult (YA) short story about mag ic by segregating the “POC love story” element into another piece. Throughout my time in the department, I was subject to mi croaggressions and criticized for writing stories and poems about people of color surviving and thriving instead of narratives that dealt in ambiguity, death, and de spair. I felt that I was expected to transmute my own suffering into something for audiences to chew on. I attended meetings centered on improving the well-being of students in the creative writing program in the past year, but I have seen no change aside from the addition of visiting faculty members. Classes about YA fiction and spoken word have expanded the curriculum, but these are not permanent course offerings, as they were/are taught by Princeton Arts Fellows Erika L. Sánchez and Danez Smith, respectively. More telling than a soundbite from my own experience is the fact that the Creative Writing pro gram still prides itself on its long history of exclusivity. It effectively operates as a zero sum game: stu dents are in direct competition with each other for spots, and one student’s acceptance means another’s rejection. The applica tion guidelines are vague, and the process as a whole is incredibly opaque. The Creative Writing pro gram’s website cites the program’s “large impact,” but how much of an impact can it have when it ex cludes many who apply? When it dismisses “genre” writing, like science fiction, fantasy, and ro mance, despite their current cul tural visibility and dominance? How many students feel unwel come and uncomfortable in the department, if they’re able to en ter the space at all? The pedagogy of the creative writing department comes from white, Western traditions. As novelist and professor Viet Thanh Nguyen writes, “As an institution, the workshop reproduces its ideol ogy, which pretends that ‘Show, don’t tell’ is universal when it is, in fact, the expression of a particular population, the white majority, typically at least middle-class and often, but not exclusively, male.” Adopting an attitude of “show, don’t tell” leads to work rife with obliqueness. Direct societal criti cism, for example, is character ized as heavy handed. “Literature” is rife with other tropes as well: characters who act in morally am biguous, self-destructive, and/or corrupt ways; ambiguous and/or unhappy endings; floral and aca demic diction; and exceedingly egocentric characters. Despite all of these tropes and the often inaccessible works that often re sult from their use, the depart ment treats literary writing as objectively superior to and more interesting than other forms of writing.Student groups centered on writing — and the arts in general — share many of the same prob lems. This includes the literary magazine that I left due to their re fusal to address the reproduction of racist imagery, as well as my own slam poetry group, Songline, which has grappled immensely and incompletely with our own use of auditions and differing def initions of what constitutes “art.”
Eisgruber’s justification for Princeton is based on a myth
ting that random interac tions among smart students under the care of some of the world’s greatest scholars will innately build future leaders. It’s not that there is no mer it to this theory. But imagine you were starting a society from scratch and you went to Christopher Eisgruber and asked him what his plan was to educate the potential lead ers of the society. “Oh, we’ll just put them all together in some Gothic buildings, give them two billion dollars to spend each year, stick Peter Singer and Jhumpa Lahiri there for good measure and watch the in credible things they create,” he could respond. “They can just do normal univer sity coursework in the mean time.”Such a vague plan would beg the question: how exact ly would this be achieved? And when we ask this question regarding the cur rent Princeton education, certain obstacles come to mind that stand in the way of its effective implementation. Students are so burdened with ordinary coursework that the type of spontaneous creation Eisgruber hopes for is severely constrained. In my experience, student projects often collapse on campus due to a lack of time and interest. Aside from faded quotes on aging buildings, there is insufficient dialogue and honesty on campus about leadership or what students should be doing to meet their responsibilities as the ben eficiaries of Princeton’s im mense resources. Some stu dents may become Supreme Court justices like Sonia So tomayor, but many may reap the advantages of a Princeton degree without ever using it for the purposes Eisgruber hopes for. Who is telling them they should? The flaws in Eisgruber’s justifications ultimately bring us to question the idea that leaders are built on clois tered campuses, far from the realities of the real world. Is there really another book we can read or a seminar we can take, even with incredible classmates and professors, that can substitute for realworld experience? Almost two years after Zoom taught us that we could be anywhere in the world at any time, we’re back staring at blackboards, secure in our smugness that we’re molding the next gen eration of leaders. Plato had a formula to educate his ideal society’s leaders — early education in music and physical training, three years of intense physi cal training, 10 years of math, five years of philosophy, then 15 years of practical political training. Now, maybe Eis gruber is correct and Plato is wrong. It would not be the first time. Maybe the mere environment of Princeton, the quality of our peers and professors, does more for leadership than a specific ac ademic program ever could. But if this is the justifica tion, it deserves some serious study. We cannot just rely on the cliché that Princeton produces the nation’s leaders based on a self-serving sys tem. And we would have to make changes to ensure that we’re actually making the most of the opportunity and getting enough practicum to serve society well. Because Green is right, if Princeton is going to segregate a talented few, it has to prove its value every single day.
/ THE DAILY
Brittani Telfair Senior Columnist
Editor’s Note: Since the publication of this piece, the Creative Writing de partment removed applications for its courses. Director of the Creative Writ ing Program Jhumpa Lahiri wrote in an email to The Daily Princetonian that the change was made to make the program more “inclusive.”
“Why should Princeton exist?” That was the question The Atlantic journalist Emma Green asked President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 a few weeks ago. Green framed the ques tion around social mobility: Princeton, after all, doesn’t do much for social mobility compared to the City Uni versity of New York (CUNY) system which directly serves the low-income community around them in tangible ways.Eisgruber made a case that Princeton was an incubator for future leaders — a home for young people with “ex traordinary istence.newtomeansthoughtetonrunsPrinceton’scredibletheoryEisgruber’stalent.”leadershipwouldbeaperfectlyjustificationforexistence,butitintoaproblem:Princdoesn’tseemtohavedeeplyaboutwhatittobealeader.It’stimechangethat—orfindajustificationforourexEisgruber’sargumentbenefitsfrombeingconsistentwithhistoricaloutcomes.Afterall,Princetonhashistoricallyeducatedthenation’sleaders—theraisond’êtreofPrincetonandsimilarinstitutionswastogivethenation’sfutureleaders(historicallythewhiteandwealthy,butinEisgruber’svisionnowamorediversegroup)theextraeducationtheyneeded to fill those roles. And there are so many good examples of Princetonians becoming leaders in a variety of ways.
James Madison! Alan Tur ing! Sonia Sotomayor! But Princeton seems to benefit from some circu lar logic here. The best stu dents in the country apply to Princeton because of its lofty reputation. Princeton selects the students with the most potential, those least likely to fail. Companies, graduate schools, and other vessels of advancement recruit from Princeton because it has a reputation for being the best, further advantaging the students who’ve made it in. Alumni, unsurprisingly, thrive, and we all pat our selves on the back for what a great system we’ve created. Princeton could have us play hopscotch for four years and do perfectly well by this metric. Princeton produc ing leaders is therefore not necessarily a function of the extraordinary educational environment Eisgruber claims it offers to students, but rather the reputational value the admission into this environment brings. If we can’t rely on the mere existence of extraordinary alumni who show leader ship, what proves Princeton is actually an incubator for leadership? Eisgruber char acterizes Princeton as an “in tense [place] where research ers and students are colliding with other people of talent and passion and imagina tion, focusing on producing things that matter to our society and our world in a whole variety of unpredict able ways.” Eisgruber is bet
During the week of Oct. 11, fourthcelebratedPrincetontheandfifth
Princeton needs to make more space for failure amid the abundance of success
BY
An end to legacy admissions?
Nobel prizes won by Princ eton affiliates in a single year. This achievement speaks volumes about the quality of a Princeton edu cation — one that fuels pas sion, celebrates excellence, and promises success no matter what path you take. President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 echoed this premise of excellence in his interview with The At lantic: “The idea of a place like Princeton is that you can identify young people who have extraordinary tal ent and will benefit from an intensive academic ex perience.” Extraordinary is a big word that conveys immense expectations: ac cepted students are already extraordinary individuals, and with an “intensive” Princeton education, they are set up for success. It is not a surprise, then, that failure is a taboo topic among different social cir cles here. It is feared and to be avoided at all costs. Though seemingly coun terintuitive, I argue that Princeton students, who are often defined by their successes, need to fail early and fail often. Meanwhile, Princeton as an educational institution needs to create an environment where stu dents can fail without fear. For the two most recent admissions cycles, Princ eton accepted 3.98 percent and 5.55 percent of its appli cation pool for the Class of 2025 and 2024, respectively. Beating these incredible odds to become a Princeton Tiger, members of the firstyear class walk through FitzRandolph Gate for the first time knowing that they truly are the cream of the crop. What is not ex pected from them is a fail ure of any kind. So when students en counter their first failures here, it hurts. Whether it is being rejected from a selec tive club, getting an ugly grade, or being denied an internship, students belat edly realize that failure at Princeton is inevitable, and yet they are not mentally prepared to deal with it. This fear of failure among the student body is further exacerbated by the rigor ous nature of a Princeton education, one that leaves no room for reflection and recovery from failures. Se mesters at Princeton are 15 weeks long; this extremely fast-paced semester leaves no time for rebound if a student gets bad grades on major exams, which often count toward 20–40 per cent of their entire grade. With this schedule, even when students are open to the idea of failing, they do not have enough time to bounce back from the inci dent, let alone extrapolate important lessons from it. It is also not hard to real ize that while opportunities to be involved on campus are endless, they are also measurements of students’ capabilities. Outside of the classroom, anything can turn into a competition, from the number of selec tive clubs one is in, the pres tige of a summer intern ship, to the amount of sleep one gets. When students are in an environment where one’s success can feel like another’s failure, expecting them to detach their selfworth from their achieve ments (or lack thereof) and to truly embrace failure when everyone else seems to be moving forward is a tallWhileorder. this culture of failure-fearing and com petitiveness stems partly from the naturally driven personalities of most Princ eton students, the Univer sity should also foster a learning environment that provides a safety net for students when they fail. Granted, the University Student Government (USG) has initiated certain efforts towards this purpose. One such effort is the studentdriven Princeton Perspec tive Project (PPP) which aims to defy the notion of effortless perfectionism — the “illusion that other’s paths to success and fulfill ment are easy, uncomplicat ed, and free of failure.” I talked to Mayowa Oke ’22, a former Ambassador of the Princeton Perspec tive Project to learn about the University’s role in the project. According to Oke, while there were mentors, faculty members, and hefty funding available at their disposal, PPP activities in the past years were mostly student-led.Eventhough PPP has un doubtedly helped more stu dents realize that it is okay to fail at Princeton, it still lacks a top-down approach with concrete policy chang es that are necessary to cre ate substantial impacts on campus and truly facilitate the systematic transition from a success-only to fail ure-friendly environment. It is also important, how ever, to acknowledge that the pervasiveness of these issues is not Princeton-spe cific. There are several ac counts regarding how the same problem also plagues other top institutions like Harvard and Stanford, where accepted students are also under a constant fear of failure. Nevertheless, that does not mean that we should wait for someone else to take the initiative. In this regard, Oke be lieves that the University needs to utilize a truly human-first approach. Through more tangible re gimes such as bolstering the mental health support system or researching ways to make the teaching and evaluation system less cre dentialist, the University can more easily encourage students to take intellec tual risks — knowing that even if they fail, they will have the time and resources to stand back up. The Princetonians I have met during my short time here are nothing short of extraordinary. Yet, Prince ton needs to create a safe en vironment where students know that they cannot be extraordinary without first learning to embrace their ordinary, fallible selves.
Julia Chaffers Senior Columnist
“WALKING
AMHERST
/ CC
Princeton should follow Amherst College’s lead
A common argument for legacy admissions is that it strengthens the con nection between alumni and the University, mak ing alumni more likely to give back to the Univer sity. These contributions, so the argument goes, are what makes it possible for Princeton to support stu dents to the extent that it does.But the University just announced that its en dowment has grown to $37.7 billion, the thirdhighest in the Ivy League and the endowmentIviestheyear-over-yearPrinceton’sStanford.nationwide,fourth-highestjustbehindNotonlythat,46.9percentreturnwassecond-highestoftheandshowsthattheisasstrong as ever. It is hard to argue that the University relies on comparatively small contributions from alum ni to keep the doors open. There’s even an argument to be made that Princeton does not need to charge students tuition at all. We should all hope that our relationship with this university is more than just a transactional agree ment that alumni dona tions will lead to a leg up in admissions. Princeton should earn our dona tions through the quality of our experiences here, not because of some hope of future Princetontakeersions,systemerence,ourbletousparentselse’snot2019,chelPrincetonian.andmeasuresmoredentwantsgenerations.ingforfaritiesversity.temwhite.inpercentcome).topstudentsing$500,000whocywhileacyofshows.vard’sdents,andmorethatsify.”childrensifies,ourstudentStreetpolicy,fendedBenUniversitybenefit.spokesmanChangrecentlydePrinceton’slegacytellingtheWallJournalthat“asourbodydiversifies,alumnibodydiverand,inturn,theofalumnidiverButthefactremainslegacystudentsarelikelytobewealthywhitethanotherstuasanalysisofHaradmissionsprocessInHarvard’sClass2019,70percentoflegadmitswerewhite,41percentoflegastudentshadparentsearnedmorethanperyear(meannearlyhalfoflegacywerepartoftheonepercentofUSinAtPrinceton,73oflegacystudentstheClassof2023areIt’shardtoargueasyslikethisadvancesdiTheexclusiverealoflegacypreferencesoutweighitspotentialindirectlyimprovinclusivityinfutureIfPrincetontodiversifyitsstubody,therearefardirectandeffectiveitcantake.I’malegacystudent,IamgladtobeaBut,asRaKennedywroteinourpathhereshouldbeeasierthananyonejustbecauseourattended.Allofhavearesponsibilityreflectontheinequitastructuresthatshapelives,andlegacyprefandthebroaderofcollegeadmisispartofthat.Othschoolsarestartingtoonthisissue—canbenext?
Students
I n September, Amherst College announced that it will end legacy admission preferenc es beginning next year. In doing so, Amherst joins a range of colleges from elite private schools in cluding Johns Hopkins, Pomona, and MIT, along side public universities including the University of California and the Uni versity of Texas. Ending legacy preferences is a significant commitment to expanding access and equity, and Princeton and other schools should fol lowThesuit.fundamental func tion of legacy admission preferences is to concen trate privilege. It grants an advantage to students for an attribute they have no control over, and did notCollegeearn. admissions is a notoriously opaque pro cess. You’ve likely heard the term “holistic admis sions” more times than you can count while on tours at various univer sities. It’s true, there are countless characteris tics that universities take into account when evaluating applicants, from test scores to fam ily background to athletic achievements. But grant ing preference due to leg acy status is fundamen tally different from those other traits. For one, legacy status is an unearned attribute. You may disagree with preferences for recruited athletes, but athletes who are recruited have earned their place. There are dis parities in access to elite training that makes some sports less diverse than others, but regardless, a given athlete applying to a school has earned their achievement and their skill is in part a reflection of their own effort. Legacy admissions is comparable to being recruited as a fencer solely because your mother fenced at Prince ton. Being a legacy has no inherent correlation with a student’s actual aca demic ability or what kind of student they would be in this community. And while legacy is never the sole reason a student is admitted, no one should get an extra push over the line because of who their parents are. One could argue that a student’s racial back ground is also beyond their control, and thus af firmative action is equally unjust. But affirmative action does not reinforce privilege — it does the op posite. Affirmative action seeks to take into account historical disadvantages and the ways that having a more diverse student body will enhance the University community by exposing students to dif feringPrincetonperspectives.hasas great a need to abandon legacy admissions as Amherst did. At Amherst, legacy students comprise about 11 percent of each class. In Princeton’s Class of 2025, 10 percent of students are legacies, a decline from the Class of 2024’s 11.3 per cent. That means more students in the Class of 2025 are legacies than are Black — eight percent are Black.Take the Class of 2022’s admission cycle for ex ample, for which there is more comprehensive data available. Of the 35,370 ap plicants, two percent were children of alumni. Near ly a third of those legacy students were admitted, compared with an overall admission rate of 5.5 per cent. 14.3 percent of the resulting Class of 2022 are legacy students. The ad mission rate for students of color was 6.2 percent. Thus, the benefit grant ed to legacy students far outstrips any other toe on the scale for other student traits. It is a unique and unearned benefit.
page 17 www. dailyprincetonian .com }{ Thursday May 19, 2022
Audrey Chau Assistant Opinion Editor AROUND AMHERST COLLEGE” OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS, COLLEGE BY-ND 2.0 walking around Amherst College.
Opinion
Satire
Princeton to withhold admissions decisions to reduce student anxiety
Last Friday, Princeton University Admissions an nounced that during the regular decision admis sions cycle, they would be “stopping the release of any data and information at all during the admissions pro cess — including students’ actual admissions results.” During the early admis sions process, the Office of Admissions announced that they would stop re porting admissions data in an effort to reduce appli cants’ anxieties. “We are committed to re ducing admissions-related anxiety for students from all backgrounds, and the best way to do so is not to give students any informa tion on admissions at all,” wrote the Dean of Admis sions in a press release. “In the spirit of continu ing to be student-centered in our admissions, we have decided to stop releas ing any information at all during our regular deci sion cycle. We believe that knowing whether or not a student gets into the uni versity raises anxiety levels of prospective students and families, and also discour ages future applicants,” the statementStudentscontinued.expressed over whelming relief at not hav ing to deal with their ad missions results.
Andrew Johnson Contributing Writer
On Sept. 29, in a lengthy and vague email to the campus community some where in your inbox, Presi dent Christopher Eisgru ber ’83 announced that Residential Colleges 7 and 8 had finally gone to the highest bidders, but with the understanding that our potentially unenlightened time may have tainted the decision.“Times are changing pretty fast and stuff, so the board thought it best to give the next generation of Princetonians, 50 years from now, some opportu nity to revisit and clean up the University’s legacy a little bit. Just in case,” Eis gruber“Perhapswrote.nothing, even names upon stone, should last forever, and certainly not bidding wars that de termine how we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he continued. “We think that this is the best decision for our communi ty and will make our lives much easier.” Jill Dolan, dean of the college, praised Eisgruber’s approach as “innovative” and “forward-thinking.” “I think this has finally given our University the chance to lead on an issue,” she said.
“Students should recog nize that naming buildings morally is hard, and we are all just trying to do our best in the context of our ignorant culture,” Dolan said.With the new residen tial colleges opening next school year, the naming committee was under time pressure to come up with something quick. “Living with a ‘Seventh’ and ‘Eighth’ College is the last thing we want,” Dolan said. “How are you sup posed to chant that at Clash of the Colleges?” The Bezos and Cruz resi dential colleges will open to students in the fall of 2023.
The following piece is purely satirical and entirely fictional. With a generous $16 mil lion commitment from Marlboro, the Center for Health and Wellbeing (CHW) will begin a new re search initiative focused on ensuring the improvement of lung health in individu als uppast,departmentfromandwithinchallenges.”dressandofer$16CHWheir,healthbeMarlborowhatsoever,withtive,CarbonEnvironmentalvironment’stertionsandInspiredeverywhere.byExxonMobilBP’saltruisticdonatotheAndlingerCenforEnergyandtheEnHighMeadowsInstituteMitigationInitiathemoneywillcomenostringsattachedprobably.“Thisfundingfromwillallowustoleadersonthepublicfront,”SallyKleenthedirectoroftheexplained.“Withthismillion,wewillbeclostofulfillingourmissionadvancingbothsciencepolicyresearchtoadtoday’smostpressingTheCHWisaprogramtheSchoolofPublicInternationalAffairs.ProfessorSeegarPuphthemolecularbiologyadded,“IntheI’vehadstudentscometomeaskingtodore
THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN STAFF / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
Emma Moriarty Guest Contributor
Hannah To and Angel Kuo Satire Contributors
ZACHARY SHEVIN / THE DAILY PRINCETONION Residential College 7’s name will be re-assessed every five decades, just in case they mess it up pretty badly the first time.
Hannah To Staff Satire
The following piece is purely satirical and entirely fictional.
The following piece is purely satirical and entirely fictional.
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search on bronchial health, and with this newfound partnership, they will be able to perform cutting edge unbiased research on the leading causes of lung cancer.”Representatives from Marlboro reportedly felt “giddy” at the announcement.partnership’s“Atatimewhencoughingisatanalltimehigh,weareexcitedtobepartneringwithsomeoftheworld’smostrenownedscientistsandpolicymakerstobepushingtheballforwardonprotectingthepublic’slungs,”saidMarlboro’spartnershipsandfundingdirector,TupacA.Day.“TheHealthyLungInitiativedemonstrateshowcorporationsandacademiacanworktogetherandinspireeachotherinaddressingsocietalsolutions.”TheannouncementwassubjecttobacklashfromseveralanonymousadministratorswhocomplainedthatapartnershipwithMarlbororepresentsastepbackwardincorporatesponsorship.Rather,theyexpressed,gettingfundedbyamoremoderncompanylikeJuulwouldhavebeencooler.AspartofthegiftfromMarlboro,RCAswillnowbeprovidingpacksofcigarettesintheircondomandcandybags.
Marlboro to fund Healthy Lung Initiative at Center for Health and Wellbeing
Writer PXHERE / CC0 1.0 Morgan Pawson ’23
“This is a bit confus ing, but I ultimately agree with the University’s deci sion. I think not knowing whether I got into Prince ton would have reduced my anxiety about getting into Princeton,” said Addison Mission ’23. “I appreciate Princeton’s efforts to accommodate students from all back grounds. Now I, like all other applicants, will have no idea about whether or not I have been admitted,” said current applicant Noah Dea. All future admissions letters will simply state, “Congratulations! On be half of Princeton Uni versity, I am delighted to acknowledge your applica tion.”
The following piece is purely satirical and entirely fictional. Morgan Pawson | Princ eton Great Class of 2023 | USG Social Impact Chair | Entrepreneur and Activist is honored to announce their acceptance of an internship with the Big Corporation Guys (BCG) for this upcom ing summer. In Pawson’s words, “I am thrilled and honored to announce that this summer, unlike many of you chumps, I will be making tons of money.” “It’s not every day I post on LinkedIn,” Pawson con tinued. “But today is a day unlike any other in history, today is the day that I have officially signed away my summer days and nights to the Big Corporation Guys. When people ask me, ‘Mor gan, why do you love the Big Corporation Guys so much?’ I have one response: I love money. From the free perks like the snack bar inside of the dungeon where employ ees are forced to sleep over night to the complimentary Spirit Cycle memberships, my internship fulfills every one of my capitalistic de sires.”On top of those perks, Pawson explained that each intern is paid a generous stipend of more than what most Americans make a year.“Plus the company pays for my apartment when I’m allowed to go home!” they added.Pawson concluded their post by referencing the Uni versity’s unofficial motto. “Princeton’s maxim em phasizes the importance of serving humanity, and who am I but a human?” “Today marks the begin ning of a new chapter in my life,” they continued. “I am grateful and humbled by all of those who have helped me reach this stage, especially to my older sister, the CEO of the company.”
Princeton names new residential colleges, but with 50 year expiration date in case they regret it later
LinkedIn junior ‘grateful and humbled’ to announce they will be making ridiculous sums of money next summer
By Adam Sanders Contributing Features Writer
“There’s a saying,” said Er nest McCarter ’24, waiting in the crowd for his order at the Wawa convenience store on Alexander St. “Every good night ends at Wawa.” On the night of Friday, Sept. 25, the store was crowded. Groups of students congre gated by the door or sat by the drink refrigerators, wait ing for orders and talking to friends. In the kitchen, Wawa employees moved quickly. The lone cashier checked out each customer one by one. Katie Horan ’25 and Daniel Tan ’25 waited by the registers for their orders, chatting. “Drunk meal was closed,” Horan said. “And I really want some mac and cheese right now.”“Ireally want a sandwich,” TanWawa,added.for many Princeton students, is more than just the location of a late-night snack run. It’s a staple of Princeton night-life — a place to go after a night out on the Street or in Firestone library. Especially at the beginning of the year, as everyone adjusted (or readjusted) to campus life, the small convenience store at the south end of campus hosted many intoxicated stu dents.“There’s a social scene at tached to it,” said Althea Du lany ’25. “You can go with your friends, you can see unexpected people throughout the night.” “It’s a good source of food, and it’s open 24/7,” said Dan ica Truong ’24, standing with her friends by the lottery ma chine. “This late at night, you get the drunk munchies.” At 1 a.m. on this Saturday, Tru ong’s view seemed to be a common one. Yet many who arrive at Wawa intoxicated don’t show the same coherence. Saachi Singh ’24 recalled her experience at Wawa on the night of Friday, Sept. 17 as one of “Therechaos.was a line outside, they kind of had ... limits on who could come in,” she said. “There was a P-Safe officer.” That night was the first during which an eating club, Colonial Club, opened its doors to all students. Students who recounted the scene at Wawa into the early hours of Sept. 18 de scribed it as disorderly. Drunken students, in a long line for one cashier, failed to even swipe their credit cards to make a purchase. An offi cer from Public Safety (PSafe) was eventually called to con trol the crowds. For many students, this un ruly behavior at Wawa raised concerns about the welfare of the“I’veemployees.yettocome to Wawa when it hasn’t been packed with people,” said Stephen Padlo ’25. “They need more staff.” On the nights of these interviews, the store had one cashier station open. “I sort of feel bad for the workers here,” said Daniel Barnett ’25. “They’re definitely dealing with … a lot of drunk students.”Otherstudents also raised concerns about drunkenness. “I can imagine that if you’re working here and you’re deal ing with inebriated students, you often get the poor end of the stick,” Horan said. “But I think sometimes students are really, really kind.” Dhruv is an employee at Wawa who asked to with hold his surname. He has been working as a cashier at the store for almost three months. Dhruv is 22 years old, the same age as many Princ eton juniors and seniors. “Sometimes, some peo ple are just drunk,” he said, when asked about the Princ eton students who come into Wawa late on weekend nights. “And it’s understandable, you know, they’re kids.” The turnover rate for em ployees at the Princeton Wawa has been high as of recently. “I’ve definitely seen some people who just started work ing here, they’ve left earlier,” Dhruv said. Some employees, he said, have lasted less than a month.Onsome recent nights, Wawa has closed the touchscreen terminals available for ordering food and restricted orders to its mobile app due to large quantities of orders. Other nights, the store has stopped taking orders en tirely. Students sit against the drink refrigerators and wait a long time for their orders. Large groups stand by the kitchen, staring at the cooks preparing their food. Singh told The Daily Princetonian she felt bad about the conditions for Wawa employees. “I can tell the employees here get very overwhelmed,” Singh said. “I just talked to a few of them, and they’re al waysDhruvoverwhelmed.”alsoraised medical concerns as another reason for Wawa’s high turnover rate, worrying about the health and safety of Wawa employ ees, essential workers, during the ongoing pandemic. Wawa, as a private enter prise, does not follow the University’s current mandate requiring mask-wearing in doors for patrons. Employees, however, are required to be masked. Many students were maskless on the nights that these interviews took place, coughing and sneezing. With the spread of the “Princeton Plague” this se mester and the ongoing CO VID-19 pandemic, some stu dents expressed displeasure with this behavior, which puts Wawa employees and members of the public at higher risk for infection. “I feel like it’s not that hard to be polite,” said Lucia Brown ’25.Yet despite these concerns, it doesn’t appear that Princ eton students are planning on changing their Wawa habits anytime soon — or that other options even exist. The University normally runs two establishments serving food on weekend nights: the Frist Food Gallery (popularly known as “drunk meal”), open in the Frist Cam pus Center on Sundays from 12 a.m. to 2 a.m., and Studio 34, located in the basement of Class of 1967 Hall in Butler College.Since the start of the pan demic, Studio 34 has been closed. The University has not announced when it will re open. At least for now, Wawa remains the only location on campus where students can go to eat late at night on any night — and in the months since the commotion of Sep tember, it continues to bear the brunt of students’ noctur nalTocravings.Dhruv,it’s not a problem if students keep coming. “As long as everyone gets helped, everyone gets what they want from their work,” he said. Still, some students are unsatisfied with the service from Wawa. “They should have a discount for Princeton students,” said Singh. “Retweet,” added Lucia Heminway ’24, agreeing with Singh’s statement. “I give out a lot of business.” Gail Samuel ’25 disagreed: “Wawa workers … see some shit, every day, at like 2 a.m.,” she said. “I don’t really think they owe us anything.”
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‘Every good night ends at Wawa’: New Jersey chain battles to keep late-night student cravings at bay
On Jan. 13, 1947, an arti cle ran on the front page of The Daily Princetonian entitled “Einstein At tends First Campus Jew ish Service.” It described a Friday night of “discus sions” led by Professor Albert Einstein — “the first opportunity for stu dents of the Hebrew faith to worship on Campus.” Thanks to this article, Einstein became known as one of the founders of Jewish student life on Princeton’s campus. Abby Klionsky ’14, who wrote her thesis on Jewish student life on campus in the 20th cen tury, remembered: “The sort of story that I heard and that I’d adopted as the narrative — until I started doing my thesis research and doing a bit of digging — was that Jewish student life began with Einstein in the 40s. That was what the folk loreButwas.”the folklore was wrong. As Klionsky would soon discover in her thesis research, Jew ish student life began on campus three decades prior to the publication of that article in 1947. It began with students such as Marcus Lester Aaron class of 1920 and devel oped with the efforts of students like Dr. Joseph Schein ’37, the oldest liv ingContraryPrincetonian.tothe widely accepted narrative, the story of the creation of a Jewish community is not Einstein’s. Here, we tell the story of these stu dents, of their repeated efforts to create a reli gious and social commu nity on campus despite small numbers and a continued lack of insti tutional support. This is a story about the chal lenges of creating insti tutional memory when generations of students strive to make change for four years — and then graduate. And, this is a story about Klionsky and the process of uncover ing a history over 100 years in the ***making.
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The truth behind Einstein ‘folklore’
During her sophomore year, Abby Klionsky re ceived an email from a friend whose grand mother had discovered a box of letters from her father, the friend’s greatgrandfather, to his fam ily. The letters’ contents described his life when he was a student at Princ eton in the late 1910s, specifically his experi ences as a Jewish student during that Klionsky’stime.friend was curious whether the Center for Jewish Life (CJL) might be interested in the letters. As a pro spective history major, Klionsky was interested in the letters herself. Recalling her reaction to that email, Klionsky said, “How many people get to do history research on things that have liter ally not seen the light of day in 100 years?”
Abby Klionsky ’14, whose senior thesis centered the origins of Jewish student life at Princeton Uncovering the origins of Jewish community on campus
Features
COURTESY OF ETHAN STERENFELD / PRINCETON ALUMNI WEEKLY
“Institutional memory is short. One generation of students has no idea what the previous generation of students did, or tried to do, or was on the verge of organizing.”-
By Alex Graja, Julie Levey, and Ellen Battaglia Head News Editor, Assistant Features Editor, and Features Writer
Joe Schein ’37 is the University’s oldest living alum. With the help of his voice, we tell the story of origins of Jewish student life on campus.
The great-grandfa ther’s name was Marcus Lester Aaron ’20. His letters have since been donated to the Univer sity archives and are available to the public. Although Aaron’s let ters touched on Jewish student life at Princeton from 1915-1920, with him, a thesis topic spanning decades was born. In “In the Tiger’s Lair: The Development of Jew ish Student Life at Princ eton University, 19151972,” Klionsky details a story of Jewish student life from its beginnings in the fall of 1915. Ac cording to her research, that September, 19 Jew ish students enrolled in the University’s firstyear class — the high est number of Jewish students in one class the University had recorded up until that point. The roughly 50 Jewish stu dents on campus in 1915 was significant enough for the Union of Ameri can Hebrew Congrega tions (UAHC) to send Rabbi Harry K. Jacobs to make monthly visits from Trenton to meet with Jewish students on campus.Despite Rabbi Jacobs and the UAHC’s efforts, Aaron’s letters revealed he was unaware of the meetings of Jewish stu dents that occurred dur ing his early years at Princeton. By the fall of 1919, Aaron began to organize his own meet ings of Jewish students for worship and other re ligious purposes. What began as weekly gather ings of a few Jewish stu dents over the winter of 1919 became the official University Jewish Stu dent Congregation (JSC) in March UniversityFollowingfromtheyservicegioustonotpension.ishmentstheydidcampus.servicesnominationalparticipateetonservicefromrequirement.studentcialanofUniversity1921.recognitiontheJSCmainlyhadimpactononecruaspectofPrincetonlife:thechapelAfixtureoncampus1746-1964,chapelrequiredPrincundergraduatestoinnon-deChristianintheChapelonIfthestudentnotattendregularly,wouldreceivepunasgraveassusPriorto1921,therehadbeenanopportunitysubstituteJewishreliservicesforchapelattendance—weresimplyexempttherequirement.theofficialrecognitionof the JSC, Jewish students were now required to at tend services at either the JSC or in the Chapel rather than be excused fromJustservices.asthese new de velopments began to strengthen Jewish com munity on campus, the University presented a new challenge. Accord ing to Klionsky’s re search and other sourc es, in 1924, Princeton set an under-the-table Jew ish quota for admission at roughly three percent. After the quota, Jewish enrollment at Princeton fell dramatically. Klion sky also found in her re search that notices for Jewish services in the ‘Prince’ fell, too: one no tice per semester in the 1923–1924 academic year, then no notice published for three years after Oc tober 1925, and then the next notice another three years after that.*** Despite the lack of ad vertisement, Jewish ser vices continued — in part because they still fulfilled the necessary chapel attendance re quired of Jewish fresh men and sophomores. By the mid-1930s, informa tion about Jewish servic es became more regular again in the pages of the ‘Prince.’However, knowledge about Jewish services on campus was still scarce. When Joseph Schein ma triculated to Princeton in 1933, he was unaware of the efforts of former Jewish students to or ganize these services. Today, on Feb. 23 — his 107th birthday — Schein is the oldest living Princ eton alum. Back in 1933 when he began his stud ies at the University, he was one of just 11 Jewish undergraduates.
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“[The] narrative was that Jewish student life began with Einstein in the 40s... and it fell apart really quickly and really easily. I didn’t even have to pull the string very far to find way more than that.” Abby Klionsky ’14
Rather than by fellow Jewish students, Schein was invited to get in volved in Jewish services by Dean of the College Christian Gauss — whom he met as the result of a series of events initiated by a practical joke. “I was registered in the ROTC as a prank by a good friend of mine,” recalled Schein. He en listed, but eventually the aspiring doctor realized he would not be able to complete all of his premedical requirements if he were to continue with theScheinROTC.contacted Gauss to get assistance leaving the ROTC. Through the difficult release process, Schein and Gauss devel oped a close relationship, often conversing in the Joseph Henry House. Schein’s son, Dr. Oli ver Schein ’76, explained that the two also got to know each other through language classes, as Dean Gauss served as chair man of the Department of Modern Languages. “My dad was unusual in that he was interested in eventually becoming a physician, but he ma jored in romance lan guages — and basically spent [his undergradu ate years] not so much in literature, but in his tory,” Oliver Schein re flected. “And I think it was through those kinds of courses that he met Dean“WeGauss.”became fast friends to the point that long after I graduated I would come to Princeton and visit him,” the elder ScheinDuringreflected.oneof their conversations, the topic of compulsory chapel came up. “‘Joseph, don’t you think it would be a good idea for the Jew ish people to have their own chapel?’” Schein re members Gauss asking him. Presumably, neither knew anything of the ef forts of the JSC. “I was Jewish, I was proud of being Jewish. I was not Orthdox, I was not practicing,” Schein said. Although Schein was not observant, he was nonetheless excited about Gauss’ proposal. “I was very proud to have been picked out by him [Dean Gauss] to [organize theForservices].”Klionsky, Schein and Gauss’s seeming lack of knowledge about the groundwork laid for them by Aaron and the JSC is “Institutionalunsurprising.memory is short,” Klionsky said. “One generation of stu dents has no idea what the previous generation of students did, or tried to do, or was on the verge ofFororganizing.”hispart, Schein organized a Friday night Jewish chapel service, which by no means as sumed the form of a tradi tional Kabbalat Shabbat (Friday evening) service.
“My preaching was one page, with one Hebrew phrase,” Schein recalled. This Hebrew phrase was a central prayer in Juda ism, the “Sh’maSh’ma.Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad [Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is one],” recited Schein, re calling the services he led.Soon enough, Schein — and his Friday night services — had become very popular on campus, for non-Jews as well as practicing students. By attending Jewish servic es, undergraduates got an exemption from at tending Sunday morning chapel and could go away for the “Princetonweekend.back then looked very different,” Oliver Schein said, “and all the [wealthy students] would get into their cars and go away for the week end. But they couldn’t go away for the whole week end because they had to be back Sunday morn ing.”According to Schein himself, “All I had to do was sign a piece of paper that said they attended.” Eventually, though, Schein looked for ways to make Jewish services more engaging and com munal. “I wanted it to be more than just a way for people to fulfill their re quirements,” he said. Klionsky’s research showed that many Jewish students wanted services to be more than an atten dance-check as well. “I think in the early days there was the sur face level reason [to have Jewish services], which was that [they] shouldn’t have to go to the Chris tian services,” Klionsky said. “And then there was this sort of shadow level, tacit need for sup port, to have this experi ence with other people whose backgrounds are like [theirs] and a chance to just feel comfortable andAfterfree.”all, for these Jewish students, antiSemitism remained a pervasive threat. But even decades later, when Klionsky worked to in terview the Jewish male alumni of this period, including Schein, she found that many stu dents were unwilling to self-identity as victims of“Iantisemitism.veryexplicitly asked every single person I in terviewed, ‘What was your experience of anti semitism on campus?’” Klionsky said. “Almost without fail, the men I interviewed said, ‘It was absolutely there. And it didn’t happen to me.’” In an effort to bolster a sense of Jewish com munity on campus, Schein began conversing with Abraham Flexner, who was the first direc tor of the Institute for Advanced Studies, lo cated in Princeton. “I had become a protégé of [Flexner’s],” recounted Schein.With the rise of Hitler’s regime abroad, Flexner worked to bring over Eu ropean scientists to the Institute for Advanced Studies who, had they re mained in Europe, would have likely been perse cuted by Nazis. Among this group of scientists was Albert Einstein, who came to Princeton in Oc tober of 1933 — just one year after Schein began his undergraduate stud ies at Princeton. “He simply introduced me to him,” remembered Schein, “Flexner, be ing Einstein’s boss, and me, being a protégé of Flexner.”Schein began to talk to Einstein about his Jew ish services on campus. “I went to see Einstein to ask him whether he would join me from time to time, [because] that would certainly draw a crowd.” Einstein com plied, and Schein began meeting Einstein at his house and spending an hour or so with him be fore the men strolled to gether to the Jewish ser vice at “ThatMurray-Dodge.interaction, it was very public,” Schein said. “People could see me walking with him on NassauScheinStreet.”recalled more private moments with Einstein, too. “I remember Einstein getting down on his knees to look for a book and he couldn’t see that well,” he said, “and what I remember is him hold ing a candle because his white hair looked very yellow, kind of golden [in the]Scheinlight.” — who, throughout his 70-year medical career, practiced first as a pathologist be fore transitioning to a career in psychiatry — understands the brain’s tendency to romanticize memories.“Inmymemory, it’s in teresting, I remember it as a candle, but I don’t believe that to be true at all,” he remembered. “I believe he had a flash light. The fantasy that it was a candle is stronger than the knowledge that it was a Schein’sflashlight.”***memoryof the candle is a small example of a larger tendency to romanticize Einstein’s time at Princeton, par ticularly in the context of early Jewish student life.As a result of the ef forts of Schein and Flexner, Einstein was in deed present at some Jew ish services on campus beginning in the 1930s. But Klionsky’s historical research clarified that Einstein did not have a formal role in the cam pus Jewish community. “My sense from what people have written and said in interviews is re ally just about like, he would attend sometimes, and he would speak sometimes, but not as an organizing function,” she“[The]said. narrative was that Jewish student life began with Einstein in the ’40s,” Klionsky con tinued. “And it fell apart really quickly and really easily. Like I didn’t even have to pull the string very far to find way more thanThisthat.”narrative identi fied by Klionsky is not a mere consequence of a fond remembrance of the past. It existed, too, among community mem bers and within campus reporting during Ein stein’s time at Princeton. The aforementioned 1947 front page ‘Prince’ article tells readers in its headline that Einstein attended the “first cam pus Jewish service.” The article explains that the service was “highlighted by the attendance of Pro fessor Albert Einstein,” and it asserts that the service “marked the first opportunity for students of the Hebrew faith to worship on the campus.” As Klionsky’s research on the JSC and other el ements of early Jewish student life demonstrat ed, the 1947 gathering was far from Princeton’s first Jewish service on campus. Nor was it the first time that Einstein had addressed Jewish students: Klionsky notes in her thesis that there exist records of similar forums taking place be tween Einstein and Jew ish students in both 1937 and 1943. “I think it’s a compel ling story, right?” Klion sky said of the mislead ing coverage of the 1947 service. “Einstein was there, the ‘Prince’ an nounced that he was at the founding, there it is.” “I don’t think the ‘Prince’ was trying to lie. I think they didn’t know, ” she continued. “But it’s a compelling story. And if it’s in print, you know, we rely on being able to rely on what’s in print.” For Klionsky, the misattribution of Jew ish student community building to Einstein par tially stems from the lack of an institutional ap paratus to consistently support Jewish students throughout the early-tomid 20th century. She compared her experi ence as a Jewish student on campus, particularly with the Center for Jew ish Life (which opened its doors in 1993), with these early decades. “There are now profes sional staff [at the Center for Jewish Life] who have been there a long time and they hold some of that responsibility and students don’t have to. And so things can con tinue along a progression in a way that, previously, it was kind of like, ‘start, stop, start, stop, start, stop’, because there was nobody who was con sistent throughout that time.”With the framework for institutional memo ry now in place — and Shein’s own willingness to share his memories — there is a unique oppor tunity to immortalize a more truthful history of Jewish life on cam pus. This story has been told before, yet prior to Klionsky’s research, not by the people that actu ally experienced it: the allure of celebrity largely obscured the truth and credit was misattributed to Einstein. But, as an 107-year-old alum knew and a former Princeton history student discov ered, this was not his story.
“PHOTO OF ALBERT EINSTEIN IN PRINCETON, NJ, SOON AFTER HE FLED GERMANY” BY ACME NEWSPICTURES, INC. /CC0
Features
Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu, who teaches AAS 245/ ART 245: Introduction to 20th-Cen
the PROSPECT. ARTS & CULTURE
page 22 Thursday May 19, 2022The Daily Princetonian
“Given that most classical African art is sculptural, it is tough peda gogically to not encounter them in person and to rely on digital images alone. No amount of high-defini tion imaging will prepare you for the awesome presence of the Princ eton ‘Ikenga’ or the Met’s ‘Nkisi Nkondi,’” Okeke-Agulu explained. Unfortunately, due to its pro longed closure, many students, es pecially from the Classes of 2024 and 2025, may never have the op portunity to utilize the art museum as a resource during their time at Princeton. Hiba Siddiki ’25 told the ‘Prince’ that she feels like she is “be ing deprived of such an important amenity at the University.” Former PUAM Student Advisory Board member Anika Yardi ’21 said, “It’s deeply saddening to know that the art museum I knew will never exist again, but I’m even more sad for the current students that will go the majority of their campus life without access to one of Princeton’s finest institutions.” For many, the art museum serves as a valuable space to preserve his tory and culture as well as invoke meaningful thought and conversa tion. In its absence, the commu nity’s relationship with art and hu manities on campus will continue to be impacted. “I think it will absolutely change the way students interact with the arts and humanities as well — for so many classes, the art museum is a vital resource that cannot be replaced,” Yardi explained. As the arts and humanities com munities at the University continue to navigate the museum’s closure, the search for sustainable makeshift spaces for learning and engagement continues. Griffith-Gorati believes that there are several alternative gallery spaces off-campus, such as “the Bainbridge that will provide opportunities for students at Princ eton to continue to engage in art and build community in person.” Additionally, she suggests that the closure provides an opportunity for students to “utilize other spaces on campus such as the Lewis Center and engage more in student-created art in the absence of our physical collections.”Nonetheless, the reconstruction of the museum has sparked excite ment and anticipation for the fu ture of the arts and humanities at the University. Steininger hopes the new museum can “find ways to encourage Princeton students to think of the collection as a resource there for them to engage with and use, like books in the library.”
Okeke-Agulu noted, “Students will find attractive spaces to hang out in the new museum. The col lection will have better spaces for its reinstallation, thus making stu dent and visitor engagement and encounters with works of art more rewarding. Moreover, the scale and architectural magnificence of the David Adjaye-designed building will emphatically remind people that the University believes that art and the humanities matter.”
The renovated museum will exchange its current design for a more modernized one that includes various new amenities such as ex panded galleries, outdoor terraces, a rooftop café, and spaces for lec tures, performances, and events.
By José Pablo Fernández García Associate Prospect Editor
tury African American Art, empha sized the integral role the PUAM played in the learning process of his course despite its relatively small African Art holding.
By Olivia Kasule Contributing Prospect Writer Near the halls of Brown and East Pyne, at the heart of Princ eton’s campus, lies the acclaimed Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM). However, what has previ ously been a hub for the arts and humanities scene on campus is cur rently a site of never-ending con struction. The renovation of the art museum, which has prolonged its initial temporary closure, began in the summer of 2021 and is slated to finish in 2024. This, in conjunction with the shutdown of the museum during the COVID-19 pandemic, has affected the ways that many stu dents, faculty, and members of the local community interact with the arts and humanities on campus. Last year, the art museum abrupt ly closed its galleries as the world at tempted to navigate a global health crisis. Consequently, many mem bers of the Princeton community gravitated toward digital media as an outlet to continue engaging with art. Isabel Griffith-Gorgati ’21 served as the Chair of Student Outreach of the PUAM Student Advisory Board during this time and noted the im portant role technology played in keeping the art museum alive. “We were able to preserve and host several online projects and events,” Griffith-Gorgati explained. From organizing a virtual Nassau Street Sampler featuring live and recorded offerings to arranging collaborative photography projects that celebrate the diverse perspectives of students by featuring their photography sub missions on social media, the mu seum and its board members found multiple ways to bring the Princ eton community together during unprecedented times.
On a Wednesday afternoon this January, as I sat in the first meeting of my French seminar, I found myself writing — in French, of course — a version of the following ques tion: What is the significance of live theater? The exercise was to write the introduction of an essay about a topic on my mind, and thanks to the many hours I’ve recently spent in rehearsal for the Princeton Triangle Club’s upcoming show, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the significance and privilege of once again participating in live theater. It’s been over two years since the Princ eton Triangle Club premiered a new show on the McCarter Theatre stage. Two years since I climbed up and down the theater’s ladders to hang and focus its lights for the first time. Two years since I first learned new spotlight cues. Two years since I first slowly watched every little puzzle piece come together for a brand new Triangle Show on stage. It’s not the same as the last time, of course. The show’s McCarter premiere was moved from the typical November weekend to Janu ary. Our tour was canceled as the omicron variant surged. And, for me personally, the club feels very different. After a rehearsal, I found myself watching a recording of the show that premiered my freshman fall: “Once Uponzi Time.” It brought up more emotions than expected as I saw nowgraduated friends performing the songs over which we initially bonded. I was pulled back to that younger version of myself who worked on that show, the one who was still so unsure of himself.Thisexperience also made me realize a cer tain pain that I’ve been carrying around for a while: the pain of feeling robbed of time. This past week and a half has been a tough remind er of what could have been. I’ve asked myself too many questions that start with “what if.” And there’s a certain weirdness in mourning dashed expectations; you’re mourning some thing that never existed beyond your own mind and heart. So, to that end, being back in McCarter with Triangle this year has been a great privi lege. It’s one less thing relegated to the grow ing pile of things we’ve lost or given up in the past two years. It’s one less thing that cannot happen because the time for it has passed us by. It’s one less thing that has to be totally reduced to a sadder, more isolated version of itself, as so many of what should be life’s most joyous moments have been. This all has left me feeling quite grateful as I’ve watched the new Triangle Show come to gether. The sound of the pit orchestra tuning their instruments. The kicks of the famous Triangle kickline. The satisfaction of an ex quisite set transition. And, of course, the mar velous beauty of painting a stage, a set, and ac tors with light. They’ve all brought me a great joy that had been missing from my life. And there is something special in each of those ex periences, and in so many more moments I’ve gotten to see in rehearsals, for which I don’t exactly have the words to describe. The closest I can get to describing how special this is is by turning to the idea of to getherness. Another question I wrote in that first meeting of my French seminar was about what we may find in smiling, crying, laugh ing, and feeling so much more, all together in one place, watching the same art being created.Idon’t have clear answers to any of these questions. The exercise was simply to write the introduction — nothing more. But what ever the significance of theater, whatever we may find in it, I do know it is significant. And what we can find in it is so worthwhile.
Despite the transition to full inperson instruction this fall, the art museum continues to remain closed as it undergoes renovation under the vision of architect Sir Da vid Adjaye. As a result, classes that usually integrated the art museum into their coursework have been forced to adapt major components of their course.
Professor Brian Steininger, who teaches HUM 233: East Asian Humanities I: The Clas sical Foundations alongside profes sor Martin Kern, discussed the dif ficulty of modifying their course — which heavily emphasizes the material side of East Asian culture — with various COVID-19-related restrictions still in place.
The arts at Princeton without the art museum
Two years later, back on stage with Triangle
“It’s a particularly unfortunate coincidence that the closure coin cides with the pandemic since we might otherwise make use of re sources in New York like the Metro politan Museum,” Steininger said. Regardless of these challenges, Steininger and Kern have managed to preserve some of the interactive aspects of their course in uncon ventional ways. Alongside taking an evening bus trip to the University’s Forrestal Center to look at Chinese calligraphy, they have also started utilizing other resources on cam pus, such as The Rare Books Read ing Room at Firestone Library, to study illustrated manuscripts and otherTheholdings.museum’s incorporation of technology through online exhi bitions, art-making classes, and on-demand videos has allowed it to continue connecting with mem bers of the community; however, the unique experience of interact ing with art in a physical space has been difficult to replicate through a digital platform.
Vote100 and Hasan Minhaj are not for brown students like me
/ THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN JOSÉ PABLO FERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
page 23Thursday May 19, 2022 The Daily Princetonian
proceeded to describe the ways in which Arab countries punish gay men, including capital punishment. While it is true that some Arab countries still carry out these horrendous practices, it had nothing to do with me, a non-Arab Muslim student who was born and raised in the United States. The conversation left a bad taste in my mouth, and I only felt further pushed away from the queer community. In a double whammy instance of Islamo phobia and homophobia, a former friend from my freshman year, a devout Christian, told me that in their view, both Muslims and “homosexuals” would end up in hell. I thought about discussing the situation with a peer mentor, but I didn’t want to out myself to them either. I felt completely alone. As the semester went on, I began to feel more weary about being in the closet en tirely. However, when I sought the advice of some queer friends, I was told to cut out the MSA entirely if they would not be support ive. I was scared. What would I do without a religious community? Who else would I meet for late night prayers or fast with dur ing Ramadan? Who else would remember to wish me an Eid Mubarak if not for my Muslim friend group? One tradition that kept me going during all of this was weekly dinners I would have with some of the friends I had made through the MSA. At one of these dinners, I broached the subject of sexuality with a quiet mention of “Love, Simon” as a recommendation for our movie night. I wanted so badly to come out. I thought that the movie would be a good segue. I’ll never forget what my friend said: “That actually makes me uncomfort able. I’d rather we didn’t talk about that.” She didn’t say gay, or queer, or anything of the sort, but I knew what it meant. It was theThenend. March 2020 came around. I found myself hurriedly packing my bags to make the next flight home where, unbeknownst to me, I would spend the next year and a half — only furthering my time in the closet. Over that year and a half, I distanced my self greatly from the MSA and my friend group within it. As I dealt with being clos eted at home, and once again being seques tered into my family’s conceptions of wom anhood, I still sought the religious support of an Imam in the community. Unfortunately, he was not affirming when it came to my sexuality. In a moment of great discord in my family during CO VID-19, I came out to the Imam and asked for his help. I was looking for someone to tell me that my feelings towards women and my conception of myself were not wrong. Instead, I received a mostly one-sided discus sion, where I was told that while my feelings were natural, acting on them in any way was Islamically forbidden. He assured me that I could and would continue to have “deep friendships” with women, even if I could not act on my feelings. I was crushed. Not my Muslim friends, nor my Imam would accept me. For a year, I turned away from Islam entirely. I focused on getting closer (virtually) to my newly found friends in other communities, other clubs and activities. I found queer students who I could relate to, and look up to. I reconnected with my friends from high school, by virtue of all being quarantined in the same town. I tried not to think about my faith. When we returned to campus, I greeted Muslim friends cordially but without zeal. When Ra madan began, I let it pass without another glance.Then Imam Sohaib passed. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than the community I was so lacking. I want ed to run back to my Muslim friends and mourn with them, hold space with them for the Imam that I had so dearly loved just as them, despite our differences in ideology. I’ve been trying to find my way back ever since.Ithasn’t been easy. While there are so many first years and sophomores that have changed the culture of the MSA, I would still feel uncomfortable being in the same space as those I know to be homophobic. I have great supportive friends now, from all faith traditions, and I refuse to be with people who will not be supportive. Progress has been slow. I joined an online community for queer Muslims, affection ately called the “Muslim Fruit Bowl.” I dis covered Hidayah LGBT, an advocacy group based in the UK, which gave me a source of information for finding out more about queer Muslims around the world. While I know of a few other queer Muslims, I have found queer students who I can relate to in other faith traditions, or who come from more conservative backgrounds. For the queer Muslims on our campus, and around the world, I just want to say that we exist. We are and have always been queer Muslims. If you search online, there are plenty of sets of scripture which will defend this, as many that will refute it, but I don’t need scripture or an Imam or the Mus lim Student Association to tell me who I am, or who I will be.
A student asked Hasan Minhaj, at a Vote100-sponsored event in Richardson Auditorium on Monday, Feb. 7 about the way caste affects South Asian immigrants in the United States, especially in Califor nia. My first thought was that he probably wasn’t qualified to answer. I thought that, being a second-generation immigrant like me, he probably doesn’t have too much familiarity with the caste system, but I wanted to hear what he had to say. In his response, Minhaj called the caste system and Indo-Pakistani conflict a thing of the 1940s and 50s. Speaking primarily to the Desi contingent of the audience, he asked, when there’s a cricket game going on between India and Pakistan, have you ever noticed that it’s not really about the game? “The game is boring,” he said. Putting on a stereotypically South Asian accent, he shouted, “India! Pakistan!” ostensibly rep resenting the supposed two sides of the divide. He said that if that is what we are concerned with, the British have won. This made plain that he is not speak ing for an audience from South Asia or deeply ingrained in South Asian culture. I wouldn’t say I’m either of those things particularly — though I’m working on con necting with a cultural tradition that my Indian (born and raised) parents and their families have been a part of for as long as anyone can trace back. I know that my place at Princeton exists partially due to caste privilege. Both my parents are from higher castes. Although caste-based discrimination is illegal, it does still occur both formally and infor mally.Ishouldn’t have to tell you that castebased discrimination is real, and it’s not true that it only popped up when the Brit ish colonial project began or that it went away when they “left” in the midst of Par tition. Of course, British rule exacerbated social antagonisms and codified caste in certain forms of law, but it would be a mis take to say that caste is a thing of the past. When my parents asked my grandpar ents for their blessing to get married, the difference in their castes was certainly a topic of discussion. Members of the Dalit caste are still often untouched. Quotas for historically marginalized groups in India are good, but they can’t do the work of reimagining or abolishing social orders. There is no doubt in my mind that if my parents had come from lower castes, it would have been more difficult for them to work in scientific research and pharmaceu tical regulation in the United States — and for me to be here.
We have to face the fact that Hasan Minhaj, at least as displayed at this week’s Vote100 event, is not for people like me. It only takes a cursory glance at Vote100 pub licity to know that it is an overwhelmingly whiteWhenspace.Iwas a Class of 2024 ambassador for Vote100 last year, I found the same to be true. As a small group of dedicated firstyears, the other ambassadors and I laid out plans to revolutionize the initiative and have it truly make a difference. For a lot of reasons, our intended plans didn’t pan out. Voting is cool, but I am skeptical as to how much a University initiative can do to change people’s minds about not partici pating. The 100 percent student participa tion in civic engagement is perhaps a noble goal, but with Vote100 itself reporting that Princeton students voted at a rate of 75.4 percent in 2020, I have to say: that might just be good enough. Now, I have more important things to worry about — I find my energy devoted to organizing with the Pride Alliance and South Asian Progressive Alliance, for ex ample.When Vote100’s endorsement message and Kevin Kruse’s questions about voting kicked off the event, the indifference in the audience was palpable. Students showed up for Hasan Minhaj: comedian — not Hasan Minhaj: man who might convince me to vote, let’s hear what he has to say. I really deeply value representation as much as the next guy, so although I am not the biggest fan of Minhaj anymore, I had to go. Watching his comedy special “Homecoming King” five years ago was ex hilarating; it seemed to tell the truth about a brown kid’s life in America. The closest I had gotten at that point was Disney Chan nel, but Ravi on “Jessie” and Baljeet on “Phineas and Ferb” were caricatures and rarely anything more. But Minhaj the comedian does not rep resent me. Being a second-generation Indi an immigrant doesn’t have to mean letting everything Indian go. In fact, our lives are inextricable from the past, present, and future of that subcontinent, currently the home of a billion and a half breathing peo ple. With them, I hold my breath.
By Anonymous Guest Contributor
Between two communities: Being queer and Muslim at Princeton
I’m a queer Muslim. I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud, at least not like that. Some people know I’m queer. Others know I’m Muslim. But it’s dif ficult to say both of those things together, not in middle school when I realized I was queer, not in my relatively liberal Muslim household, nor in my socially conservative high school environment. I thought that Princeton would be different. I was wrong. I have never been fully “out.” My reasons for being in the closet at Princeton were many. Generally, I was anxious about being out in a school where I did not yet have any support and had not found a safe space, no matter where I turned. Additionally, my im mediate and extended family are incredibly homophobic, and I feel that their knowing would have incredibly harmful effects on myThroughoutlife. my time here, I have tried to find a home for myself in Princeton’s Mus lim community. While I have great friends within the community, the community it self and many of its members have been alienating and have turned me away both from finding the religious community I want and the community support I need. As a first-year student, I had great difficul ty making friends. Then, a Muslim student I knew from class invited me to a Muslim Student Association (MSA) mixer. Through the group, I made fast friends, though I al ways felt a bit awkward. My family may have espoused and upheld certain Muslim val ues like modest dress, strict gender roles be tween men and women, and the importance of prayer and fasting when possible, but the strictness to which the MSA adhered to these values was often off-putting. I was one of few women who wore less modest clothing; I was a loud and outspoken feminist. Meanwhile, one member of my friend group once told me she “did not believe or understand femi nism.” And of course, I was in the closet. Once, during an informal discussion about politics, a former MSA student leader remarked that all Muslims should hold the same conservative values, including a con ception of “marriage between one man and one woman.” I rebutted that not all Muslims believed in that rigid structure of marriage, but was told by other members of the group to “let it be.” In a different instance, another student leader made a transphobic joke and I watched as other MSA members laughed in agreement. In Muslim spaces, I felt that I couldn’t defend my own queerness even if I wanted to — even if they had known. Just like being queer in Muslim spaces felt risky, being Muslim in queer spaces felt dif ficult as well. The LGBT Center (now known as the Gender and Sexuality Resource Cen ter) staff and student leaders were generally kind and supportive. They often tried to help me, and their workshops were a highlight of my freshman year, including my favorite “Mom, I’m Gay,” a workshop on coming out. However, as a closeted student, it was hard to feel comfortable spending time in the LGBT Center when I was not out on campus. I did not want to have to explain to friends that I had made there that I did not want to be known as queer outside of the center. In addition, I was worried about being seen at LGBT Center events by students I wasn’t yet outAdditionally,to. I recall multiple instances in which students were openly Islamophobic to me in queer spaces, further alienating me. During a dinner in my freshman year, a fel low queer student told me that “all Muslims are backwards and homophobic.” He then
Saying that engaging in Indo-Pakistani rivalry is evidence of “the British winning” erases experiences like my grandfather’s. In 1947, when the new border between India and Pakistan ran through his home state of Punjab, he had to pick up and move to what was a new nation-state. Plus, we should ac knowledge that athletic competition is one of the safer ways for this real geopolitical and interpersonal divide to manifest.
SAM
By Mollika Jai Singh Contributing Prospect Writer KAGAN
Filming for the new Christopher Nolan movie Oppenheimer took over East Pyne for on Thursday afternoon, with many students vying to take a look.
page 24 Thursday May 19, 2022The Daily Princetonian
basement of 1903 Hall at 7 p.m. sharp. As I entered the basement, I wasn’t sure what to expect: by all accounts, it is a bar ren, industrial space with concrete, bunkeresque walls, and exposed ceiling pipes bet ter suited for mosh pits than fine-dining.
By Hope Perry Contributing Prospect Writer
Anyone who managed to enter East Pyne would’ve found tons of people crowding around every window, cameras open on nearly every phone. Staff cleared out the largest window areas, mentioning that people might be visible in the shot if they crowded too close. Across the courtyard, a crowd of people on the third-floor men’s restroom nearly leaned out the window; a crewmember yelled at them to close it. Professor Daniela Mairhofer of the Clas sics Department has an office with win dows that look directly over the courtyard. When asked if she had received any prior warning or instructions from the crew, she said she hadn’t. “Not beforehand,” she said, “but when they started filming, a crew member came to my office and told me to turn off the lights … I am sitting and working now in the dark, all in the line of duty for a (hopefully) good movie.” Mairhofer invited us to her office to watch the filming up close, where the ‘Prince’ team was able to snap a few pho tos.It seemed like everyone on campus had an“Iopinion.thinkit was a very unique experience to watch the filming. I didn’t find it to be disruptive but more so I found it to be a fun activity in the afternoon,” Eliot Peck ’25 told the ‘Prince.’ Kevin Kruse, a history professor at the University, stated in a tweet that “The film crew for ‘Oppenheimer’ has taken over the Princeton campus and, no, ha ha, they don’t give a shit if you’re trying to get to class.”When asked about how the University determines which projects are allowed to shoot on campus in the context of the dis ruption, Deputy University Spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss told the ‘Prince,’ “The University reviews requests to undertake film projects on campus on a case-by-case basis. All filming is carefully planned with a focus on safety and minimizing any disruption to the University commu nity. Generally, Princeton seeks only to recover any costs to the University that are incurred by the production.” The University Office of Communica tions did not respond to a specific ques tion about whether PSAFE officers were additionally compensated or supported for their role in enforcing the barriers and filming perimeter. After filming for over an hour at East Pyne, some of the cast and crew took a break in Whig Hall and then moved to the University Chapel to continue production. Mujtuba Yousufi ’24 was able to score a picture with Christopher Nolan in the chapel, and told the ‘Prince’ how he made it happen.Nolanhas been nominated twice for best picture, twice for best screenplay, and once for best director in the Academy Awards, and has directed hits like “The Dark Knight,” “Inception,” and “Interstel lar.”Yousufi said that he went into the cha pel to pray, but that Father Zack and his friend left soon after. “I’m friends with a lot of [people in the] Aquinas Institute so I saw the priest just outside the chapel and I spoke to him and I asked him if I could go pray in the chapel,” Yousufi said. “I was there at the chapel and I waited an hour watching them film,” Yousufi said, adding that there were many Princeton employees inside the chapel, “letting the film crew know what they were allowed to interact with ... At the end, Christopher Nolan went up to the Princeton employees and went to thank all of them.” That’s when Yousufi made his move. A Princeton employee introduced them, “because my mother wanted [me] to take a picture,” Yousufi laughed. “He’s, like, my favorite director … this is the highlight of my semester.” creates campus chaos
COURTESY OF AUDREY YANG
Did the basement look like the main din ing room of Agricola or the upstairs seating area of Ficus Above? No, but the juxtaposi tion of fine dining arrangements with what could otherwise have passed for a parking garage even more strongly showed me that this was an exclusive pop-up experience. The servers, all of whom were students, sat me down after a short wait, and the bread quickly followed. My server took the time to explain exactly what the dish consisted of, which I found to be a nice, personal touch. The bread, he said, was a sourdough loaf with a sesame seed crust, paired with both normal and herb butter. The bread, put simply, was a revela tion. The crust was perfectly blackened; the doughy insides were impeccably thick, hearty, and not overly sour. The real gamechanger, however, was the sesame seed coating: that extra element added just the right balance to the bread, ensuring I had a smile on my face before I finished even my first slice. The included herb butter was also excellent; it added more complexity to the bread while infusing the dish with a sense of the rustic. In fact, the bread was so good I specifically asked my server whether it was house-made or purchased from a high-end bakery — it was baked that very morning by one of the chefs. Unlike most restaurants, the server didn’t collect the bread before bringing the appe tizers over, which I’m immensely grateful for — I am unashamed to say that I contin ued eating slice after slice (the bread came in a generous portion!) of sesame sourdough between the rest of the courses PPop Up served.Next up was the appetizer: house-cured salmon on an “invisible” potato chip with charred scallion-everything cream cheese, pickled radish, and alfalfa microgreens. Vi sually, the appetizer, which came in two bite-size pieces, was a sight to behold. As I stared at the semi-transparent, intricately webbed golden-brown potato chip, my serv er explained it was made of some “molecular gastronomy I don’t understand.” Amen to that.The taste of each amuse bouche was ex quisite. From the menu description, I imag ined the appetizer would be a reimagined take on a classic cream cheese and lox bagel, but as soon as I popped one into my mouth, I could tell it was much more than that. I first tasted the salty, earthy salmon and the lightness of the potato chip before those sen sations were replaced with the brininess of the radish and creamy sauce. The whirlwind of layered flavors culminated in a luxurious culinary explosion — and before I knew it, I found myself eagerly reaching for my sec ond bite-sized piece. All in all, though the appetizer was a touch too salty for my taste, the combination of flavors it presented was uniquely delightful.
The quiet majesty of East Pyne was shattered on Thursday, April 14, as news spread across campus that Academy Award-nominated director Christopher Nolan was on campus shooting his up coming film “Oppenheimer.” Hundreds of people crowded around the courtyard, some on the ground in the hot sun and others pressed against windows, jostling one another for the chance to glimpse a celebrity.Onone side, crowds formed around caution tape that extended from the courtyard’s eastern entrance all the way down Firestone Plaza to the University Chapel. On the other side, near Nassau Hall, a smaller group of students jockeyed for a view of the film set. “Dude, I’m so missing class for this,” one student yelled to his friends. “It’s Christopher fucking Nolan!” Uniformed Public Safety (PSAFE) offi cers manned orange barricades blocking the entrance to the courtyard as students swarmed towards the building. “Two steps back, two steps back!” Pro duction staff told the crowd. Multiple students commented that it “felt like Lawnparties again,” referring to A$AP Ferg’s headliner performance last fall, when multiple students were injured as the crowd pushed towards the barri cades around the stage. “The more you move around and push forward, the more they’re gonna come out here and yell at you!” one PSAFE officer told the crowd, asking them to stop. Matt Damon, Cillian Murphy, and Jack Quaid stood close to the archway on the Firestone side of the building on breaks between takes. People on all sides were clamoring for the smallest glimpse. “I counted at least three smiles from Matt Damon aimed personally towards me,” Fletcher Block ’25, told the ‘Prince.’ Paige Morton ’25, who scored a video with Matt Damon, said in an interview that “he was really nice and really willing to take pictures with students, which I thought was really cool.” Rumors swirled that Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt, and Robert Downey Jr. were on campus, but that wasn’t true, accord ing to crewmembers speaking to the crowd. One crewmember said Downey Jr. had left town after previous days of film ing.The film is based on the 2005 book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Dr. Michael Gordin, a professor of the history of science at the University, specu lated that the scene filmed in East Pyne likely was set “after late-1942, when the Manhattan Project officially began and Oppenheimer had his post [with the Man hattan Project].” Gordin further theorized that the scene in Princeton may be related to Oppenheimer’s recruitment of other scientists for the Project. “But it is only a guess,” Gordin added. A crew member confirmed his guess, however, telling The Daily Princetonian that the scene being filmed took place in 1945. Fortunately, the crowd didn’t get too wild, but students were determined to get even the most fleeting look at the actors.
East Pyne courtyard film set for ‘Oppenheimer’
PPop
The main course was a sous vide duck leg paired with butternut squash purée, black berry pan sauce, and red cabbage slaw. The dish looked lovely; the combination of but ternut squash purée and blackberry sauce created brilliant yellow-purple hues on the plate. I started by trying the slaw, which had a natural, slightly bitter taste — the butter nut squash and the blackberry, along with the slices of Granny Smith apples in the slaw, balanced out the bitterness of the cabbage. The star of the dish, of course, was the duck leg, which far exceeded my expectations. The skin was impossibly crispy; the meat was tender with a generous layer of melt-in-yourmouth soft fat. The gaminess of the duck leg was already majestic on its own — paired with the cabbage slaw and sauces, the flavors became heavenly. The final course was dessert, a caramel ized poached pear with a rosemary tuile and a honey goat cheese mousse topped with carbonated sugar. Even before I saw its fi nal plating, I was already eagerly anticipat ing the dish. From my seat in the restau rant, I could see the chefs using rum and a blowtorch to flambé slice after slice of pear, minutes before they would be served. When dessert did arrive, it was another visual masterpiece. The pear was goldenbrown and slightly oozing decadent juice. Next to it, a shard of rosemary tuile thin as paper separated the pear from a white cylin der of mousse. The chefs prudently ensured the dish didn’t suffer from cloying sweet ness: the sugariness of the caramelized pear was counteracted by the creamy earthiness of the goat cheese mousse. What I noticed most, though, was the smorgasbord of tex tures: the pear and mousse were varying shades of soft and smooth, the rosemary tuile was delicately crunchy, and to top it all off, the carbonated sugar (which I later confirmed to be Pop Rocks) added a rather unexpected, inventive element of fun to the course by setting off little explosions in my mouth.Bythe end of the meal, I was completely blown away. While it was evident that the students behind PPop Up haven’t completely perfected the experience — diners had to use the same fork between the entrée and dessert, for example — these minuscule oversights hardly detracted from the overall experience. Indeed, PPop Up was able to offer significant improvements over traditional restaurants; service was blazingly fast, likely due to the fact that fewer than twenty diners were present in the basement at a given time. Moreover, PPop Up is a bargain compared to other high-end dining establishments — the meal costs $28, not including tips. As I walked out of the basement at the end of the meal, I felt as if I had just borne wit ness to a transformative event. I can’t recom mend a meal at PPop Up more; if you’re lucky enough to snag a reservation in the near future, come and experience it for yourself, and make sure to tip generously at the end of what I found to be an astounding dinner.
Student-run
By Joshua Yang Staff Writer Up: fine dining takes center stage — on a budget
Yet PPop Up transformed the basement into something more pleasant and sophisticated: the room was dotted with tables surrounded by colorful plastic chairs and blanketed with white tablecloths. Little touches, like the Fire Code-friendly artificial candles and soft jazz music, piped in from speakers, further add ing to the ambiance.
AUDREY YANG / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
Artisinal bread was served at the pop-up restaurant in the basement of 1903 Hall.
Princeton is hardly short on fine dining options. Agricola plates and Mistral small dishes tantalize the taste buds; Mediterra starters and Ficus Above inventions craft an upscale, sophisticated meal experience, not to mention the other top-dollar restaurants housed in town. Yet these restaurants are often prohibi tively expensive — which is why I was in trigued by PPop Up, a new student-run finedining pop-up experience with the potential to offer a worthy alternative to these estab lishments at a fraction of the cost. Run by Ethan Arrington ’25, Sophie Leheny ’25, Allen Park ’23, Matthew Pickering ’24, Adrian Rog ers ’23, and Felix Xu ’25, PPop Up is an ambi tious concept: it hosts semi-regular dinner services featuring a prix fixe menu of dishes invented, tested, fine-tuned, prepared, and served by students, all from a modest up perclass dorm kitchen. A few weeks ago, in February, I was lucky enough to land my name on the list of attend ees invited to PPop Up’s first-ever service. The menu, which I was sent ahead of time, promised alluring (and somewhat myste rious) dishes such as house-cured salmon on an “invisible” potato chip and a honey goat cheese mousse paired with carbonated sugar. The day of the dinner, I was sent a short email “highly encouraging” semi-for mal wear and instructing me to arrive at the
page 25Thursday May 19, 2022 The Daily Princetonian
In what could have been the final offensive pos session for the Tigers this season, Princeton put the ball in sophomore guard Kaitlyn Chen’s hands. She drove hard right off of a screen from Mitchell, turning the corner with a purpose. Mitchell then ran away from the ball to Meyers in the opposite corner, who burst towards the top of the key spotting up for Whenthree.Meyers got there, however, the play had been foiled by Indiana’s defense. Chen got caught in the air under the bas ket, looking to make a skip pass back out to Mey ers. The ball never made it. Instead, it was picked off by Ali Patberg, who was promptly fouled. Af ter two more fouls got the Hoosiers into the bonus, forward Aleksa Gulbe stepped up to the line and calmly downed both free throws, pushing the Indi ana lead to 56–52 with just 1.6 seconds left. Coach Berube still had one timeout to burn. Only the players know what was said in that final huddle. The final play of their sea son — the final play of the seniors’ careers at Princ eton — saw Cunningham inbound to Meyers for one last three-pointer at the buzzer, which she drained. It didn’t matter towards the outcome, though, and the game ended Indiana 56, Princeton 55. The look on their faces watching that final shot go in says what words can not quite articulate about the raw emotions they felt as the realization that their season was over be gan to settle in. “This is never easy to see your season end,” Coach Berube said. “We had a great year, and I’m extremely proud of my team, my staff, the uni versity, the Ivy League. We just came up a little short against a really strong team, a great Indiana team. But we fought until the end, and I can’t ask for anything more from my players.”ForPrinceton, Cunning ham and Stone each added 13 points. Meyers had 11 points, and Chen had 10 points and five rebounds. As she’s done all season long, Mitchell was a beast on the boards, putting up six points and 15 rebounds for her team. The next leading rebounder in the game was Indiana’s Mack enzie Holmes with eight. “Ellie is unbelievably relentless,” Berube said. “Nothing stops her. She has a knack of reading the rebounds, and she has this drive of going for every board, every loose ball, diving out of bounds to save a ball; she’s every where. She’s the heart of our defense. She was Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year for a reason.” This makes for Prince ton’s fifth loss all season. They walk away with a 25–5 record, as well as a per fect 14–0 record in the Ivy League. Even with the loss in the big tournament, the team reflected on what their success has meant in the grander scheme. “We put Princeton on the map,” Cunningham said. “We beat the SEC champs, and then had a one-point game with the Big Ten runner-up. For the Ivy League, it’s huge. For Princeton, it’s huge.” “We showed the nation al stage that we can com pete with anyone,” Berube added.While this season has officially come to an end for the Tigers, the team loses only two seniors from their current roster: Meyers and guard Neenah Young. These two won 97 games across their four seasons together, and finished with a 54–4 Ivy League record. Next season, the Tigers can expect to see most of their players return. Key returners will include Cunningham, Chen, and Mitchell. Regardless, fill ing the hole that Meyers will leave behind will prove difficult no matter what kind of talent fills her void. She finishes her career at Princeton with 936 points, just shy of the 1,000Untilmark.next winter, the Tigers can take a wellearned rest. According to Coach Berube, however, it does not seem like the team is eager to take time off.“They’re going to be re ally hungry to get back to games like this.”
Women’s basketball season ends with March Madness second-round loss to Indiana, 56–55
“It was certainly tough to defend them in the post down the stretch, just get ting around Holmes and [Aleksa] Gulbe,” Coach Berube said. “They’re big andThestrong.”Tigers refused to go away. They went on a 8–0 run over the next two minutes, culminating with a smooth drop-off pass inside from Chen to sophomore forward Ellie Mitchell, whose layup off the glass gave Princeton their first lead since the first quarter, 50–49, with just under five minutes re maining.After Cardaño-Hillary quickly responded with a baseline reverse layup to re-establish the Hoosier lead, the scoring came to a complete standstill. Final ly, with just 1:12 remaining in the final frame, Abby Meyers managed to get to the free-throw line and knock down two clutch shots. Princeton led 52–51.
The Tigers’ season came to a brutal end in Bloom ington, Ind. On March 21, the No. 11 seed women’s basket ball team (25–5, 14–0 Ivy League) lost to the No. 3 seed Indiana Hoosiers (24–8, 11–5 Big Ten) in the second round of the NCAA tournament, falling 56–55. The game came just two days after big wins for both teams. This past Sat urday, Princeton knocked off No. 6 seed Kentucky in a hard-fought 69–62 win. The Hoosiers had a much easier time taking care of business against No. 14 Charlotte, winning 81–51. This was the Tigers’ sec ond time making it to the second round of March Madness. If they managed to pull away, it would have made for Princeton’s first trip to the Sweet 16 in pro gram history. The Tigers’ tournament run instead came to an end on Monday night due to a poised Indiana team that managed to hold their own on the defensive end. The Hoosiers limited Princeton to significantly fewer points than their season scoring average of 68 points per game. Indiana finished the regular season ranked No. 11 in the AP poll, meaning that this would be Prince ton’s toughest matchup to date in the postseason. All five starters for Indiana earned All-Big Ten honors this year, making for the most single-season honors in program history. Even with the cards stacked against them, Princeton was not fazed at the beginning of the game. The Tigers came into the game aggressive from the start — junior guard Grace Stone scored the first bucket of the game with a three-pointer from the top of the key. It quickly became a back-and-forth game, with neither team able to pull away by much. Then, just four minutes into the game, senior guard Abby Meyers got called for her second foul. Since five per sonal fouls disqualifies a player from the game, Head Coach Carla Berube subbed Meyers out. She would not see the floor again until the second quarter.Even without the Ivy League Player of the Year on the floor, the Tigers managed to keep up with the Hoosiers. The first quarter ended 17–17, with Princeton shooting a 100 percent from three. Un fortunately, foul trouble would plague Princeton once more, with sopho more guard Kaitlyn Chen picking up her second foul to end the first quarter. The second quarter be gan with both of Princ eton’s premier ball han dlers, Meyers and Chen, watching from the side line. Picking up the slack were the other starters, namely junior guards Julia Cunningham and Grace Stone. They led the team in scoring at the end of the half, with nine and eight points, respectively. Their offensive produc tion was not enough to stop Indiana’s ensuing run. With some of Princ eton’s best players on the bench, the Hoosiers came out gunning to open the quarter. Guard Ali Patberg hit an and-one three and converted the four-point play to push the lead to 21–17. This momentum carried through the rest of the half, leaving Prince ton trailing behind 39–29. Leading the way for the Hoosiers was guard Nicole Cardaño-Hillary with 10 points, with guards Chloe Moore-McNeil and Grace Berger each adding nine points.“We gave up 39 points in the first half, and that’s not really who we are,” Princeton Head Coach Carla Berube said follow ing the loss. “The foul trouble really hurt us.” Coming out of the locker room, it seemed as though there would be more of the same for Indiana. Back-toback jumpers from Berger extended the lead to 43–29 with six minutes to go in the third quarter. But this 14-point lead would be the largest of the game for the Hoosiers, who faced a re silient Princeton squad already accustomed to facing adversity. The Ti gers managed to stop the bleeding with a revamped defensive effort.
By Matt Drapkin Staff Writer
COURTESY OF @PRINCETONWBB/TWITTER
This year was just the second time the Tigers had ever reached the second round of March Madness.
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Just the next possession, Holmes drew a foul for In diana, and Grace Berger stepped up to the line for a pair of free throws. She knocked down just one of two, leaving the score tied 52–52 with 58 seconds to go. Coming out of a time out, the Tigers looked to get Meyers going on the perimeter. Mitchell set her point guard a screen going towards the left baseline. Indiana switched Holmes onto Meyers, and with one look at the new defender, Meyers pulled the trig ger from deep. The shot missed off the front of the rim.Coming the other way, the Hoosiers ran a very similar offensive set. Try ing to give their guard space to create, Grace Berger used a screen at the top of the key to get some space on the right side of the court. Cunningham switched the screen on de fense with Chen, who now had the task of guarding the Hoosiers’ leading scor er.Berger wasted no time. She stepped right, spun left, and finessed her way into the paint for a layup over sophomore forward Ellie Mitchell that gave Indiana a 52–54 lead with just 28 seconds remaining.
“We knew we were down 10 at half, and I think we kind of went back to our principles
just two minutes into the fourth quarter.
givehitlowedWithdisplaynalHolmes,sidetinuedawayifter,inponentsmanagedperiod,toshrinkless,seasoncantcentfromteamtyourandandofgotdiaCunninghamdefensively,”toldthemeafterthegame.“Wealotofstops,gotalothandsontheballthere,wewereabletopush,thatalwaysleadsustobestoffense.”Itstillwasnotapretoffensivequarter;theonlyshot32percentthefieldand20perfromthree,signifidrop-offsfromtheiraverages.RegarditwasenoughtotheIndianaleadthreebytheendofthe45–42.Princetontokeeptheiroptojustsixpointsthequarter.TostartthefourthquartheHoosierslookedastheywerereadytopullforgood.TheycontofeedtheballintoforwardMackenziewhoputherarseofpostmovesonfullfortheaudience.onedropstepfolbyanother,HolmestwobasketsinarowtoIndianaa42–49lead,
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One of the most impressive teams on campus is one you’ll rarely have the opportunity to watchPrincetoncompete.women’s fencing, which has only competed in meets away from the Orange Bubble this season, is now ranked first overall in Division I. The team achieved the rank ing through a dominant perfor mance in the Ed Duals tourna ment on Jan. 23. They had an undefeated 19–0 on the season and as of early February were eyeing a deep postseason run. “I don’t want to say I expected it, but I wasn’t surprised when it happened,” Jessica Lin ’25, an Épée fencer, told The Daily Princetonian. “We have a really strong team … I’m glad our re sults are reflecting that.” At the Penn tournament, the then third-ranked Tigers knocked off No. 1 Notre Dame, No. 2 Columbia, No. 5 Ohio State, and No. 6 Northwestern en route to a 5–0 record at the tournament. The wins capped off a weekend which saw the women go 7–0 overall, thanks to wins over Johns Hopkins and No. 8 Temple at the Philadelphia Invitational on Jan. 21, as well as an additional win over Yale at the Penn duals. In fencing, there are three weapons: epee, foil, and sa bre. Each team presents three athletes per weapon, and each athlete competes in three bouts apiece, making 27 bouts to tal. At Penn duals, the Tigers crushed Notre Dame and Ohio State by the score of 19–8 and beat Northwestern 16–11. Their closest matchup came in a nar row 14–13 win over Columbia. “Each squad has different strengths,” Lin said. “For wom en’s epee, Columbia might have been the hardest [match].” “It was really fun,” Lin added. As a first-year, Lin explained that she was unclear about what to expect going into the season. “I think everyone played their part really well.” As most high schools don’t have fencing teams, many of the fencers are competing in college fencing’s team-based format for the first time. Lin and her fel low first-year teammates have been competing at a high level against the best teams in the country.“Incollege fencing, every thing is a five-touch bout,” Lin explained. A win in a given bout is given to the fencer whose weapon first makes legal con tact with their opponent five times. “I feel like there’s a lot of pressure to make decisions pretty fast,” she continued.
Editor’s Note: After this article was originally published online on Feb. 1, the Tiger women’s fencing team won the Ivy League cham pionships and brought home the title for the first time since 2017. The championship marked the pro gram’s 11th Ivy League title, and the team defeated all six of their Ivy League opponents en route to the win.
The Tigers have only won this ti tle once in 2013, thanks to domi nance in the sabre discipline from Olympian Eliza Stone ’13. “I feel like there’s some pres sure … everyone’s been saying, ‘we want the rings, give us Ivies, give us NCAAs’,” Lin said. “Per sonally, I feel like I need to calm down, stay humble, and keep working. If everything goes as planned, we have a pretty good shot.”
Lin’s teammate, Maia Wein traub ’25, who competes in foil and won the gold medal in the event at the North American Cup last October, said that team scoring means everyone has to constantly be on their best game.“You can’t just rely on one fencer, because for each squad there are three people fencing,” she said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “If you have one person win all of their bouts, that’s only three out of nine … you need to rely on your teammates and make sure everyone is working at their best.” The team-based format is not without its benefits, though. “One of the reasons I was drawn to this school was be cause of the people on the team,” Weintraub said. “We have really good team cohesion, and we trust each “Sometimesother.”you have to learn you can’t depend on yourself for help,” Lin added. “You can rely on the team to help you out.” The Tigers currently sit atop a ranking which sees five of their six Ivy League foes ranked within the top seven. Only Penn is ranked lower, sitting at No. 13 (the seventh Ivy League op ponent, Dartmouth, does not have a fencing program). No. 2 Cornell is 18–0 on the year, just one win behind the Tigers. Brown, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale, who occupy ranks No. 4 through No. 7, have a combined record of 47–8. Weintraub said the Ivy League round robin the weekend of Feb. 12 will be cru cial in determining the team’s fate. “[Ivies] are big for us,” Wein traub said. “It’s sort of a brag ging rights tournament.” After Ivy Championships, the team will head back to Philadel phia for the Temple Duals tour nament on Feb. 27 before host ing the co-ed NCAA Regionals on Mar. 12 in Jadwin Gym. This will be the Tigers’ only home meet of the season. Should they progress to Re gionals, the Tigers would then travel to Indianapolis for the coed National Championship dur ing the last weekend of March.
‘We trust each other’: Women’s Fencing ranked No. 1 in the country
PHOTO COURTESY OF JESSICA LIN. Jessica Lin ’25 competes in epee at the Penn duals meet on Jan. 23. KU0 / DAILY PRINCETONIAN Students gather on Cannon Green to celebrate with a once-in-a-generation bonfire.
page 28Thursday May 19, 2022 Sports www. dailyprincetonian .com{ }
By Rachel Posner and Isabel Yip Senior Sports Writer and Assistant News Editor
ANGEL
THE
Alongside friends, fam ily, and fans, the Princeton student body gathered on Cannon Green on the night of Nov. 21 to watch a bonfire in celebration of the football team’s defeat over both Har vard on Oct. 23 and Yale on Nov. 13 this season. The last bonfire took place in 2018, when members of the Class of 2022 were first-years. Undergraduate Student Gov ernment President Christian Potter ’22 commented on how special it is for the Class of 2022 to have bonfires book ending their college experi ence.“Coming to Princeton, I didn’t know how important athletics and football would be; and when we had our bonfire freshman year, espe cially for our class, we were like, yeah this is a really big deal, this is a really big part of Princeton,” Potter said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “To have it senior year, after the pandemic, after every thing, it’s another reminder that when we come back to full Princeton life, this is what this means. It means showing up to the games, it means winning, it means having these great celebra tions, so I think it’s really spe cial for our class.” The Tigers received the title of Ivy League Champions this Saturday with a 34–14 defeat over the University of Penn sylvania. First-year defensive lineman Tommy Matheson spoke on the heightened stakes of the game. “Going into that game, we wanted to win. Internally, we thought it meant nothing if we lost that game,” Mathe son said. “I just think, you know, this whole bonfire is great, but if we weren’t the Ivy League Champions it wouldn’t have felt as nice.” Matheson said being cheered on at the bonfire “was one of the most cool, one-of-akind experiences of my life … and so hopefully we’ll get a lotPrincetonmore.” shares the title with Dartmouth College, after the Big Green defeated Brown University 52–31 on Saturday. Princeton and Dart mouth, the Ivy League cochampions, both ended their seasons 9–1. The Tigers secured the title of Ivy League Champions for the 13th time in program his tory. As per tradition, their wins over both Harvard and Yale in the same season en sured a bonfire celebration for the Princeton community. Beginning Sunday at 10 a.m., each class took part in building the bonfire. Stu dents decorated wooden pal lets to commemorate Princ eton’s double victory and stacked the pieces to create an ignitable tower. An outhouse with the scores of the Har vard and Yale games — 18–16 and 35–20 respectively — topped off the pile of pallets declaring student sentiments towards these two rivals. Students wrote, “Harvard is a safety school” and “Yale is number 5 in the ranking but last in our hearts” in colorful script to be burned in the cel ebratory bonfire, as well as: “Princeton forever, see you all in Whighell!” Hall and Clio Hall were lit orange in celebration of Princeton’s Ivy League vic tory as spectators began to congregate around barricades in anticipation of the bonfire. The bells of Nassau Hall be gan to ring at 7:30 p.m. Before speeches commenced, the Princeton University Band, cheerleaders, and winning football team paraded around theMorganbonfire.McDonald ’25, tak ing part in her first event as a cheerleader during the bon fire, told the ‘Prince,’ “it felt so nice after the past year and a half to come together and celebrate something.” “I’m a very traditional per son,” she added. “I think today reminded everyone what it means to be a Princetonian.” Speeches followed these initial festivities. Speakers included Program Coordina tor in the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students Mitchel Charles ’18, Univer sity President Christopher Eisgruber ’83, USG President Potter, Senior Class President Santiago Guiran ’22, Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack ’00, and Princeton Football Head Coach Bob Surace ’90. The women’s lightweight crew team was invited to lead the crowd in a Locomotive cheer as a way to celebrate their IRA National Champi onship title this past spring. “We feel really honored that the new athletic director, John Mack, wanted to honor us in such a public setting,” Junior rower Sarah Polson said. Junior rower Artemis Veizi added, “It was also really ex citing to celebrate the football team and their accomplish ments. It’s nice to be a sports team supporting the other sports teams on campus and having that 37 — soon 38 — varsity team unity.” Looking back on their spring 2021 achievements, Polson said it was “amazing” that the team was allowed to compete at all, and that “the circumstances lended itself to a boat that was one of the fastest boats we’ve ever put out.”“We’re just excited to build off of that,” she added. Following the speeches, the football team proceeded to light the bonfire pile. The lights illuminating Can non Green were turned off, and the lawn went dark aside from the subtle glow of the bonfire.Aftera few minutes, flames erupted, and cheers burst from the crowd. Smoke rose and blurred the view of East Pyne Hall. As wood from the bonfire continued to crum ble, cheers continued to rise. For spectators watching the bonfire’s flames nearly reach the trees behind Nas sau Hall, the celebration was a unifying experience. “This has made me realize how happy I am to be a part of the Princeton community,” said Nina Boudet ’25. “It was huge energy … ev eryone was just in a great mood for this, it’s been a long time coming for sure,” Potter said. “It feels like a big victo ry, not just over Harvard and Yale, but over a lot of chal lenges and adversities.” The Princeton University Band concluded the bonfire with a performance of “Old Nassau.”PeterAnella ’25, a member of the rugby team experienc ing the bonfire during his first semester on campus, ex pressed his excitement over the sporadic tradition. “How many more times is this gonna happen in your life?” he asked. “Probably never.”
By Wilson Conn Head Sports Editor
‘Bookended by a bonfire’: Tigers take home Ivy League title for first time since 2018
