March 2, 2017

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Thursday March 2, 2017 vol. CXLI no. 19

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Bone marrow donor registry attracts 300

By Marcia Brown Head news editor

For two days in the Frist Campus Center, students ran a bone marrow match swabbing drive at a central table. According to a Facebook post by Erik Massenzio ’17, the drive “broke the record for university signups in a single day.”

Samantha Ip ’18, who helped organize the event, said that the drive registered 119 the first day and 167 the second. Previously, the record for a single day at a university was 97, according to Be The Match representative Leebe Nuñez, Massenzio said.

Kyle Lang ’19, who volunteered to help register people for the drive, said that he found out about the event through Massenzio at an Aquinas dinner.

“It’s a great cause obviously, and telling his own story about how his mom was saved by this registry really inspired me to contribute even that small part,” Lang said.

Massenzio explained that, in second grade, his mom was diagnosed with leukemia and that she eventually needed a stem cell transplant. He explained that unless the stem cells match perfectly, blood cancer patients could have autoimmune reactions to the transplant and die.

To find a match, the chances are about one in eight million people, Massenzio wrote in an email soliciting donors for the registry drive. His mom found a match through this registry with someone who signed up in college, so Massenzio believes this cause is incredibly important.

Once a participant’s cheeks are swabbed, the participant is added to the Be The Match Stem Cell Registry. It takes roughly 10 minutes to swab a cheek with a Q-tip and go through the registration process.

According to the Facebook event, the DNA sample “will be sent to a lab for sequenc-

ing the genes relevant to autoimmune matching (MHC proteins).”

If a participant matches, their donation of stem cells for a blood disease patient could be a life-saving transplant, according to the Facebook event. Donation of stem cells is done through one of two procedures.

Only one in 430 donors matches with a patient, however, so Massenzio contends it is critical for as many people to participate as possible. According to an email promoting the event, “The more people join the registry, the more likely patients with these lifethreatening diseases are to successfully match with a donor.”

Massenzio said that Nuñez, the coordinator for Be The Match, was really impressed with how willing University students were to be a part of the registration drive.

“Usually when she goes to schools, she said [the students] don’t really know what they’re doing but with Princeton everyone was really willing, ‘Oh yeah, sign me up!’” he said. “It’s really a testament to our class.”

“They worked so hard, and let me tell you, it showed,” Nuñez said. She explained that it’s often hard to find groups of students on campus who are passionate enough to administer the event, but this event was very successful because of Ip and Massenzio’s hard work. She said that her organization works to administer these registration drives all over the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

Ip said that she joined in the organizing effort with Massenzio when he reached out to her before Intersession. Both Ip and Massenzio are pre-med students as well as members of Quadrangle Club, which helped them make this connection.

“I didn’t realize how important it was until I looked at the statistic,” Ip said.

“People with leukemia need See MARROW page 4

IMAGE BY MARCIA BROWN

Students ran a bone marrow match swabbing drive at Frist.

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Canadian Justice speaks on democracy

By Sam Garfinkle Staff writer

“There is, in short, a shared longing for belonging… a shared longing, in other words, for justice,” according to Canadian Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella.

In a public lecture at the Woodrow Wilson School titled “The Judicial Role and Democracy,” Abella was quick to note that she had added another topic that was particularly relevant in her mind, namely the role of diversity and inclusion in democracy. Thus, she said that the two topics of her speech were “protection for minorities and an independent judiciary.”

Abella began by referencing C.P. Snow’s speech “The Two Cultures,” which dealt with what Snow saw as a growing division between scien-

COURTESY OF JWA.ORG

Justice Rosalie Abella addressed diversity and inclusion.

tists and literary scholars. While Abella took issue with Snow’s general thesis, she also saw the divide as a valuable analogy for modern understanding.

“Aren’t we all diminished by what we don’t know about others, and what they don’t know about us?” Abella asked.

She further reflected on the role of justice in promoting understanding and equality.

“I have always seen justice as the aspirational application of law to life…. Learning how to see first and then define, instead of the other way around,” Abella said.

Using literature to illustrate the evolution of American diversity over time, Abella discussed “The Melting Pot,” a play by Israel Zangwill about Russian Jews and Christian immigrants in the United States. In this work, the character of American society allows these immigrants to transcend the horrors that divided them, showcasing the ability of this country to set an example.

Abella also insisted that one of the great aspects of American culture is the ability to belong without fitting a mold. For example, black Americans in Harlem, as portrayed in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” are able to be part of a greater culture while maintaining their individual and group identities.

“Someone with their identity can simultaneously maintain that identity and join the mainstream…. It’s integration, not assimilation. Affirmative action is See ABELLA page 2

ON CAMPUS

David Miliband speaks to gravity of refugee crisis

By Audrey Spensley staff writer

President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee David Miliband travels all over the world to support refugees. Yet he started his lecture, “The Global Refugee Crisis and What To Do About It,” by pointing out his connection to the University.

“The International Rescue Committee was founded by Albert Einstein in 1933 in response to Hitler’s regime,” he said. “One of the things [Einstein] did was to stay in Princeton and the other was to found the IRC.” Since its inception 83 years ago, the IRC has grown into one of the world’s largest refugee aid organizations.

Miliband “oversees the IRC’s humanitarian relief operations in more than 40 war-affected countries and its refugee resettlement and assistance programs in 26 United States cities,” according to a University press release.

Miliband, addressing his speech to a packed lecture hall in McCosh 10, explained why such breadth is necessary when assisting refugees — their numbers and their plight has grown into a global epidemic, spurred by deep societal changes.

“There is a threat or fundamental change to the architecture and assumptions undergirding international relations through my lifetime,” Miliband said. “I think we’re at a moment that historians will come to consider really crucial, way beyond whether or not there’s a change in these assumptions.”

Global shifts in political trends, Miliband asserted, are the root sources of this pivotal moment.

“The political crisis frames everything, including the refugee crisis, which is a symptom but also, to some extent, a cause of some of the judder-

ing political changes you see in the U.K. and also in the U.S.,” he said.

“This debate, sometimes about populism, about societal divides or restricted democracy, is part of a wide syndrome of fragmentation and upheaval,” he continued. “The Eurasia group has forecast a geopolitical repression with the danger of a geopolitical depression. And I would argue that it’s really the case that globalization over the last decades has been too unequal, too unstable, and too insecure for it to have much good.”

Miliband identified a newly emerging conflict between political and economic goals as the core source of international disruption.

“Politics and economics are indeed tearing each other apart,” he said.

“The global economy is boosted by high levels of migration, but local politics, mostly at the request of societies, are being torn apart by debates on immigration. Global economics is stabilized by international economic cooperation and support by nations on sharing, but local politics, on that sharing, is very resistant.”

Many politicians are also opposed to international trade, Miliband argued.

Miliband sees the potential end of what he termed a ‘post second-world war era,’ a time period in which Western nations largely collaborated toward common goals.

“This isn’t just about Post-Cold War era, it’s about post-war era,” he said.

“The Cold War was fought to break down walls; the West after World War II stood for a declaration not of independence but of interdependence. The West associated universal values, not just Western ones, and argued that injustice or oppression anywhere was a threat to justice and freedom everySee REFUGEE page 2

In Opinion

Today on Campus

Tom Salama makes the case for spring extracurricular recruiting, and Kaveh Badrei discusses how the truth within comedy is essential to critiquing society. PAGE 6

4 p.m.: Jo Dunkley, professor of physics and astrophysical sciences, will present “Neutrino Physics from the Polarized Microwave Background,”at 4 p.m. Thursday in Jadwin Hall, Room A10.

Claiborne ’17 wins Luce fellowship

By Sarah Hirschfield contributor

Monique Claiborne ’17 was awarded a Luce Scholarship, which allows her to spend a year in Asia, where she will work as an intern in arts and entertainment in Seoul, South Korea.

Claiborne, a philosophy major from Opelousas, Louisiana, said she will pursue work at a record label, film production studio, or arts magazine.

The Luce Scholarship, started by the Henry Luce Foundation in 1974, aims to enhance the understanding of Asia among potential American leaders. Recipients have records of “high achievement, outstanding leadership ability, and clearly defined interests with evidence of potential for professional accomplishments,” according to its website. Claiborne joins 17 other students selected in this academic year.

Claiborne, a dancer, became interested in the Luce Scholarship after she started listening to Korean hip-hop music earlier this year. “This could be a way for me to get my foot in the door,” she said of the entertainment industry, and added that and the internship catered toward her intellectual interests.

Claiborne said she tries to take an “iterative approach to life” and is “open to possibilities,” noting that she expects to experience a lot of personal growth and development next year.

“A lot of academia is appealing to me,” she said. “It would be cool to have that foundation to be a public intellectual.”

Claiborne said she is almost certain she will pursue a Ph.D. in Philosophy.

On campus, Claiborne is a member of diSiac Dance Company, which she joined her sophomore year.

“Dancing has helped me realize that I do have a creative side,” she said.

“It’s important to have that creative, artistic, expressive side of you, especially when you do something as analytical as philosophy. It’s been a really good way to humanize what I study.”

As a philosophy major, Claiborne is writing her thesis on the aesthetic experience.

“My thesis is trying to unpack the relation between beauty and utility and to mend that rift in philosophy that says they have to be completely separate and to explain the extent to which beauty can enable something’s function and vice versa, using interactive products specifically as an example,” she said.

“Monique was a stalwart of the seminar in Berlin,” wrote philosophy professor Benjamin Morison, who taught her last summer, in an email to the Prince. “It was her first time outside America, but you would never have known it. She found a favourite coffee-shop to work in which, I later learned from a Berlin native, was in fact the trendiest place in the whole city. Reading Plato’s Republic with her was a true pleasure, especially hearing her views about Plato’s critique of art and poetry.”

Claiborne expressed her excitement for having the opportunity to learn Korean in Seoul.

“The first two months, they’re funding an eight-week language course,” she explained. “It goes to show that the organization really does emphasize personal development.”

Claiborne said that a year ago, she never would have imagined she would be living in Korea.

“We grow and we change so much every day,” she said. “There’s a lot of freedom in not being a hyper-planner.”

Claiborne is also involved in peer academic advising, the Writing Center, Campus Iconography Committee, Orange Key Tours, Scholars Institute Fellows Program, and Princeton Faith and Action.

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Miliband: Stick to facts REFUGEE Continued from page 1

where. And it’s those assumptions that I would argue are now under question.”

All of these issues, Miliband said, are directly and negatively affecting refugees.

“Refugees are caught between the forces of global interconnectedness and political contraction,” he said.

Miliband spent the rest of the lecture speaking about the five major points that he believes characterize the refugee crisis.

“First, that the mismatch between need and provision for refugees and displaced people has never been greater,” he said. “Let me start with the scale of the crisis.”

There are more than 65 million refugees today; they are forced migrants, Miliband said, not economic migrants seeking better opportunities. Few are willing or even able to return to their homes, which are ravaged by war or instability. Many are internal refugees — people who are displaced from their homes but remain within their country’s borders.

“The word crisis, I’m sure, is overused, but my goodness this is a crisis,” he said.

Miliband than cautioned against the proliferation of myths revolving refugees and urged the audience to focus on the facts.

“We need to break free of fictions that undermine the situation,” he said, citing a sheet listing facts about refugees as opposed to common conceptions about them, that had been taken off of the U.S. State Department’s website.

“Frankly, the attack on facts deserves a Princeton lecture series all to its own,” Miliband said to applause from the audience.

“It’s a fiction that wealthy countries like the United States host the majority of refugees, they don’t,” he added.

Miliband also argued that Western imperialism shouldn’t be entirely blamed for the roots of the crisis.

Third, he said, refugee resettlement is part of the solution. He described how Turkey had built refugee camps meant to hold 217,000 migrants; there are now over 2 million registered Syrian refugees living in Turkey, with many more likely un-

documented. This case, according to Miliband, demonstrates the importance of integrating refugees into cities and communities.

He also advocated for greater reform in the economics of refugee aid — not just increased contributions — but a more effective allocation of resources.

“We need to reform humanitarian need and build a model of economic, not just social support,” he said.

“More money alone is not enough to solve the crisis. We have to think about the kind of help we’re providing, where we’re providing it, and how.”

He cited Jordan as an example of a nation working hard to offer more support from refugees but also in need of support from the World Bank.

He also described Nigeria as an excellent example of refugee support and integration.

“In Nigeria, fewer than one percent of refugees are completely independent on national aid,” he said.

“Every refugee who arrives gets a plot of land, the right to a job, and other support to make a new life.”

Finally, Miliband argued that Western countries’ treatment of refugees will dictate their social values in the years to come.

“If we do these things I argue, we will express the important values of our own societies,” he said. “The work of rescue is not only about ‘them,’ it’s also about ‘us.’”

In the question-and-answer session following the lecture, an audience member asked about the United State’s security concerns regarding refugees from countries too unstable to provide documentation papers.

“We’ve got to hold to the facts,” Miliband responded. “It’s perfectly legitimate to ask about security.”

“People are responsible for their own papers. The burden of proof is on the refugee, not the U.S.; it’s not the refugee that chooses to live in U.S., it’s the U.S. that makes sure they are secure.”

“If you want to come cause trouble in the United States, you don’t come as a refugee. It’s far too difficult,” he joked. “I don’t want to advertise other methods.”

A University graduate student asked about the change of rhetoric that he believes has accompanied the See REFUGEE page 8

Abella: Phoenix from ashes of Auschwitz was justice ABELLA

Continued from page 1

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not reverse discrimination, it is reversing discrimination,” Abella said.

She further elaborated on the opposition to this type of change, saying that it is often due to policies that “render the status quo vulnerable.” Pointing to the ousting of three Iowa Supreme Court justices in 2010 following a decision to legalize same-sex marriage in the state, Abella criticized those who politicize the judicial process.

“They want judges to be directly responsible to public opinion, particularly theirs,” she said. “Judges may not be accountable to public opinion, but they are decidedly accountable to public interest.”

Discussing the difficulty of jurisprudence, and quoting Benjamin Franklin, Abella said, “Judges have to be comfortable experiencing the tragedy of ‘the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts.’”

She also discussed the motivation for difficult rulings, saying that they are necessary for the courts to maintain its commitment to protecting people’s rights.

“Better to court controversy than to court irrelevance,” Abella said. “Was Brown controversial?

Absolutely.” But without these sorts of rulings, she said, “Too many children will grow up in a world that does not bend towards justice.”

Ending her lecture on a personal note, she discussed her family’s historical devotion to law, especially her father’s life and legacy.

“He never saw me get called to the bar… and never saw me revel in the life of the law,” Abella said.

She recalled how he had stood for lectures in Polish law school, refusing to sit in the section reserved for Jews, and as she reflected emotionally on his legacy, the

words nearly caught in her mouth.

“Here I am, 70 years later… all because the phoenix that rose from the ashes of Auschwitz was justice.”

As both the youngest and the first pregnant woman appointed to the judiciary in Canada, Abella has had an illustrious career, receiving numerous honors, the most recent of which was Global Jurist of the Year, according to a University press release.

After the lecture, Abella stayed for a Q&A, answering questions about everything from nominations to the international impact of U.S. jurisprudence. On the subject of nominations, she expressed a clear distaste for the public hearing process of the United States, saying that it ruins reputations and doesn’t provide useful information about the nominees. Regarding the impact of judicial rulings in the United States, she was skeptical.

“We [The Canadian Supreme Court] hardly ever refer to the constitutional jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court anymore,” Abella reported.

She attributes this to the fact that many countries have written new or drastically modified constitutions in the last 100 years, while the U.S. still retains its original with minimal modification.

“The world changes. Laws change. People change,” she said.

Abella also discussed what she called “show-stoppers,” which she categorized as mechanisms for halting generally progressive arguments. She gave as examples the notion of a “constitutional originalist,” and the accusation of “Americanization” in countries outside of the U.S. Through all of this, she still maintained that judges must not be subject to popular opinion.

“You can’t play to the crowd. Democracy won’t work if populism is what drives it,” Abella said.

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Drive broke record for most registrants in one day MARROW Continued from page 1

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stem cell transplants so they can get healthy stem cells to produce healthy blood cells for them. Only 30 percent of people are able to match with someone in their family which means that 70 percent of people have to find a match on the registry.”

During intercession, Ip said the two worked hard to create a successful and clear marketing effort so that students would know what they were signing up for when they came to get their cheeks swabbed in Frist.

“The marketing effort for us was really important and we wanted as many people as possible to sign up, but we wanted to know that people know what they’re signing up for,” Ip said. “It’s really sad if a patient finds a match and the donor doesn’t want to go forward with it.

That’s something that was really important to us and students came up to the booth and they really knew what they were signing up for.”

Nuñez explained that, if you are selected as a potential match, there is a series of steps the match must go through in order to actually donate. First, the organization calls the match and goes through a basic series of questions to check a donor’s health. Then, the donor has a physical and a blood test to retest the match.

Once matched, there are two ways to donate, Nuñez explained. The first is through a machine that draws blood from your arm and takes healthy stem

cells before sending the blood back into the donor.

The process takes about 6-8 hours and comprises about 70 percent of donations, Nuñez said. The other 30 percent of donations are done through extraction of bone marrow. In a roughly 45-minute procedure, doctors draw 3-4 percent of the liquid marrow in the pelvic bones with needles. The body regenerates the marrow within weeks.

Massenzio said that although he’s a senior, he said he thinks they might do another registration drive in the spring.

“We got about 300 total, but that’s like nothing compared to the University as a whole,” he said.

“Everyone can get excited about it,” he added. “It’s not controversial; you just sign up and you help people.”

“Doctors have tools, and medicine, and knowledge, and they have everything ready to do [a transplant], but if they don’t have that person then they can’t do it, and that’s the important thing to remember,” Nuñez said.

Nuñez agreed that she hopes to have another drive in the future.

“We’re hoping to be back next year,” she said. “Next year, we will do a competition between the eating clubs or any club that wants to compete and we’ll do a prize.” “[The drive] was so great — we were sweating there were so many people at the table,” Nuñez said. “That’s never happened to me ever.”

The registration drive took place Feb. 27 and 28 and ran from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 to 10:30 p.m. both days.

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Opinion

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In truth we laugh Kaveh Badrei Columnist

T

he presidential seal of the United States flashes up on the screen, and for a second, it seems like an official message from the White House. We forget for a moment that it’s 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday night, and let our imaginations run wild. Melissa McCarthy walks out in a big suit and hairpiece, yelling angrily for everyone to be quiet. The crowd roars. And for the next five minutes, we see “Sean Spicer” shout and slam her way through this White House press briefing, as she belittles reporters and asserts her “dominance.” Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!

Behind the humorous portrayals and funny accents, SNL does something every Saturday that makes us laugh and think critically about our society. Through such a topical and vocal use of satire, the show uses comedy to send a message. In these times, with a federal government that is entering more and more uncertain waters, it is these uses of comedy that cut through the falsehoods

of politics to give us a more truthful look at our world.

It’s often easy to put comedy in a box. We tend to only think of it as blockbuster movies or late-night talk shows, failing to respect it as the impactful, inf luential art form that it truly is.

We could look to the city of Chicago for inspiration, as it is a historic hotbed of comedy, and the birthplace of improvisational comedy.

The Chicago style of comedy maintains the notion that there is always truth in comedy. It’s the idea that holds empathy, relatability, and human connection in tandem with ridiculous bits, wacky acts, and unmerited silliness in a comedy act.

Comedy should, in Chicago’s eyes, keep this grounding with the audience, this sort of tethering to the truths of everyday life that makes a good joke impactful and ultimately hilarious.

Taking this notion to heart, we can look at comedy in a completely new light. Comedy can cut through falsehoods and clearly critique society.

Thus, we can appreciate comedy as something more than jokes and laughs and

bits; rather, it’s a tool to dispense truth in an often untruthful world. This way, comedy becomes something more powerful, something more impactful than what it’s made out to be. It sends a message. This form of comedy opens the door for the possibility and potential to analyze, critique, and lambast some of the biggest f laws in our world.

On campus, as a member of the improvisational comedy group Quipfire!, I can definitely identify with this reliance on truth in comedy.

Although we don’t always craft scenes that depict deep societal issues or critique modern political issues, we nevertheless try to create a dynamic that relates to the audience. We want to put on a scene that the audience can feel, empathize with, and ultimately understand on a human level. So in this way, when you watch an improv show, you’re watching something that really resonates with you, however ridiculous, wacky, or hectic it may be.

In times like these, with a political and social climate so volatile and riddled

vol. cxli

with bias, falsehood, and sensationalized drama, our necessity for truth and clarity becomes excessively clear. Objective truth is the backbone of sound analysis and involvement; without it, nothing functions. Now more than ever, we demand an avenue to cut through the haze. We demand art that neglects society’s fog and seeks truth through and through.

Comedy isn’t just about getting laughs. While we always hope that something will be funny, I think that the truth behind comedy is endlessly important and essential for any sort of act. In this way, we can use this art form to really say something about the society and the world around us, something that shuts down falsehood and confirms our perception of the truth around us, something that gives it to us straight. At the end of the day, comedy should make us laugh and smile, but it should also make us think.

Kaveh Badrei is a freshman from Houston, Texas. He can be reached at kbadrei@princeton.edu.

Columnist

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business manager

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 Rachel Brill ‘19 associate opinion editors Samuel Parsons ’19 Nicholas Wu ’18 associate sports editors Miranda Hasty ’19 Claire Coughlin ’19

associate chief copy editors Caroline Lippman ’19 Omkar Shende ‘18

Tom Salama of spring recruitment means that we often have to wait a whole year to get involved in something we are passionate about, with people who we want to be with. With only four years of college, we don’t have much time to waste.

Princeton needs a more legitimate, formalized system for spring extracurricular recruitment. The University should organize another extracurricular fair akin to the one at the beginning of the year in Dillon Gymnasium. This would not only allow clubs to swell their ranks with new, enthusiastic membership, but it would also give students another opportunity to learn about and get involved in new activities. Those students that did not know exactly how much time they would have for extracurricular activities, especially freshmen, would be able to make a more informed decision about what to join in spring. Those who have discovered new interests and passions would be able to get involved earlier, and make the most of their time at Princeton.

Of course, clubs have autonomy over whom they take as members and when they take them, and I am not proposing that the University somehow force clubs to consider new members in the spring. I concede that it might only be smaller, less popular clubs that would be most open to a spring recruitment program.

But I also think that the positive experience that these clubs will have with spring recruitment and the talent that they will able to recruit will eventually prompt every club to see the advantages of opening their doors to new membership in the spring.

The advantages for clubs are numerous, and the benefits for passionate potential members are clear. Students trying to join an extracurricular activity in the middle of an academic year, especially firstyears, are more conscious of the expectations that a club has of its members. They are

Matthew McKinlay ’18

associate street editor Andie Ayala ‘19 Catherine Wang ’19

Spring recruitment uring the first few weeks of freshman year, I was very impressed with the number of extracurricular and sport opportunities that appeared around every corner.

There were so many different ways that I could spend my time outside of class, whether through club and intramural sports, campus publications, acapella and dance groups, or the investment clubs that Princeton offers. Over the course of the semester, I became more heavily involved in certain activities, while losing interest in others. A new sport or a new group can be totally engrossing for a number of weeks or even days, but then it may slowly fade to the background as interest is lost. I think this is normal. The issue is not with how one respectfully withdraws from activities, but rather with the long wait that one must endure before joining anything new.

It is much more tormenting to realize that I wish I had joined a particular group than to simply lose interest in something I am already a part of. In the beginning of the year, I was not only unsure of the amount of time that I would have for extracurricular activities due to my coursework, but I was also unsure about the time commitments of each activity itself. By the time I was better informed and had a clear idea of what groups I was able and eager to join, the fall semester was all but gone. I would not be able to join my desired clubs as part of the fall intake.

To my dismay, I realized that with a rare few exceptions, most clubs at Princeton do not have a spring recruitment process, and so joining these organizations would have to wait longer than I thought.

Extracurricular activities are great opportunities to bolster friendships and get to know new people too. But this only works if we are actually able to join activities. The lack

Sarah Sakha ’18

editor-in-chief

less likely to join just for the sake of joining, as I sometimes was guilty of during my first semester. Clubs would also be able to rely less on secondsemester seniors to carry the load, and can use the spring semester to train new members and thus decrease the large inf lux of totally new and inexperienced members every fall.

Opening up spring recruitment would enable more students to experience the joys of belonging to the community of an extracurricular club. I received a few emails through my residential college email chain about opportunities to join certain clubs in the spring, but these were the exception, not the norm. Clubs and their leadership should make a serious effort to reach out to new members in the spring, because everybody should be able to find a home and a community through an activity that they enjoy, with a group that they like.

Tom Salama is from Bayonne, N.J. He can be reached at tsalama@ princeton.edu.

editorial board co-chairs Ashley Reed ‘18 Connor Pfeiffer ’18 cartoons editor Tashi Treadway ‘19

NIGHT STAFF 03.01.17 copy Morgan Bell ’19 Stuti Mishra ’20

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the rubber stamp

avaneesh narla ‘17 guest contributor ............................................

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Sports

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{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } MEN’S BASKETBALL

How good is good: Comparing the Princeton men’s basketball team to its competition This semester, the ‘Prince’ will be running a weekly sports analytics column that will focus on visualizing Princeton sports data. Those interested in contributing should contact sports@ dailyprincetonian.com.

With two games remaining in the regular season, there is little more the Princeton men’s basketball team can be doing to ensure its success. Not a single team in the Ivy League has managed to dethrone the Tigers this season, and Princeton (19-6 overall, 12-0 Ivy League) is currently riding an unstoppable 15-game win streak.

On the flip side, Princeton is garnering little national attention for this feat, while the media focuses on the likes of Kansas, Villanova, and Kentucky — the usual suspects of men’s college basketball. In fact, only after winning 15 straight games did Princeton earn a single measly vote in the weekly national rankings.

In a season full of college basketball drama, it is worth placing Princeton’s performance within the wider national context. While it is well known that the Ivy League does not usually measure up to the likes of the Big 12, the Tigers’ recent success implores us to analyze the barrier between the Ivies and the remainder of the NCAA competition. Such findings will help us understand the significance of the team’s recent successes.

As a starter, we can compare Princeton to the current most elite team in the NCAA, the University of Kansas. Having won all seven of their most recent games, including impressive wins over No. 4 Baylor and No. 9 West Virginia, the Jayhawks secured the NCAA’s top ranking this past week. For our purposes, Kansas will serve as a metric of the NCAA’s most elite

squads.

Taking a quick look at season averages of major statistics reveals little difference between the two teams at hand. From a shooting and rebounding perspective, the Tigers and Jayhawks are neck and neck.

The main difference resides in offensive production per game, with Kansas outscoring Princeton over 11 points per game, on average.

When comparing the basic statistics, it is hard to determine the difference between the two squads.

What factors are lying beyond the stat lines, marking the respective calibers of the two teams? Of course, the elephant in the room is the difference in difficulty of schedules between the two teams: while the majority of Kansas’ opponents rank in the top 100 in the NCAA, just four of Princeton’s opponents have shared the same status.

To account for the disparity in schedules, the NCAA utilizes two key metrics to regularize difference so that teams can be compared on a fair scale. The first is colloquially known as Strength of Schedule, and it involves ranking all 351 teams in the NCAA based on the difficulty of their season matchups. Under the system, Kansas ranks 27th (Nebraska takes the top spot, for those who are curious), while Princeton comes in a whopping 151st place, still the highest in the Ivy League. The difference in schedule difficulty, as expected, accounts partially for the difference between the two teams.

Given schedule difficulty,

GRAPHICS BY DAVID LIU

though, how do we rank the NCAA teams based on their performance at the end of the day? The second of the two key metrics is Rating Percentage Index, which is the weighted average of a team’s record, as well as its opponents’ records. The calculation for RPI accounts for just 25 percent of the weight in a team’s own record, while the remaining 75 percent is actually dependent on a team’s opponents’ records.

For Princeton, this means that should the Tigers complete a season entirely undefeated, the team would still struggle to rank in the tier of the Big 12. In fact, even given the team’s current impressive performance, Princeton peaks at a rank of 53rd, based on the RPI metric.

While the RPI and Strength of Schedule technique separate the Tigers from Kansas and the NCAA elite, it also illustrates the disparity between the Tigers and their Ivy League competition. Behind Princeton, Yale and Harvard compete for a distant second, followed by Penn.

Columbia, Brown, Cornell, and Dartmouth straggle towards the bottom of the RPI rankings.

The data allows us to conclude that Princeton’s dominant success this season has distanced the Orange and Black squad far from the remaining Ivy competition. Even so, the data does not place Princeton in the upper echelon of the NCAA. Should Princeton advance into the NCAA March tournament, which seems all but certain, the Tigers will have the chance to put the data to the test and measure themselves up against the best of college basketball.

COURTESY OF DAILY PRINCETONIAN PHOTO STAFF

Climate affects refugees REFUGEE Continued from page 2

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rise of populism.

“Immigration and refugees are tied together,” Miliband said, stating that political rhetoric tends to address both as one issue. “Confusion of the two is very difficult.”

A graduate student asked about the difficulty of balancing the need for programs with short-term effects and the need for long-term investment.

“It’s a great question, because longitudinal effects of investment are hard to get it in the short-term,” Miliband responded.

“You’ve got to be willing to [establish programs that last] for longer than three to five months,” he added.

Another student asked if the data has so far shown whether the cause of displacement is a significant differentiator in the needs of refugees.

“It’s a great question. And the thing about great questions is I don’t know the answer,” Miliband responded to laughter in the audience.

He added that extreme weather events change the needs of refugees because they are much more likely to eventually return to their home countries.

Related to this response, a University student taking a class on the environment asked if there was a climate change component to the refugee crisis.

“Climate change and the refugee crisis must be considered separately,” Miliband said.

Another University student asked Miliband what he would be doing if he were a 19-year-old at Princeton.

“Don’t start thinking first about how to uproot your life. Don’t resign

from Princeton, finish your studies, get good grades,” he joked. “But while you’re doing that engage locally. We have an office in Elizabethtown, New Jersey that resettles refugees.”

“Be a citizen who takes his citizenship seriously locally,” he added.

Before heading the IRC, Miliband served as the United Kingdom’s 74th Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and represented the Labour Party in Parliament from 2001 to 2013.

Miliband’s political career is what attracted Jonny Hopcroft ’20, who is from the United Kingdom, to the lecture.

“I was struck by how confident a public speaker he is and how good of a leader he would be,” Hopcroft said, adding that he was disappointed when Miliband lost the 2010 Labour leadership election to his brother, Ed Miliband, who was later defeated in the general election.

“It makes me frustrated. He could have been our [Canadian Prime Minister] Justin Trudeau,” he said. “He would stand up for our values.” “[Miliband’s] accomplishments have earned him a reputation, in former President Bill Clinton’s words, as “one of the ablest, most creative public servants of our time,” and as an effective and passionate advocate for the world’s uprooted and poor people.

As the son of refugees — Miliband’s parents fled from continental Europe to Britain during World War II and its aftermath — he brings a personal commitment to the IRC’s work,” a University press release said.

The lecture, sponsored by the Edge Lecture Series, was held in McCosh 10 at 6:00 p.m. on March 1.

Tweet of the Day “Allie Harris ‘17 and Adam Kelly ‘19 are officially on their way to College Station, TX to compete at NCAAs!” Princeton track and field (@ PrincetonTrack)

Stat of the Day

20 championships Princeton Men’s Track and Field has officially won 20 Ivy League Heptagonal Championships.

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