March 17, 2017

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Friday March 17, 2017 vol. CXLI no. 28

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STUDENT LIFE

U. students volunteer with fire department

By Katie Petersen staff writer

Of the roughly 1,000 calls the Princeton Fire Department receives every year, 100 percent are answered by volunteers. When a call comes in, these volunteer firefighters rush to the Witherspoon Street firehouse, don their turnout gear, and board a fire engine. The process takes under 10 minutes.

Five of those volunteers are University students.

The partnership between the University and the town fire department has existed informally for decades, but was formalized in 2006 with the creation of the Princeton Student Firefighter Association, said Bob Gregory, Princeton Fire Department’s Director of Emergency Services. The three to six students that are involved every year are full-f ledged members and go through intensive training.

That means 170 hours of learning about fire suppression, forcible entry, and “all the fun stuff,” says Amanda Hurley, a sixthyear graduate student in molecular biology at the University.

Hurley signed up to become a volunteer firefighter five years ago at an activities fair. She was thrilled she had the chance to do so;

she even wrote about firefighters for a writing class.

“I never had the opportunity [to be a firefighter] before I came to Princeton, because they have such a well-established program for getting students into the fire department,” Hurley said.

Gregory hailed the importance of the program and the students it brings in. The students “give the fire department another set of eyes on things. A lot of the students are very good because they’re analytical,” he explained.

“We’ve had a couple of students help in ... SOPs, standard operating procedures,” Gregory said.

“We’ve had some students look at how we do things and say, ‘Hey, I think we’d be better off doing it this way or that way.’”

Hurley and other student volunteers said their service has been a benefit to them, as well as the community.

Danielle Sawtelle ’17, one of the volunteers, said that she enjoys the chance to get out of the Orange Bubble and work with the other volunteers, most of whom are either older adults or younger high schoolers.

“As a student, it’s cool ... to interact with people who are in different stages of life,” Sawtelle said.

See FIRE page 2

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A Facebook page of University students sharing memes has garnered almost 6,000 members.

U. memes page goes viral

By Jane Sul staff writer

University Facebook group Princeton Memes for Preppy AF Teens has recently gained fame both within and outside the University. The public group, which now has almost 6,000 members, is an open forum on which members of the group post funny memes relating to Princeton life.

The group’s official page describes the group as “just a bunch of entitled millennials on a FB page wasting their time writing memes.”

It also adds a friendly caveat which reminds members to “keep memes wholesome.”

Nina Osipova ’20 created the meme page on Feb. 28.

She said her idea to create the page came after talking to a friend who attends Harvard about Harvard’s similar memes page.

“My friend said that one of the people she knew at Harvard who is also a freshman recently started their own meme page a month ago....

She asked me, ‘Does Princeton have a meme page?’”

After the conversation with her friend, Osipova looked to see if a Princeton memes page already existed.

She found one page, but it was not active.

“I found that there was one [page] called Princeton

Memes for Sad AF Teens,” Osipova said. The Facebook page had been created in December 2016, but it had been inactive for a long time.

“It was pretty much dead,” Osipova said. “No one had posted in it for quite a while.”

Osipova reached out to Shannon Chen ’20, who had originally created the page, to see if she was interested in helping revive it.

“I messaged her. I knew that I was going to sound super weird,” Osipova said.

Chen quickly accepted Osipova’s offer to help revive the group. She is now one of the four co-administrators of Princeton Memes for Preppy See MEMES page 3

ACADEMICS

STUDENT LIFE

U. professor Julian Zelizer is elected to Society of American Historians

Students to embark on TigerTrek to New York

By Abhiram Karuppur

By Kristin Qian

In Opinion

Today on Campus

A Wilson School MPA shares her philosophy on the PPS budget, and the Editorial Board calls for more initiatives that encourage school spirit in sports. PAGE 4

1 p.m.: Join th Muslim Life Program to participate in Jummah Prayer with Imam Sohaib Sultan in Murray-Dodge 104 from 1 pm to 3 pm.

Wilson School professor Julian Zelizer has been elected as a member of the Society of American Historians, which composes around 400 members, including professional historians, journalists, and film and documentary makers.

“I am honored by the Society’s recognition of my work and to join this distinguished group of writers,” Zelizer said.

Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs, and he has been a professor at the University since 2007. He earned his bachelor’s degree in history from Brandeis University in 1991, and he received his master’s degree and Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University in 1994 and 1996, respectively.

According to website of the University Department of History, Zelizer “has been one of the pioneers in the revival of Ameri-

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staff writer

The inaugural weeklong New York TigerTrek trip, hosted by the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, will take place over spring break next week.

Twenty undergraduates have been selected to participate in this trip, and they will be meeting with founders and CEOs of startups, venture capital firms, and other companies in New York and Philadelphia.

The lineup includes Comcast, Chegg, x.ai, Etsy, Bond Street, Greycroft, WaitButWhy, Tory Burch, Iris, Stitch, Insight, REINGE Clothing, and the author Jennifer Weiner.

The trip is co-directed by Soham Daga ’18 and Caroline Stafford ’18.

The E-Club has hosted a weeklong Silicon Valley TigerTrek for the last five years, and last year, a one-day TigerTrek to New York City was developed. Stafford, who is a concentrator in comparative literature and has been a member of the E-Club since her freshman year, led the trip. She has since worked on transitioning the one-day trip into a weeklong experience for this year, modeling it after the Silicon Valley program that the E-Club offers as well.

“Everyone on campus here always talks about ‘West Coast,

best coast’ in terms of entrepreneurship and innovation,” Stafford noted. She explains that there accordingly seems to be a lack of consideration of the buzzing entrepreneurship that is taking place in New York.

Daga, an ORFE major, participated in the Silicon Valley TigerTrek trip his freshman year, characterizing it as a defining experience of his Princeton career.

“I wanted to create a similar experience,” Daga said. “I really wanted to see whether or not opportunities that exist on the West Coast, like in Silicon Valley, can be found on the East Coast,” he added.

Many people think that going to Silicon Valley is the only plausible way to succeed in entrepreneurship, Daga noted, but there are actually quite a number of startups in New York. Although most major tech companies are in California, there is a much more diverse selection of companies in New York, from fashion to biotech to artificial intelligence, Daga said.

Three freshmen, five sophomores, eight juniors, and four seniors will be embarking on the trip.

“Of course Silicon Valley is great for tech startups, but entrepreneurship is not just about tech. New York is obviSee TIGERTREK page 2

WEATHER

Professor Zeliger noted he is “honored by the Society’s recognition.”

can political history” and is the author of several books, including “The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society,” published in 2015, and “Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security—From World War II to the War on Terrorism,” published in 2010.

Zelizer has edited 10 books on American political history, and he has published over 700 op-eds in outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

He also has a weekly column on CNN.com. Some of his recent op-eds include “Trump’s Hidden Success,” published on CNN.com, and “How Medicare Both Salved and Scarred American Healthcare,” published on Zócalo Public Square.

He is also a regular contributor on CNN’s TV channel, and he co-hosts the podcast “Politics & Polls” with Sam Wang, University professor of neuroscience and molecular biology and founder of the Princeton Election Consortium.

Wang, a polling expert, said that if President Donald Trump won more than 240 electoral votes, he would eat a bug — which he later did on CNN. In addition, Zelizer has received fellowships from the Brookings Institution, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the New America Foundation.

Zelizer is not the only member See ZELIZER page 3

Associate News Editor

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Mildly cold and Sunny chance of rain:

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The Daily Princetonian

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Hurley: Firefighting one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done FIRE

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“They always check in on how classes are doing and it kind of brings some of the University to them, as well.”

Classes occupy time and school is important, but academic demands don’t deter the hardworking University volunteers, who take at least 15 percent of the calls the department receives, including three active-duty nights per month on which they must respond to whatever calls come in.

When asked how she balances being a volunteer firefighter with being a graduate student in molecular biology, Hurley laughed and said, “I just never told my boss.”

“Sometimes when you’re

in the lab or you’re doing a lot of intellectual stimulation, it feels really good to just get out there and do physical, productive work that has a beginning and end, you know? ” Hurley explained. “Grad school sometimes feels like it’s never going to end, but if you go put out a fire, you’re like, ‘I did something today. And it feels amazing.’”

“Being a firefighter is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done,” Hurley added.

That passion is vital to keeping the Princeton Fire Department thriving. The response force consists of about 30 volunteers, meaning that these student firefighters make up nearly 20 percent of the department’s numbers.

Gregory has been in the firefighting business for 30 years, and has been sta-

tioned in Princeton for 18 of those. Fire Chief Dan Tomalin has been at the department for 30 years, Deputy Chief Kyle Rendall for 25, and Assistant Chief Salvatore Baldino for 15.

“The volunteer fire department used to have more of a fixed community base, where people would stay in,” explained Gregory, adding, “The majority would be like Dan and Kyle and Sal.” But now, their long records of service are the exception.

Because people seem to move around more, Gregory says, “it has gotten a lot more difficult to maintain volunteer levels. But the program with the University helps us tremendously.”

IMAGE BY AMANDA HURLEY

From left to right: Amanda Hurley, AJ Goldman, Sam Pritt, and Dave Kolet. Hurley, Pritt, and Kolet are students at the University who give their time to volunteering at the fire department.

Friday March 17, 2017

Weeklong trip will include many meetings, site visits TIGERTREK Continued from page 1

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ously an amazing hub of activity in the entrepreneurial business world, and it’s really close,” Eric Stinehart ’20, a prospective Woodrow Wilson School major, said. Stinehart was also part of the organizing team for this trip.

“I think it will give us a glimpse into different types of industries we might be interested in career-wise. That’s why I think it’s great as a freshman to start to get an idea of that,” he explained.

Amy Liu ’19, a BSE computer science concentrator who also helped organize this trip, said that it will be exciting to talk to founders and CEOs, learn about the risks they have taken, and find out how they have brought their ideas to fruition.

“I think that [entrepreneurship] is really inspiring and something I definitely want to be a part of in the future,” Liu said.

During the trip, there will also be a networking and mentorship event with alumni. The alumni event will be a way to see a more personal side to entrepreneurship, foster meaningful relationships, and be an opportunity to ask questions about Princeton to these leaders, Stafford noted. Meeting these people and talking to them about their experiences, failures, and mistakes can encourage students, she added.

In entrepreneurship, there is a valid fear of failure, Stafford noted. The event will help students with this by giving them the opportunity to talk to people who have had these fears, she continued.

“Entrepreneurship is the willingness to innovate,” Stafford explained. At its core, she said, entrepreneurship is not

The Honor Code Marisa Chow ’17

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a complex or intangible concept, but rather something accessible.

“I’m not COS or ORFE. I am comp[erative] lit[erature]. As a qualitative individual, I can still have a place in entrepreneurship,” Stafford said.

Meaghan O’Neill ’17, a senior in the computer science department, applied to the New York TigerTrek based feedback she had heard from her friends who had participated in the Silicon Valley TigerTrek. On the trip next week, she hopes to get exposure to different startups and to learn from people who have been successful in entrepreneurship and their respective ventures.

“For me, I see myself ultimately going into a career of entrepreneurship, whether that’s five, 10, or 15 years down the road,” O’Neill explained.

“I actually didn’t know that there was such a robust entrepreneurship scene in New York prior to applying. I just figured that all the big name companies that you recognize would be out west. That’s not the case, obviously,” O’Neill said. “I think it’s a really good thing to see how startups do in cities that aren’t necessarily nurturing for startups.”

Throughout the course of the week, students will visit three to four companies each day and participate in other group activities together.

“I hope to ask hard questions to leaders and get honest answers about what their struggles are and what their mistakes are. I think there’s a lot of value to be found in learning from other people’s mistakes,” Daga said.

The TigerTrek will run from March 19 to March 25. The trip is sponsored by the Bendheim Center for Finance.

The Daily Princetonian

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Zelizer has Osipova: The meme page helps us to cope with written over the stress culture, brings people together MEMES 700 op-eds Continued from page 1

ZELIZER

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of his family at the University.

His mother, Viviana Zelizer, is a professor of sociology at the University, and his wife, Meg Jacobs, is a research scholar in the Wilson School.

The Society of American Historians was founded in 1939 by Columbia history professor Allan Nevins, in order to “bring good historical writing to the largest possible audience.”

The society also sponsors four awards every year for nonfiction books and dissertations. Those awards are the Francis Parkman Prize for the best nonfiction work in American history, the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for the best historical novel on an American theme, the Allan Nevins Prize for the best-written history doctoral dissertation, and the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Prize for distinguished writing in American history.

The society’s Executive Secretary is Andie Tucher ’76, who served as a speechwriter during Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. Other members in the society include historians Danielle Allen ’93, James Goodman GS ’90, Martha Hodes GS ’91, and Daniel Kevles ’60 GS ’64. Past presidents of the society include University History Professor Emeritus James McPherson.

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AF Teens.

Osipova said that only University students were allowed to join the old group, which may have contributed to its lack of popularity.

“The problem was that you couldn’t join the group because you could only join if you had a Princeton email,” Osipova explained. “I thought that was super unnecessary and I told Shannon, ‘Okay, I’m going to make a new page.’”

Inexperienced in such social media ventures, Osipova said she simply followed the advice of her friend from Harvard.

“My Harvard friend had told me — ‘Make sure you make everything completely public, don’t require anything from anybody, just add all of your friends, and post like five starter memes.’”

Osipova received her first 20 notifications during her physics lab. After that, “everything just became totally

crazy,” she noted.

The group’s popularity has grown exponentially in less than a month. Osipova said that through the Facebook page, students can post, tag friends, and comment on relatable University-specific problems and experiences through memes. Some of the memes target academic aspects of the University including writing seminars, theses, precepts, and classes, particularly COS 126: Computer Science - An Interdisciplinary Approach.

Other posts focus on aspects of social life unique to the University.

The “public” setting for the page has also allowed individuals from outside the University community to contribute to the group.

Fiona Erskine-Smith, an Australian woman who stumbled on the group after reading a New York Times article about millennials, has become quite the celebrity within the page after joining the group and making a prominent post: “I’m 44 years old and live

in Sydney, Australia. Admins, I’m f lattered but also not sure you should have accepted me? I pressed the ‘join’ button as an experiment and now I feel slightly ashamed. Just thought you should know,” her post read.

The post has since garnered over 700 likes and 35 comments.

Over a phone call, ErskineSmith said she appreciated the pressures that students are under, as well as students’ “ongoing competition with the other campuses.”

She said she was surprised that after making multiple posts in the group, she has been added by a number of students on Facebook.

Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals and reportedly “the most hated man in America,” was also a member of the group for some period.

Osipova said that one of the admins of the page had to remove him from the group after he made “an inappropriate post.”

“Memes give you a chance to sit back and laugh about

silly things,” said Mofopefoluwa Olarinmoye ’20, a moderator of the group.

“We are living in a stressful environment,” Osipova explained. “We are going through school which dominates all our time. We are removed from home. The meme page helps us to cope with a stress culture. It brings people together.”

Mohamed Shalan ’17, a frequent poster in the Facebook group, said he likes the group because the memes “resonate with a lot of students.”

“I like its light criticism and appreciation of Princeton culture. It was a great way to combine something mainstream with a group experience,” he said.

When asked what her favorite meme was, Osipova said, “It’s the Wilcox chicken meme.”

“I am from Wilson College and I can absolutely agree with the meme that their chicken is very, very dry,” she said.

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#Fresh

Grace Koh ’19

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Opinion

Friday March 17, 2017

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EDITORIAL

Fostering campus spirit for athletic teams

T

he recent successes of the men’s basketball team have generated significant excitement on campus. The team’s victories over Penn and Yale in the inaugural Ivy League Tournament led to a NCAA tournament bid as the No. 12 seed, and the team was on a 19-game winning streak going into the tournament. The team has experienced tremendous support from students over the past several weeks through a variety of social outlets, such as high game attendance and Princeton filters on Facebook profile pictures to support the team on the road to the NCAA tournament. There was also high demand for tickets to the recent firstround Ivy League Tournament game versus Penn, even though it was an away game taking place during the weekend before midterms. The Board commends both the recent performance of all of the University’s athletic teams and students’ commitment to spectatorship. We encourage students to continue this strong support for all of the University’s athletic teams and encourage the University to expand policies facilitating this support.

Currently the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students and Princeton Athletics provide student transportation to select away games, such as the Ivy League tournament game against Penn. The Board commends

this effort and encourages the University to continue offering transportation for nearby high-profile games.

Additionally, the Board recommends that ODUS and Princeton Athletics consider expanding the number of nearby games to which they offer transportation. This way, students will have more opportunities to support their teams. ODUS also organized a viewing party with pizza in Frist Campus Center to watch the NCAA tournament game versus Notre Dame.

The Board encourages ODUS to continue holding events like this for other major-league and championship away games for all sports so that students can support their fellow Princetonians even when traveling to the game is not feasible.

The Board also commends the work that the Undergraduate Student Government currently does to foster a spirited atmosphere for our athletic teams, and the Board encourages it to expand this work. For example, USG could include all upcoming games for the week in its weekly emails, as opposed to only mentioning select games. This simple addition would help increase campus awareness of various sporting events and potentially increase attendance at traditionally less-attended athletic events.

Similarly, the Board recommends that the University install a promi-

nently displayed sign in Frist listing each team’s season games or competitions and highlighting the dates of home games. This would be consistent with Frist’s current role as a hub for the campus community, by giving students necessary information to support their fellow Princetonians.

Having this information displayed as a calendar that is put up at the beginning of each sports season would be beneficial because it would give even the busiest of students the advanced notice necessary to plan game attendance into their schedules.

Campus support for our athletic teams, particularly men’s basketball, has been very strong, and the Board hopes students continue to support their fellow Princetonians, on both men’s and women’s teams, in their athletic endeavors. The Board also supports the University’s current role in facilitating student support of these events and urges it to continue developing these efforts so that the University can continue to be a spirited atmosphere for all of our athletic teams.

The Editorial Board is an independent body and decides its opinions separately from the regular staff and editors of The Daily Princetonian. The Board answers only to its Co-Chairs, the Opinion Editor, and the Editor-in-Chief. It can be reached at editorialboard@dailyprincetonian.com.

Bursting the bubble: Reflections on work at Princeton Janelle Tam

Contributing columnist

I

will always remember my very first midterms week at the University, staggering under the weight of work and despairing at the growing realization that I was desperately behind. One night is etched in my memory. Caught in a vicious cycle of being too stressed to sleep and becoming more stressed because I couldn’t sleep, I sat on the couch in my common room, alone, utterly exhausted, and wondering what I was doing at this school.

Why am I at Princeton?

What is the purpose of my work in the first place?

On the most basic level, I wanted to do well in school so I could graduate and get a job to secure my future. But there was a deeper, more troubling line of thought — that my GPA was the measure of my success, and I needed to be successful because that was what I had built my identity on.

I’ve talked to many people who have had experiences similar to mine, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

The culture within our Orange Bubble lauds academic

excellence, often in a way that makes it easy to become consumed with our problem sets and papers. But is that even an accurate attitude towards work, let alone a healthy one?

To find out, I talked to a few alumni about their perspectives on academic work at the University. I figured that they had the benefit of hindsight and a few years’ distance to give them a more objective point of view. Their consensus on the purpose of academic work was clear: Our classes at Princeton should prepare us for our post-graduation plans, but more importantly, help us develop as people.

For Shawon Jackson ’15, the most useful outcome of his academic work was critical thinking skills and and set of skills to enter different communities. “Work will always be there,” he said. “It’s just a question of what is the actual output of your effort. If the output for me is not helping someone or drastically changing the situation, there’s no need to get stressed about it.”

Work is about so much more than proving to myself that I can get an A. It’s about embarking on an exciting intellectual exploration, and

acquiring the tools to find answers to my questions about the world. It’s about growing in maturity and curiosity, learning to look at the way things are, and asking not only why things are there but how they can be changed. It’s about gaining the knowledge and skills to make an impact.

I would argue that it is possible to do all of these things and have a terrible GPA. Most of the time, focusing on intellectual exploration, rather than getting A’s, will have the positive effect of infusing our work with the genuine interest, excitement, and joy that lead to good grades. But this is not always true. One of our education system’s flaws is that its measurements of academic success do not always quantify the right things. Take failure, for example. Clearly, anyone who has never failed has never been challenged.

Yet how many of us avoid the challenge of a difficult class for fear of hurting our GPAs? What finally calmed me down that night in my freshman year was the realization that the problem wasn’t my imminent bad grades; instead, the problem was my relationship to my work. I had

begun to see it as a measure of who I was, as opposed to a means to a greater end. That outlook didn’t change my performance in my classes — I still got the lowest grades I’d ever gotten. But it changed the way I view my work. I tried to choose classes based on pure interest and usefulness.

I decided to audit a class so I could learn without having to worry about being evaluated.

I started to attend talks from different departments, go to free workshops, linger for conversations with professors and classmates, read for fun. I let go of the premed track because it drove my focus on my GPA. It’s been a struggle to maintain this attitude towards work and I have often failed, which is why I need a regular check in with myself.

Why am I at Princeton?

What is the purpose of all of this work in the first place?

If I don’t like the answer, then I know it’s time for an attitude change.

Janelle Tam is a senior from Waterloo, Canada. She can be reached at jhtam@princeton.edu.

vol. cxli

Sarah Sakha ’18

editor-in-chief

Matthew McKinlay ’18 business manager

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

141ST MANAGING BOARD managing editors Megan Laubach ’18 Grace Rehaut ’18 Christina Vosbikian ’18 Head news editor Marcia Brown ’19 news editors Abhiram Karuppur ’19 opinion editor Newby Parton ‘18 sports editor David Xin ‘19 street editor Jianing Zhao ‘20 photography editor Rachel Spady ‘18 web editor David Liu ‘18 chief copy editors Isabel Hsu ‘19 Samuel Garfinkle ‘19 design editor Abigail Kostolansky ’20 Rachel Brill ’19 associate opinion editors Samuel Parsons ’19 Nicholas Wu ’18 associate sports editors Miranda Hasty ’19 Claire Coughlin ’19 associate street editor Andie Ayala ‘19 Catherine Wang ’19 associate chief copy editors Caroline Lippman ’19 Omkar Shende ‘18 editorial board co-chairs Ashley Reed ‘18 Connor Pfeiffer ’18 cartoons editor Tashi Treadway ‘19

NIGHT STAFF 3.16.17 copy Douglas Corzine ’20 Jordan Antebi ’19

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Togetherness Marissa Rosenberg-Carlson Contributing columnist

T

he minimalist composer John Cage had a catchphrase: “I have nothing to say and I’m saying it.” That’s me. I text my friends all the time, especially when I have nothing to say. I do this because I hate being alone. I stay for hours when I eat dinner at Terrace, not so much to procrastinate on work as to procrastinate leaving a social space for a carrel in Firestone that I find to be way too quiet.

For 20 years, I successfully avoided having to being alone for any extended period of time.

This fall, I studied abroad at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). There, for the first time, I was truly alone.

At Princeton, we check in with each other. If my Arabic class starts at 9:00 a.m. and I’m not there by 9:10, I can count on one of my classmates to message me, “Ayna anti? [Where are you?]”

If something suddenly concerns

me at 11:30 a.m., I work through it with friends over lunch at noon.

If I witness a flash mob in Frist at 4:00 p.m., I’m laughing about it with the Glee Club alto section by 4:30. We complain (with reason) about how insular our Bubble can be, and yet I love that we are bound up in one another’s lives.

It was hard for me to find comparable situations abroad. At SOAS, exchange students rarely join school societies; most are distracted by the city. Even London at large grapples with loneliness. In 2010, Britain’s Mental Health Foundation found that 60 percent of Londoners aged 18 to 24 frequently feel lonely. In 2015, the UK Office for National Statistics deemed Britain the “loneliness capital of Europe,” reporting that Londoners have fewer strong friendships and are less likely to know their neighbors than people in any other European town.

Given only a few months to build relationships, I felt acutely plagued by “London loneliness.”

Some Wednesday morning in

October, I woke up — alone in my single room in my central London flat — with an inexplicable feeling of dread. I got dressed silently, made and ate breakfast alone, and to my horror realized that I was accountable only to myself — with no classes on Wednesdays and the city at my disposal. An hour later I enjoyed art at the Barbican Centre, but debriefed it with no one. I sat arbitrarily in a café, perused four bookstores, and wandered home on a roundabout path, since no one was expecting me. The anonymity felt unnatural, like I was leading a secretive existence.

This, in turn, felt purposeless.

That night I wondered, “What’s the use of doing anything for myself if I’m not sharing my experiences with other people?”

But since study abroad should push our limits, I challenged myself, after that day, to be alone more often. This encouraged endless introspection. I became more perceptive to what I wanted and more committed to making myself happy. I completed class readings only when they

interested me. I read eccentric British memoirs for pleasure. I didn’t feel guilty about sleeping eight hours each night. When I panicked after the U.S. election, I left bad media consumption habits in my flat and escaped to Ireland.

By December I had accepted that, for group-oriented folks like me, study abroad is inherently lonely. I didn’t let that preclude me from having a meaningful semester. I made peace with the realization that communities are my reason for being. I knew I would have to work harder to keep up my energy as long as I was away from Princeton. So I did.

On my plane back to the States I recalled “The Opposite of Loneliness,” a piece written five years ago in the Yale Daily News by the late Marina Keegan. Regarding being on Yale’s campus, Keegan wrote: “It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together.”

What I missed most about

Princeton was this sense of abundance. Its energy can overwhelm us. Our campus communities are dissonant. But I never lose the feeling that I somehow belong with you all. I never study alone. I never eat meals alone.

If I can’t sleep, I can walk outside at four in the morning and know that another insomniac or Street-goer or early riser will be somewhere out there, too, sharing at least a time and place with me.

While you’re still here, I hope that you likewise find moments of solitude. I hope that through them you come to appreciate some aspect of this community - like abundance that has welcomed you, some person you want to hug, some place or experience that makes any of this worthwhile.

Marissa Rosenberg-Carlson is a Near Eastern Studies major from San Francisco, Calif. She can be reached at myr@princeton.edu.

Princeton Public Schools: Valuing public education Vivian Chang

Guest Contributor

A

re we asking the right questions about public schools? On March 14, ‘Prince’ contributing columnist Sarah Dinovelli ’18 published an op-ed regarding Princeton Public Schools’ budget. In light of this piece, I want to engage in dialogue about the broader themes of public education and Princeton schools in particular.

Dinovelli criticizes initiatives such as additional funding for a psychology intern and an elementaryschool gardening program. Criticism of these fund allocations for not “greatly impact[ing] students’ learning” is imprudent in its attempt to narrowly define education.

First, even in a high-achieving area like Mercer County, N.J., students in K-12 schools face extreme academic pressure. This has garnered national media attention, with extreme examples of students as young as 10 years old worrying about having “nothing to put on [their] résumés.”

Funding for psychology interns in K-12 schools provides counseling to students and supports their mental well-being. We at the University can attest to the dire need for more coun-

seling services, given the perennial push for expansion of Counseling and Psychological Services funding and counselors.

In addition, hands-on learning programs like school gardens improve student learning outcomes and creativity. Children who have access to free play in school experience cognitive, social, and physical benefits. Just as well, these programs provide a respite from high-stakes testing instruction and academic stress.

One study by Kontra et al. (2015) at the University of Chicago and DePaul University showed that hands-on learning experiences improved students’ grasps of concepts in physics.

I have worked in the School District of Philadelphia myself, liaising with school principals and teachers and teaching after-school programs in a smaller role, I have seen the importance of less-structured play to students’ learning and mental wellness.

Second, Dinovelli’s criticism of the Princeton School Board’s budget stems from a proposed deficit of 0.4 percent ($400,000 out of $95 million). By combining this issue with references to teachers’ unions and the proposed Princeton Charter School expansion, which will cost the Princeton Public Schools $1.16 million annually, Dinovelli attempts to imply fiscal irresponsibility on the

part of the Princeton School Board on par with the magnitude of these issues. This is not a compelling argument. The spending issue in question amounts to a tiny fraction of the overall school budget; reducing this spending would not affect teachers’ contracts, nor would it ease the burden of charter school expansion.

That said, we should consider the broader issue of Princeton’s raising taxes and potentially pricing out lower-income families. Given the township’s above-average median income (estimated at $114,645 according to the United States Census Bureau), and the municipality’s current lawsuit against increasing its “fair share” affordable housing obligations, the lack of access to excellent schools like Princeton’s replicates economic inequalities on a greater scale. And based on the recent national attention paid to the University’s need for greater socioeconomic diversity in the student body, we should also be talking about the significance of ensuring quality education for all students.

Nevertheless, Dinovelli’s original concern with Princeton Public Schools is not about economic inequality or access to education, but rather programs she deems “superfluous.” Arguing that “the children of Princeton can survive without

learning how to grow carrots” in the name of “efficiency” underestimates the strength of the educational resources that attract families and students to Princeton. Having interviewed dozens of students from Princeton-area high schools, I have seen the positive impact of highly well-resourced schools that invest in students’ personal and academic growth.

Public education is a public good.

It requires community investment and good faith by taxpayers. Princeton-area families move here specifically so that their children can attend nationally-ranked public schools, just as many of our parents did for us, if they had the choice and finances to do so. Denouncing the Princeton School Board for spending on psychology interns and innovative programs attempts to force education into a box, limited by narrow ideas on what educational goals should be. We came to Princeton to receive a liberal education. Should we begrudge Princeton K-12 students the same opportunities?

Vivian Chang is a second-year Master in Public Affairs student in the Wilson School from Columbus, Ohio. She can be reached at vivianc@princeton.edu.

Sports

Friday March 17, 2017

page 6

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } MEN’S BASKETBALL

​ igers fight to the wire, T fall to Notre Dame 58-60

By Chris Murphy Contributor

In an epic game to kick of the Round of 64, the men’s basketball team can hold their heads up high, knowing they fought the No. 5-seeded Irish to the wire and only just missed a potentially game-winning three-pointer in the final seconds of the game. In one of the biggest games of Princeton’s history, the Tigers gave Notre Dame everything they had and unfortunately came up just short.

The Tigers came into this game as the No. 12 seed, looking to use their perimeter attack against a Notre Dame team that played a similar style. However, it became clear in the opening minutes that this game would come down to Princeton stopping the inside pressure of the Irish.

Notre Dame quickly changed their play style, transitioning from a perimeter shooting team to one that was content with — as coach Mike Brey of the Irish described — “throwing the ball down in there and seeing what happens.” This created an early mismatch for the Tigers, who looked out-ofcharacter in the beginning of the game while having to deal with a combination of Bonzie Colson down low and Matt Farrell on the perimeter. Farrell scored six points early, Colson was disruptive in the paint, and the Tigers failed to score for the first few minutes of the game, going one for six and missing their first three shots.

As Mitch Henderson notes, “We were a little impatient throughout the first half.”

The rest of the first half was a back-and-forth affair, as the Tigers tried to claw their

way back into the game, only to see Notre Dame pull back away. However, senior Spencer Weisz — the Ivy League’s player of the year — showed great performance throughout what became his final game in a Princeton uniform. He hit several three-pointers early on, including one that tied the game at 11 with 12:47 to go, and netted himself eight points before the halfway mark of the first half. He was a key component throughout the game and has been a critical player throughout the season, leaving his mark on this Princeton team.

A critical juncture of the game came in the midway portion of the first half. Taking a feed from Myles Stephens, Amir Bell drove it inside and made a lay-up. Princeton took the lead 17-15, and forced the Irish to call a timeout with 11:26 to go. However, just after the timeout, the Tigers failed to capitalize on the momentum, going through a six-minute scoring drought during which the Irish were able to regain the lead. The Tigers would never regain their lead.

“I think they out toughed us in the second half,” Weisz said.

“They got all the loose balls, they forced turnovers, they grabbed the rebounds, and we fell behind because of it.”

Princeton would build some momentum heading into the break, based again on a threepoint attack. Weisz, sophomore Devin Cannady, and senior Steven Cook each made a three-pointer, pulling the Tigers to within six points at the half. But to begin the second half, Notre Dame’s Farrell and Colson took the game back over. Farrell scored seven points in the first four min-

utes of the half, and an emphatic dunk by Colson put the Irish up double digits.

“We asked ourselves what we wanted to make of this game,” Weisz noted. “We brought more toughness late in the second half.”

Weisz led the ferocious Tiger comeback with the other Princeton players in hot pursuit.

Weisz’s reverse layup at the 11:30 mark trimmed the lead to six, and it was evident that the frustration was mounting for the Irish. Cannady converted a layup and one opportunity, Stephens had a monster slam to send the Princeton faithful into a frenzy, and the Tigers were staring at only a fivepoint deficit, with 5:19 to go.

“In a situation like that, you’re trying to do everything you can to claw back. At the end we started to get back to our old ways,” Cook noted.

The Tigers got a tough break at the 4:02 mark when a play that seemed like a charging foul was deemed a blocking foul. The officials reviewed it and confirmed the call, sending Steve Vasturia of the Irish to the line, where he converted both free throws. As the clocked ticked to under a minute, Princeton brought the game within one possession, after a tip-in by Pete Miller.

Then madness ensued.

Princeton sent a crosscourt inbounds pass to set up a Tiger with a three-pointer, with 20 seconds to play and three points to make up.

While this shot missed, Miller cut through the defense and tipped it in, bringing the game to within one. The Tigers would then be forced to foul Notre Dame’s Matt Farrell, who missed his first free throw. The Tigers, needing just one point

to tie the game, gave the ball to a testament to the teams. We Cannady, who was set up by a can compete with anyone.” screen and given an open look.

As we look ahead to next Cannady took the shot, the ball year, the Tigers will be a team careened just out, and the Ti- to be reckoned with. They will gers would put Notre Dame on not only return with a young the line with 0.4 seconds to go, core of talent, but will also ending their chances of a win. have valuable experience that a Cannady said after the team can only gain from playgame, “When that ball left my ing in positions like this. Next hand, I thought it was good.” year, other teams better watch Many people thought the same out. thingunfortunately, ― it was not Today is also day to celebrate to be. the work of the seniors who, as For the Tigers, three players Coach Henderson stated, “were scored in double digits, but the responsible for bringing this Irish defense was the star of team back to its winning ways the show, forcing the Tigers and back to the NCAA Tournainto poor shooting beyond the ment.” The Class of 2016 got to arc. Cook led the way with 15 go out swinging, playing the points, Weisz had 11, and Ste- style of ball they love best with phens had 10 for the Tigers. the people they love best.

On the other side, Farrell and “The locker room after the Colson combined for 34 out of game is hard,” said Henderson. the 60 Irish points in the game. “On one hand you want to be The Tigers’ defense kept them able to thank the seniors for in this game, but their impres- all they have done. But on the sive comeback fell just short. other hand, it’s so bittersweet However, perhaps the best because it feels like we’re saymoment of today came in the ing goodbye.” conference room after the Sadly, we will never see the game. Despite just losing af- likes of Weisz, Hans Brase, ter the nation’s second-longest Miller, Cook, Alexander Lee, active winning streak, despite or Khyan Rayner on the court having their season end on playing for Princeton again. a missed three, and despite But, we can cherish the legacy shooting 25 percent from deep, that they leave us with. They the Tigers had nothing but have returned Princeton to positive words for one another. a winning culture, laid the “This year has been amazing foundation for what should for us,” Cook said. “16 and 0 be many successful seasons to in the Ivy League, and getting come, and, of course, given us the program back to the win- the first ever Ivy League Conning way. It’s been an amazing ference championship. season, and I’ve done it with So while we say goodbye people I can call family.” to the seniors, we will always “I’m just so proud of the remember the history and team we became; I couldn’t legacy they leave behind. And, have asked for anything more,” as for today, the seniors went Weisz noted. “Every year, when out with a bang, giving us one the brackets come out, people heck of a final ride. look at the Ivy League and see what matchup we have. It’s a testament to the league and

IMAGES BY MILES HINSON

Tweet of the Day “Hurts more when you know the guys, staff, and the work they put in. Best of the best. We were/are behind you every step @Princeton_Hoops” Courtney Banghart (@coachbanghart), women’s basketball head coach

Stat of the Day

15 points

Senior Spencer Weisz led the men’s basketball team with 15 points in the NCAA first round match against Notre Dame.

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