March 25, 2015

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Wednesday march 25, 2015 vol. cxxxix no. 32

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In Opinion Mizzi Gomes discusses resisting the impulse to indulge in information and guest contributor Eileen Torres suggests ways to improve the mental health environment on campus. PAGE 6

Today on Campus 4:30 p.m.: Awardwinning filmmaker Dena Seidel will deliver a talk, “The Art of Science Filmmaking.”

She is the creator of the documentary Antarctic Edge: 70° South. Guyot 10.

The Archives

March 25, 1971 The University’s 16th president, Robert Goheen ‘40, announced his resignation, disclosing no future plans. He was president for over 13 years.

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News & Notes Williams Transco discusses pipeline with Princeton, Montgomery residents

The Willia ms Tr ansco company met with Princeton and Montgomery residents to discuss developments to a $650 million natural gas pipeline project extending into both towns, according to the Times of Trenton.

Last week, Williams Transco revised its plans to dig open trenches through environmentally sensitive wetland areas of Princeton Ridge and opted to use tunneling instead.

Should an emergency merit a mass evacuation, the township has made plans for residents to be brought to a number of municipal buildings.

Residents should call 911 should they smell gas, Bob Gregory, director of Princeton’s Office of Emergency Management, said, adding that otherwise, the best plan is to shelter in place.

The company said that the new pipeline is necessary because the existing one is no longer large enough to accommodate increased production.

Environmentalists have expressed concern that the construction of a larger pipeline will encourage hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania.

Construction is slated to begin in early May and go through July.

ACADEMICS

Science journal launches

HIJAB DAY

By Christina Vosbikian staff writer

The student-run Intercollegiate Science Journal launched on March 11 after publishing its first issue.

Efforts to establish the journal were led by Stephen Cognetta ’15, former editor-in-chief of Innovation magazine, which reports on science and technology research at the University.

Articles for ICSJ are selected by the individual schools.

Participating schools other than the University are Harvard, Stanford University, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, Duke University, Rice University, Washington University in St. Louis and University of California, Berkeley.

The first issue included two articles that were written by University students.

The Princeton contingent of ICSJ is led by Cognetta, Cissy Chen ’16 and Abrar Choudhury ’16. Chen and Choudhury are Innovation magazine’s current president and editor-in-chief, respectively.

Last January, Cognetta and others began reaching out to various universities with existing science journals to see if they would be interested in joining ICSJ, Cognetta said.

“The idea was pretty simple, just to connect these science journals together,” he said.

Cognetta noted that he reached out to more than the nine member schools, but that some schools, many because of a lack of science journal or how recently their own science journals had been founded, were unable to join ICSJ. Other universities were unresponsive, Cognetta said, adding that See JOURNAL page 4

NATALIA CHEN :: ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR

A student in Frist Campus Center tries on a Hijab as part of the Muslim Students’ Association’s Hijab Day on Tuesday.

STUDENT LIFE

U. women’s basketball player threatened before game

By Katherine Oh staff writer

A threat against a member of the University’s women’s basketball team was phoned in to the University of Maryland athletics department on Monday, USA Today reported.

Leslie Robinson ’18, a forward on the women’s

basketball team and the niece of First Lady Michelle Obama ’85 and President Barack Obama, was at the University of Maryland on Monday to play the Maryland Terrapins during the second round of the NCAA Division I women’s basketball tournament.

Further investigation by the University of Maryland’s

Police Department indicated the threat was unsubstantiated.

Robinson declined to comment.

University of Maryland athletics department spokesman Zack Bolno deferred comment to the UMPD. UMPD’s public relations officer did not respond to a request for com-

U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S

Research prompts increased rodent use at U., nationwide

By Olivia Wicki staff writer

There has been a small upward trend in the University’s laboratory rodent use since the last numbers were made available in 2007, according to Dr. Laura Conour, director of laboratory animal research and University attending veterinarian.

A Feb. 25 study in the Journal of Medical Ethics found animal use in laboratories nationwide has increased by nearly 73 percent over the last 15 years, driven primarily by an increase in rodent use.

The study was conducted by researchers with the advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Inventories obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Dr. Alka Chandna, co-author of the

article, from the years 1997, 2002 and 2007 do not show a clear trend of increased use of animals in the psychology, molecular biology and ecology and evolutionary biology departments at the University.

On Nov. 30, 2007, there were 20,601 animals in inventory, on Dec. 17, 2002, there were 12,731 in inventory and on Oct. 31, 1997, there were 19,298.

The number of rodents in the inventory decreased from 14,445 in 1997 to 6,569 in 2007.

However, that trend may have changed since 2007.

“We have gone up a little bit in terms of our rodent use,” Conour said, adding that she did not know of any specific numbers that would be currently maintained by the University.

Chandna said that the

problem with such recordkeeping is the increased use of animals that are vaguely categorized, including many rodent species, since they are not subject to regulations such as the Animal Welfare Act. The Animal Welfare Act sets minimum standards of care and treatment for animals bred for commercial sale, transport and research.

Matthew Bailey, vice president at the National Association for Biomedical Research, which advocates for the humane use of animals in laboratories, said he was not surprised by the increased use of genetically modified rodents in biomedical research in the United States.

“With advancements in biotechnology over the last 20 years, scientists with geSee PETA page 5

ment.

The athletics department received a call around 3 p.m. on Monday, according to a statement released

by UMPD. The caller stated that her male acquaintance had mentioned Robinson’s name and was in possession of a handgun.

The person may have been See BASKETBALL page 5

{ Feature }

Women’s History Month: Academic

By Shriya Sekhsaria Women at the University have faced a multitude of challenges in academics such as an underrepresentation in certain disciplines and a clash between their tenures and biological clocks.

In the early years of coeducation at the University, there was also a sense of intimidation of being the only woman in most classes.

ulty members were professors who also taught identical classes at the University, according to the book “Transforming the Tiger: A Celebration of Undergraduate Women at Princeton University” by Catherine Keyser ’01. Some of these professors included logician John Grier Hibben, Class of 1882, mathematician Henry Burchard Fine, Class of 1880, and Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879.

Sharing plans and professors with the “sister college” The academic program at Evelyn College, the University’s “sister college,” was set to parallel the University’s program and mandated courses in ancient and modern languages, literature, mathematics, science and other subjects.

Forty-one of Evelyn’s fac-

Nurturing experts in “critical languages” Susan Craig ’70 said the critical languages students were permitted to take any course in the undergraduate curriculum in which they were interested. For Lynn Nagasako ’70, departmental classes for Japanese linguistics consisted of one-on-one classes with a professor at See WOMEN page 3

staff writer

BEYOND THE BUBBLE

Photographer discusses juveniles in justice system, political activism in art

By Zoe Toledo contributor

Art can be a powerful force for social change, Richard Ross, a photographer of juveniles in the U.S. justice system, said in a lecture on Tuesday.

Ross, who is also a professor of art at the University of California, Santa Barbara and executive director of Ju-

venile In Justice, discussed his photography book “Girls in Justice.”

“I’m not a judge, I’m not an attorney, I’m not a probation officer, I’m an artist and I’m a human being,” he said. “That gives me credentials. I can do something.

Even though I’m an artist, I can attack a problem.”

Through powerful images, informative facts and

personal stories, art can become sufficiently dangerous, Ross said, adding that he hoped the presentation of these images would bring about a discussion on a variety of issues relating to the incarceration of juveniles and will lead people to be aware of the different aspects of juvenile justice.

Ross freely gives his images to non-profits for advo-

cacy purposes, he said.

The Juvenile In Justice project directed by Ross uses photographs of more than 100 facilities from over 30 states to demonstrate visually the often compelling circumstances of incarcerated youth, he said, adding that his book is a closer examination of experiences of girls in the justice system.

Although data available

on juveniles in the justice system is voluminous, younger people need bits of data that are in a digestible form, Ross said. In the past, there have been important sentimental images that have defined generations, he added, explaining that using images that make intuitive sense and small facts is how he aims to inform the See LECTURE page 2

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Art can be a powerful force for social change, Ross says in lecture LECTURE Continued from page 1

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public about children in the justice system.

Ross said that he sought to demonstrate what juveniles going through the justice system experience through his photographs, adding that the juvenile system is a practice that has been hidden under the guise of administrative segregation, time-out groups and isolation.

Kids in the world of juvenile justice are often defined by the actions of the worst day of their lives, he said.

Audience members should compare this to the picture

of their parents describing their accomplishments of being admitted to the University, he added.

In the past, children have been accountable to society and institutions, Ross said, explaining that people should instead consider the notion of making society and institutions accountable to children. Ross shared the audio recording of an interview with a young girl who was sexually abused to demonstrate the complexity of the children’s situations.

Such children are thought unstable for staying in their situations and considered delinquents if they stay, he said.

“Girls are brought into the

Wednesday march 25, 2015

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juvenile justice system by a unique set of social forces and experience incarceration much differently than boys,” he said, noting that sexual abuse, experienced more commonly by girls than boys, often contributes to girls’ delinquency. Girls are also more likely to run away than boys, he said.

The lecture, called “Girls in Justice: Gender, Mass Incarceration and Journalism,” took place in McCormick Hall 101 at 4:30 p.m. The lecture was sponsored by the Ferris Lectures in Journalism, the Center for African American Studies, the Council of the Humanities and the Program in American Studies.

CHRIS FERRI :: ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR

Rockefeller College students help design murals as part of their weekly study break on Tuesday night.

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Women face underrepresentation, clash between tenure and biological clock WOMEN

Continued from page 1

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the Institute for Advanced Study.

Judith-Ann Corrente ’70 said it was extremely uncomfortable to be the only woman in a classroom full of men.

“Forty-five years later, and I still remember how scared I was,” she said. “Making myself go in there was challenging. I was shy, and it was hard because our lives were so public.”

Corrente said that at the beginning, many of her professors assumed that she did not belong.

“Most of [the sexism] was just gossip afterwards, which, you know, was pretty silly,” she said.

However, professors also encouraged critical languages students to speak and to give their opinions in class, Margery Hite ’74 said.

“I think sometimes we felt as though there was a consideration of the girl’s opinion and a guy’s opinion,” she said. “But most of us were quite aware that an opinion was an opinion – it had no gender.”

In-class attitudes towards the ‘co-eds’ Peter Cohen ’70 said women were so rare in classes that they were considered foreign entities.

“Everybody was checking out who was this woman, what did she have to say or was she hot,” he said.

Sara Sill ’73 said that in one of her classes, after discussion, the instructor would ask for the women’s opinion.

“That was a little strange — it wasn’t what you think about it, it was what did the woman in the class think about it,” she said.

Sue Perles ’75 recalled that every day throughout the semester, her chemistry professor would say “good morning gentlemen.”

Marsha Rosenthal ’76 said that in her freshmen Latin class, the professor would greet the men as he was facing the board before turning around to say “and lady.”

“He was trying to be friendly — he was not trying to put me down,” she said.

“But it made me want to, you know, hide under the desk.”

Though Rosenthal said that the experience of being in precepts is a true highlight of Princeton, Marjory Smith ’73 said she was a bit intimidated in precepts and did not raise her hand due to internal pressures.

According to a 2011 report from the Steering Committee on Undergraduate Women’s Leadership, faculty members noted that often their shyest students in precept were women, and that this lack of participation arising from shyness hurts their academic

performance.

According to the report, men tend to speak up more quickly than women, to raise their hands and express their thoughts even before they are fully formulated. Women, on the other hand, may take a bit more time to shape their comments and be more reticent about speaking up.

Award Winners Since classes with women have graduated through 2014, only nine of the 45 valedictorians and 13 of the 44 Latin

“Most of us were quite aware that an opinion was an opinion – it had no gender.”

Margery Hite ’74 salutatorians were women.

In 1975, Cynthia Chase ’75 and Lisa Siegman ’75 became the first female valedictorian and salutatorian of the University respectively.

“I was very focused on what I wanted to say in my valedictorian address,” Chase said about what she felt when awarded the prize.

From 1970 through 2015, 79 students received the Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize, the highest general distinction conferred on an undergraduate, and 30 of them were women.

“I was pretty shocked — a bit overwhelmed,” Marsha Levy-Warren ’73, the first woman recipient of the prize, said.

The University has had 72 male and 25 female Rhodes Scholars since the 1970s.

Perles, the first female Rhodes Scholar at the University, said that from her perspective, the scholarship was just a chance to go to graduate school.

“It’s a blend of academics, public service, leadership, athletics and it’s a blend that there’s no one formula for,” she said. “And the applicant pool is spectacular.”

Recruiting female faculty members There were no tenured female professors until the 1968 appointment of sociologist Suzanne Keller. Ten years after coeducation, there were only 10 women among 371 tenured faculty in 1979.

While the University was celebrating ten years of coeducation, there was a campaign called “Ten years of women without tenure of women” to increase the number of tenured females at the University, Sally Frank ’80 said.

“We needed the role models, we wanted the courses and we wanted women in the professional positions,” she said.

According to the Steering Committee’s report, one student noted that female professors were more encouraging, another that they were gentler and a third that they were less likely to say bluntly “No, you’re wrong.”

Rosenthal said it is also important for young men to work with women on the faculty.

“It’s formative for men to be able to exchange ideas with women whom they can look up to and respect,” she said.

University President Emerita Shirley Tilghman said the ease of combining family and work was a big part of the reason she came to the University as a full-time professor of life sciences in 1986.

“Everything is very close,” she said. “I used to say that I lived three minutes from work, three minutes from school, three minutes from the pediatrician, three minutes from the after-school program. And if you are trying to combine family and work, those are huge advantages.”

Dean of the Faculty Deborah Prentice said universities have become much more family-friendly as women’s representation in academia has grown.

“That 4:30 to 7 o’clock slot is still very valuable, but I think there’s been much more effort to move at least some of the activities to noon time so that people with child care responsibilities don’t miss out,” she said, adding that there is more equal treatment of men and women due to increasing awareness of the issue of gender equity.

Prentice noted that one of the most significant challenges to women in academia is the timing of the tenure clock and the biological clock.

“Women’s career crunch comes at the same time that women are supposed to reproduce if they’re ever going to,” she said.

During the 2014-15 academic year, approximately 344 of the 1,175 members of the faculty are women, excluding visiting professors. Of the 344 female faculty members, 198 are tenured, according to the Princeton Profile, which is a document of statistics published annually by the Office of Communications.

“We’re always working very hard to recruit more female faculty and even in some disciplines to identify more female faculty,” Prentice said. “In some disciplines, the pipelines are still pretty skewed towards men.”

Shedding the ‘STEM stigma’

No women in the Class of 1973 concentrated in economics, physics, astrophysics or chemistry, according to a May 1973 article in the Princeton Alumni Weekly magazine entitled “Are Princeton’s Women Afraid of Economics?”

“There weren’t that many [female faculty] in the humanities and social sciences and I’m sure there were fewer then in the sciences,” Marsha Rosenthal ’74 said.

Robert Jahn, professor emeritus of aerospace science and dean emeritus of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, said a certain amount of foresight and courage was required to sign up for the fields of sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics at the University.

He added that women tend to avoid the fields because of their aversion to mathematics since high school. Jahn described this aversion as due to cultural norms and presumptions, not a difference in men and women’s academic potentials for engineering activities. “[Women shying from STEM] robbed the profession of some very good talents that should have been allowed to manifest themselves and bloom in the industrial world,” he said.

Prentice said the University tries especially hard to recruit female faculty in fields where there aren’t very many women.

“Once you have a gender imbalance, it’s more likely to feed itself than to correct itself,” she said. “And it’s really hard to overcome these things.”

Tilghman said that metrics like time to tenure, tenure rate, salary, space, nomination for prizes and resources for start-up funds were continuously evaluated at the University to ensure that female faculty in STEM

are being treated fairly, equitably and equally to the male faculty in STEM. Jahn said that in the early years of his tenure, he took engineering undergraduates into New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., to raise awareness about engineering in secondary schools that had female students ready to apply for undergraduate programs.

“I think that taking the existing undergraduates, including women, into those schools and allowing them to make presentations and go one-on-one with the potential applicants was very productive,” he said.

“The environment at Princeton is not one which causes women to shy away from engineering,” chemical and biological engineering major Lindsey Bergh ’15 said. “So that’s really, really nice.”

Jahn said that during his time as Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the female strength in the undergraduate body increased from being just one engineer in 1971 to being almost equal to that of the male strength in 1986.

According to the Opening Enrollment statistics, 240 undergraduate women, 402 undergraduate men, 149 graduate women and 437 graduate men concentrated in engineering in the 2014-15 academic year.

The Women’s Studies Program The women’s studies program was established in the eighties after much student rallying for it.

“I was thrilled when the University made the announcement [to install the Women’s Studies program],” Frank said. “It was the only issue I fought on while I was a student that I won while I was a student.”

Frank, who still serves on

the advisory committee for the program, said that when the University agreed to begin the program in women’s studies, it went and hired some of the top names and added them to the program.

In the interim, various women’s studies courses and some student-initiated seminars became available to interested students.

Levy-Warren said women’s studies courses removed the prevalent feeling of isolation by putting her in a group of female intellectuals.

“Once you have a gender imbalance, it’s more likely to feed itself than to correct itself.”

Deborah Prentice, Dean of the Faculty

“We felt that the University needed to acknowledge the long history of women’s participation in intellectual life,” she said of why she engaged in activism for the program.

By the late 1990s, the program was renamed the “Program in Women and Gender Studies,” which changed to the program in “Gender and Sexuality Studies” in 2011.

Levy-Warren said the women’s studies classes and the hiring of more female faculty were evidence that the University cared about the female students and the female students’ place in history.

This article is the second in a four-part Women’s History Month feature series. Check back tomorrow for a look at women in athletics at the University.

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Wednesday march 25, 2015

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NATALIA CHEN :: ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR

As part of Islam Awareness Week at Princeton, the Muslim Students’ Association helped students try on hijabs on Tuesday.

Two U. students contribute to intercollegiate journal JOURNAL Continued from page 1

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any school’s journal was welcome to join.

Part of the motivation for the journal was the opportunity to collaborate with students at

other universities and to learn from other publications, Chen said.

The journal also hopes to create a platform for students at universities without existing science journals to get their pieces published, Cognetta said.

“In the future, I can see this becoming more of a chapter [system],” Choudhury said.

“Schools that might not have science journals can establish their own chapter of ICSJ, and through that, gain resources and learn from other journals that have already succeeded.”

Going forward, ICSJ will have to decide whether to remain a print publication or be exclusively web based as it grows, Cognetta said. All schools, except Oxford and Cambridge, distributed paper journals. The ICSJ board will also discuss how many times to publish during the year.

“The whole idea is to make science fun and interesting to read,” Cognetta said, explaining that innovative design and relatable articles are key to ICSJ’s appeal.

Accessibility is a very important issue in science journals, Libby Tolman ’15, a physics major, said.

“The conglomerate part is, I think, especially useful for science majors because it’s good to see what’s going on at different schools you’re considering for grad school,” she said.

Another important aspect of the journal is its intention to appeal to a more popular audience, Pavel Shibayev ’15, a physics major, said.

“Initiatives like this really help to disseminate groundbreaking research at various universities in less specialized language,” he said.

The new platform is also important for existing journals, Ali Palla, the editor of U.C.

Berkeley’s Berkeley Scientific magazine, said.

“The biggest thing is that the articles that we write will reach a larger audience,” Palla said. “We can also increase ICSJ on campus here which will bring the other articles to campus here. It’s just about spreading science education and getting people interested in science.”

However, the magazine’s intention to appeal to a broader audience doesn’t mean it has no relevance to science majors, Benjamin Huang ’15, who wrote an article for the first issue, said.

“ICSJ and Innovation reach non-science readers and elucidate a topic and the scientific backing behind it,” he said. “[But] even for scientific readers who might have more of a background in a subject, they can still read about science and other subjects that are highly relevant to their lives.”

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Wednesday march 25, 2015

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Advocacy group PETA published study U. of Maryland police investigate on increased animal use in U.S. labs claim, finds threat unsubstantiated PETA

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netically modified rodents are better able to better understand genetic causes of disease and develop more effective treatments,” Bailey said.

Rodents are also convenient for laboratory use, Conour noted. “[Rodent use] is a feasible research tool that exists,” she said.

Over 70 percent of rodents used for research at the University are genetically manipulated to investigate the effects of injecting new genetic information into mice genomes or phenotype mutation through the over-expression of particular genes, Conour said. She explained she thought PETA’s data ref lected a general surge in transgenic research.

Transgenic science allows for multiple gene alterations in animal subjects, to investigate research into combinations of gene mutations and various gene combination functions.

Research universities receive funding from institutions such as the National Institutes of Health for laboratory work that uses animals subject to the AWA. The NIH’s Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare released a statement calling PETA’s study inaccurate because the numbers in the study only represent the number of animals in a laboratory’s inventory at a given time and not actually the number being used for research.

The NIH declined to comment beyond that statement.

Animal censuses at any institution are affected by levels of new grant rewards or fund-

ing decreases, Conour said.

“I think for us, in terms of increased rodent use, we’ve had a new junior faculty member come on in the Department of Molecular Biology, and he’s a rodent user, and so I think our numbers went up because we had an additional faculty member doing animal research come on board,” Conour said.

Bailey noted that PETA has declined requests to share the data behind the study, which is an unusual decision.

“You also have to look at the motivation of the group [PETA],” he added, noting that publishing such data is in the group’s best interest.

Bailey explained that the study’s results offers PETA, an organization that does not want animals to be used in research at all, a factual platform from which to launch funding and advocacy efforts.

MURAL

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A student helps to paint the Rockefeller College crest as part of the residential college’s mural painting event on Tuesday evening in the Rockefeller Common Room.

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driving around campus, USA Today reported, adding that undercover security personnel were stationed near the Princeton bench during the game in light of the threat.

UMPD also notified the Secret Service, whose

agents were also present at the game to accompany Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor ’76 and Elena Kagan ’81, who attended the game that night, USA Today said.

A Secret Service spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The University was notified of the threat, University spokesperson Martin Mbu-

gua said.

“We are aware of the matter as reported by the University of Maryland Police Department,” he said, adding he could not comment on whether the University has taken any action based on this information due to security reasons.

The women’s basketball game concluded without incident.

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Opinion

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Don’t be a trafficker Isabella Gomes

senior columnist

D

o you remember that film “Good Will Hunting”? Where Matt Damon’s character calls out this guy in a Harvard bar for regurgitating some advanced textbook just to impress a girl? At one point, he’s sitting on a park bench with Robin Williams and Robin says, “you’re just a kid, you don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.” Matt’s supposed to be playing a young genius that has gone unrecognized by the world. As a student on Princeton’s campus — as a part of the Ivy League community — I’m pretty sure I’ve met a couple of geniuses and probably a lot more who could almost qualify. We all talk about this topclass education, where the students are reading all the time. We’re busy taking advantage of all the information that’s out there. After hearing Monica Lewinsky’s TED Talk, I’ve begun to wonder if that’s actually a good thing. Should we be striving to know everything, to pass judgement on everything?

On March 19, Monica Lewinsky, the then-22-year old intern that Bill Clinton referred to when he said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” talked

about the culture of online public shaming. She drew upon her personal experiences from when she worked at the White House in 1998. For a while, she was the woman we shoved into a corner of scandal and scorn. We made her an object of political caricaturization, a mere cultural reference in bad rap songs and perhaps worst of all, the first young victim of largescale public humiliation. I was scrolling through the past decade and a half’s worth of Monica Lewinsky references online and each was more distasteful than the last.

I wondered, when they were first made, how many of these “jokes” were thought to be witty? Did the jokesters think themselves clever in their ability to show how much they knew about politics and current events and even more so when they could manipulate this knowledge all for a poorly earned chuckle? In so many cases, I’ve found that highly educated people — most often, professed patrons of news magazines and websites — frequently make these jokes and call it well-informed satire. Princeton students are certainly no exception.

Who can blame us? From the first day, we’re thrown into a setting of serious academic discussion that leaves little room for settling down and adjusting. The more we’re expected to talk, the less time we have to think about what we’re saying

vol. cxxxix

or what our peers are saying. We forget to question why information that is out there is out there, how it got there and whether it should be out there. It seems with the overwhelming availability of information, we become obsessed with getting all of it and then showing it off.

We never stop to differentiate between being a societally conscious, intellectual individual and a trafficker of online harassment.

The greatest lesson that our professors can teach us is not to analyze information, but to know when to reject it. This might sound absurd — after all, why not take advantage of information that’s been made publicly available? Then again, in that same vein of thought, we’d have to ask, why not open a website link for a leaked celebrity sex tape? Why not open the forwarded email from an eating club that exposes an intimate act between two students? Why not invade someone’s privacy or violate his or her space just because you can?

In early March, Wesleyan University’s campus newspaper, The Wesleyan Argus, released a news article, reporting the arrest of four students allegedly involved in the distribution of the drug Molly/ MDMA. This article was followed up with a response by the Argus’ Editors-in-Chief, Gabe Rosenberg and Sofi Goode, who stat-

ed that the publication would not release the names of the Molly overdose suspects after consulting with their executive editors (EICs of previous semesters) as they “took into consideration that the investigation was still ongoing and no student had been convicted.” In February and September of 2014, the Prince similarly dealt with issues of disclosing students’ names after their arrests for the possession of marijuana, eventually deciding that it was the newspaper’s responsibility to publish them. Whether or not either of these decisions was morally correct, both involved a thorough consideration of the implications in releasing this information to the public. As students, we don’t have the convenience to consult with an entire editorial or public relations team to filter what we say, view or post online.

Nonetheless, we should still attempt to consider all the implications of certain pieces of informations.

By knowing when to reject information and when to contribute, we practice restraint and demonstrate the full potential of our education. And in the end, sometimes when an opportunity is presented to us, it’s best not to take advantage of it.

Isabella Gomes is an ecology and evolutionary biology major from Irvine, Calif. She can be reached at igomes@princeton.edu.

Anna Mazarakis ’16 editor-in-chief

Matteo Kruijssen ’16 business manager

139th managing board news editor Jacob Donnelly ’17 opinion editor Benjamin Dinovelli ’16 sports editor Miles Hinson’17 street editor Lin King ’16 photography editor Yicheng Sun ’16 video editors Leora Haber ’16 chief copy editors Caroline Congdon ’17 Joyce Lee ’17 design editors Austin Lee’16 Julia Johnstone’16 prox editor Rebekah Shoemake ’17 intersections editor Jarron McAllister ’16 associate news editors Ruby Shao ’17 Jasmine Wang ’17

Missing Break

associate opinion editors Jason Choe ’17 Shruthi Deivasigmani’16

Grayson Shepperd ’16 ..................................................

associate sports editors Sydney Mandelbaum ’17 Tom Pham ’17 associate street editors Harrison Blackman ’17 Jennifer Shyue ’17 associate photography editors Natalia Chen ’18 Christopher Ferri ’18 Sewheat Haile ’17 associate chief copy editors Chamsi Hssaine ’16 Alexander Schindele-Murayama ’16 editorial board chair Jeffrey Leibenhaut ’16 Cartoons Editor Terry O’Shea ’16

NIGHT STAFF 3.24.15 news Doug Wallack ’16

The missing piece at the ‘Best Darn Place of All’ Eileen Torres ’13

guest contributor

P

rinceton is an amazing place. The beautiful campus, gifted professors and all-star students make for an incredible four-year experience. Whether it’s Saturday night parties on the Street or Tuesday night cookies at MurrayDodge, every Princetonian cherishes memories of his or her best times on campus. For me, one of the highlights was singing under the arches with the Wildcats, one of Princeton’s all-female a capella groups. The Wildcats were my on-campus family, my soul sisters and some of my best friends.

So it came as quite a blow this January when I heard from a fellow Wildcat alumna that a member of our group, Audrey Dantzlerward ’16, had passed away.

We were shocked and devastated. Audrey was one of the most exuberant people I had met at Princeton, with a bright smile and infectious laugh. During rehearsals, I often noticed how her joyful disposition was dampened by the demands of college life. In the few heart-to-hearts we had outside of rehearsals, we connected around our shared struggle as low-income minority students trying to adapt to Princeton’s heavy workload and highly individualistic academic culture.

When I heard the news of her passing, my heart sank like a ten-pound weight.

Tears spilled from my eyes, for Audrey, for her family, for her friends and for the students who had gone before her. Such a beautiful soul, gone. While the impact on me was partly numbed by time and distance from Princeton, my heart ached deeply for friends who were still on campus, fighting to push through Dean’s Date and final exams while coming to terms with such a devastating loss.

In the weeks that followed, I hoped to see a sweeping response from the Princ-

eton community acknowledging the tragedy and its impact on students. But while emails and Facebook messages abounded, the administration’s response to Audrey’s death was rather subdued. Only one statement appeared on Princeton’s webpage, and as a result, very few alumni even knew that a student had died. For students on campus, communication and support were even more minimal than one might expect.

A memorial gathering was held the night of Jan. 12, where students and staff gathered to support one another and honor Audrey’s life. According to The Daily Princetonian’s report on the gathering: “Senior Associate Dean of the College Claire Fowler sent an email to students before the meeting asking them to meet with a residential college administrator if they felt coping with Dantzlerward’s death was interfering with their academic work.”

While I’m sure Dean Fowler meant well, this statement unfortunately suggests that in the eyes of the administration, academic work comes first, and student health comes second. Of course, Princeton is an academic institution, and keeping up with schoolwork is a high priority. But in the face of something as grave as the loss of a life, academics can and should be superseded by other concerns.

What students needed, especially those who were close to Audrey, was acknowledgment and support around the emotional reality of losing a peer. From what I heard from my friends on campus, this support has been limited at best. Counseling and Psychological Services offered a workshop on Distress Awareness and Response on Feb. 9, informing students on how to best care for friends having a hard time. While this marks a step in the right direction, it ultimately serves only as a band-aid over a much broader issue.

Our society as a whole undervalues the importance of mental and emotional health: nearly 20 percent of American adults suffer from some form of mental illness, but fewer than half receive treatment.

Mental health issues are largely stigmatized and silenced, overwritten by the story that success, money and prestige will lead to happiness. Unfortunately, this story has proven to be largely false. Money can’t buy happiness, and often the most successful people struggle under the weight of superhuman responsibilities and expectations.

Despite these sobering realities, many of us are still encouraged to put aside our holistic well-being in the name of achieving the ideal of success.

This dynamic can play out in a more extreme way at a place like Princeton, where student life is often heavily idealized. Princetonians are supposed to be the best of the best, and we want to prove it!

As any late-night conversation with roommates might tell you, many students feel an intense pressure to succeed in every way — academically, professionally and socially.

Even if things aren’t going well, there’s an incentive to project the image of being well put-together. In reality, however, it’s not always true.

As Princeton’s COMBO III survey found, roughly 50 percent of female students and 37 percent of male students report that they sometimes or often feel depressed. From the comments section of the ‘Prince’ to the Tiger Admirers Facebook page, Princetonians have been voicing their struggles and asking for help. Personally, I can’t count the number of conversations I had with peers who admitted to feeling completely overwhelmed at Princeton, to the point where they were considering leaving or taking a break. Because of the pressure to stay in the game — and in part because of stringent leave of absence rules — most of them decided to push through instead.

Unfortunately, these truths are hardly recognized by the administration. Actual mental health resources are limited, and no public, top-down reforms have been announced to address the cultural issues behind students’ distress. The result is a sink-or-swim, “show must go on” mentality that requires students to continually

jump through hurdles while struggling to get the basic health support they need.

Perhaps the clearest indication of Princeton’s lack of adequate mental health resources is that for the last five years, students have been creating much-needed support networks themselves. Grassroots initiatives like the Mental Health Forum, Mental Health Week and Lotus Café, an informal discussion group for students seeking greater mental and emotional wellbeing, have shown the deep ingenuity and compassion of Princeton students. They have provided a positive space for students who are struggling — or who have friends who are struggling — to voice their concerns and build solidarity with their peers.

But these efforts have their limits. In my two years as a Peer Health Adviser, I did my best to help build a better mental health environment on campus. In the end, though, there was only so much I could do while keeping my own head above water. Through my friendships with students who did amazing work through those initiatives, I saw how despite their genuine passion for the cause, they simply had too much work and not enough energy to create the comprehensive change they wanted to see. Without adequate training or compensation for their work, their efforts became a liability to their own school-life balance.

It’s inspiring to see the power of these grassroots initiatives start to shift the culture on campus. But the truth is that even if a handful of committed students are willing to sacrifice more of their own academic careers to bring these projects to completion, it is not their job. There are paid professionals at Princeton charged with the mental and emotional well-being of students. They can take bolder steps toward reform, advocating for more programs and incentives that foster a better mental health environment on campus. The CPS workshop was a great place to start, but for real change to happen, these events and workshops need to happen year-round, and their subject matter must become a more in-

grained, long-term and open conversation.

In addition, the administration can foster many other projects to help support the health and well-being of Princeton students. What about an AlcoholEdu-style program, focused on mental health issues?

What about more counselors, and regular evaluation forms, at CPS? What about a Mental Health Week not just once a year, but every semester? These are a few of many ideas that I’m not the first to propose, but that have yet to be implemented.

If we learned anything by losing Audrey, we learned that these initiatives need to start now. No one can get through an institution like Princeton without some support, and many students need more than what’s being currently offered.

Princeton leads the vanguard when it comes to cutting-edge research, technology and business ideas. The issue of mental health now presents an opportunity for the administration to show its commitment to being the best of the best in ways that really matter. This means publicly demonstrating a shift in priorities toward fostering a healthier mental and emotional environment on campus. It also includes implementing real changes that empower and encourage students to find complete mental well-being as part of their education and growth at Princeton. What if Princeton graduates were not just the most successful, but also the happiest?

Top-notch academic work requires topnotch mental health care. Students are asking for this support and doing the footwork — it’s time for the administration to play a larger role. In doing so, Princeton can help change the collegiate culture surrounding mental health and create new ideas about what success looks and feels like. Most importantly, fostering overall well-being in the University we know and love just might help save the lives of Princeton students in years to come.

Eileen Torres graduated Princeton in 2013. She can be reached at eileenmarietorrez@gmail.com.

The Daily Princetonian

Wednesday march 25, 2015

page 7

RUBY SHAO :: STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The panel of NBA comissioner Adam Silver, NY Knicks General Manager Steve Mills ‘81 and former two-time Ivy League Player of the Year Craig Robinson ‘83 discuss various issues relating to race in the NBA.

Star-studded panel discuss sports, race, society in today’s NBA

By Lorenzo Quiogue princetonian senior writer

National Basketball Association players have a unique opportunity to express their political views on the basketball court, said NBA commissioner Adam Silver at a panel discussion on Tuesday.

Silver spoke as part of a panel entitled “Political Expression and Activism in Today’s NBA,” as part of a forum on sports, race and society.

Besides Silver, the panelists included Craig Robinson ’83, former two-time Ivy League Basketball Player of the Year and analyst for ESPN, and Steve Mills ’81, general manager for the New York Knicks.

Silver said that NBA players, whether they like it or not, serve as role models for millions of people around the world, and while they aren’t obligated to express their political views, they did have the opportunity to do so every time they stepped on the court. Silver noted the example of Derrick Rose, who

was the first NBA player to wear an “I Can’t Breathe” Tshirt as he walked onto the court before the start of a game.

Silver added that some political issues can be incredibly divisive, and the NBA also had a responsibility to draw the line at a certain point.

“I have the responsibility to draw a line — if that platform became a daily forum, it would drown out particular issues, and it’s also a disservice to fans who come to see a basketball game,” Silver said.

“It also makes some players uncomfortable — some of them may feel like they don’t know enough to express themselves as a billboard.”

Mills said that the league has always had an obligation to deal with issues that affected society and noted former commissioner David Stern’s handling of Magic Johnson’s HIV announcement as a watershed moment for the league’s involvement in societal issues.

Robinson said that, as a

former college coach, he had an obligation to educate student-athletes in a way that felt safe for them to voice their opinions.

“It comes down to, ‘Can Coach Robinson be that role model to make them care more about others than the sneakers they’re wearing?’ ” Robinson said.

Silver explained that the one of the current issues facing the league is that of the age limit for players, which currently stands at 19 years old. Silver expressed his desire to raise the age limit, so that players would have to spend two years playing either in college, the NBA Development League or overseas, before transitioning to the NBA. Silver noted that the additional year would make players more mature when they eventually made it to the NBA. Mills said that the opportunity to spend a lot of time on a college campus would be very beneficial for a player,

noting that people don’t understand how difficult it is for a young player to walk into an NBA locker room for the first time.

“You come from a world where you’re not used to having this kind of money — you don’t have anyone around you who’s used to having this kind of money,” Mills said. “When you get to the NBA, you walk into the locker room with 14 millionaires and you think you have to be just like them.”

Silver said that the age limit was not an issue that he viewed through the prism of race. However, he acknowledged that since 80 percent of the NBA’s players are AfricanAmerican, any issue that affects the league would naturally be considered a racial issue.

Mills and Robinson commended Silver on his swift response to former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s recorded remarks in April, adding that they did not expect a resolution to

come as quickly as it did.

“For me, I was able to do what I did because I wasn’t doing it in a vacuum,” Silver said, noting the help he got from Mayor Kevin Johnson of Sacramento, as well as Clippers point guard Chris Paul, president of the National Basketball Players’ Association.

Robinson added that it was extremely important for young athletes to see things being resolved the way they should, since most of them come from backgrounds where that isn’t necessarily the case.

Silver and Mills both said that the NBA was doing very well in terms of diversity in its teams’ front offices, noting the league’s high performance on Richard Lapchick’s Racial and Gender Report Card, which studies the hiring practices of sports leagues across the country.

Silver added that one of the things he is most proud of is that former NBA players are now team owners, citing Michael Jordan of the Charlotte

Hornets and Shaquille O’Neal of the Sacramento Kings as examples.

Silver added that the NBA emphasizes in its rookie transition program that a player’s career in the NBA should not just be defined by how long he plays, because there are a lot of jobs in and around the league.

Robinson stressed the importance of education for young athletes and added that he tries to emphasize the importance of getting a college degree and being professionals even outside of a person’s chosen sport.

Silver noted the increased presence of the NBA in youth basketball and added that it tries to impart values like respect, hard work, teamwork and integrity on the millions of young basketball players around the world.

The panel was held at 7 p.m. on Tuesday at Richardson Auditorium. It was moderated by Eddie Glaude GS ’97, Chair of the Center for African American Studies.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver talks basketball, race, merit

By Ruby Shao

loved the game.

Associate News Editor

National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver addressed the role of sports in systematic social change during a panel on Tuesday. Following the lecture, The Daily Princetonian sat down with Silver to discuss his career, race relations within the NBA and the future of basketball.

The Daily Princetonian: How did your love for basketball begin?

Adam Silver: My love for basketball began as a boy growing up in Rye, N.Y. My father lived in New York City.

I lived with my mother, and he had season tickets to the New York Knicks, and that was an activity I did with my father. In addition to being a fan of the Knicks, I played with my friends, you know, as a young boy, just at school and at the playground, and I

DP: What has been the most challenging part of your job as commissioner?

AS: I think the most challenging part of my job is that there are a lot of conf licting interests sometimes, or competing interests, I should say. Teams may have varying opinions and different forces out there are pushing me in all kinds of directions. I think by nature, I try not to have to say no to people, but part of the job is saying no, and I think that makes me uncomfortable sometimes, because I’d like everybody who’s involved with the NBA to have a uniformly positive experience, but you know, I realize that I can’t please everybody all the time.

DP: What decision have you been most proud of that you’ve made so far in your time as commissioner?

AS: I’m very proud that I made Mark Tatum, who lives in Princeton, N.J., my deputy commissioner. He’s been outstanding.

DP: The NBA’s revenue has steadily increased throughout most of the past decade, and you saw the biggest year-to-year franchise value jump as of January 2015.

What would you attribute this success to, and how do you plan to sustain it?

AS: I attribute the success in revenue to the all-time popularity of the game and to the fantastic job that our players are doing on the court. The way to sustain it is to keep doing what we’re doing and growing the game not just in the United States, but globally as well.

DP: To what extent do you plan to try to incorporate more non-African Americans into the player composition of the NBA?

AS: The great thing about the NBA is that the composition of the players is decided by how they perform on the court, and we just let that take care of itself. There are certainly no quotas in the NBA. What you try to create is a system where the best players mostly are the ones who are rewarded with the best contracts and the most playing time. The last thing I would ever try to do is micromanage in any way the selection of players in our league.

DP: What have you seen as the effect of Linsanity, especially in the realm of race relations within the NBA? AS: I think what’s been so great about Linsanity is that [Jeremy Lin] personally has demonstrated to people that stereotypes are just that, and that you shouldn’t judge people based on their ethnicity or their background. And I think that

when he originally came into the league, he would say the same thing as a college player — that people underestimated him because of his ethnicity. And I think he demonstrated, as I said in response to the last question, that ultimately those judgments should only be made based on performance on the court, and not based on race, ethnicity, nationality, background.

It’s all about what you can do on the f loor.

DP: So your ideal NBA would just be merit-based in terms of performance on the court.

AS: Yes, and I think no system is perfect. I think the great thing about major league sports in this country is that nothing could be more transparent in terms of seeing how players perform on the court. Teams generally want to win above all, and if for whatever rea-

son they’re not putting their best players on the f loor, the marketplace will quickly see just that, that somehow players are being rewarded for something other than merit. And so again, no system’s perfect, but I think we have as close to a meritocracy as any business I’m familiar with.

DP: Lastly, how do you plan to make basketball the number one sport in the world?

AS: Well, the way we’re going to grow this game is by continuing to work on a grassroots basis throughout the world. We have programs in China, in India, throughout the continent of Africa and everywhere else in the world to demonstrate to boys and girls what a wonderful game this is. And we know that if we can develop among young people a love for the game, they’re highly likely to be fans throughout their lives.

Wednesday march 25, 2015

Sports

page 8

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

The end of a dream

by Jack Mazzulo :: Contributing Photographer

The women’s basketball team crashed out of the NCAA tournament to No. 1 seed University of Maryland Terrapins 85-70.

The team concluded the season with a 31-1 record after a perfect and unprecedented 30-0 regular season.

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