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Wednesday March 31, 2021 vol. CXLV no. 27
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Special Opinion Edition
Designed by: Giao Vu Dinh
As we celebrate women’s history, let us push for a better future for women at Princeton By Hannah Reynolds Columnist
Editor’s Note: This piece discusses sexual misconduct, which some readers may find troubling. Note: If you or a friend have experienced sexual misconduct and are in need of assistance, Princeton has a number of resources that may be of use. You can also reach SHARE, Princeton’s Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising, Resources and Education service at 609-258-3310. The recent murder of Sarah Everard in London has reinvigorated demands for women’s equality around the world.
Everard’s death comes during the 26th annual Women’s History Month in the United States, reminding us that even as we celebrate our womanhood, male entitlement and violence remain serious threats to our safety and wellbeing. Globally, nearly one in three women have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetimes. Though it is not often discussed, the Orange Bubble is not immune to sexual misconduct against women, either. In a 2017 survey, 27 percent of undergraduate women reported experiencing some form of
sexual misconduct in their time at Princeton. The same survey reported that 38 percent of undergraduates who reported sexual assault first encountered their assailant in the eating clubs, part of Princeton that, in a normal year, is fairly central to undergraduate social life. Several of these eating clubs, ironically, did not even admit women until the early 1990s, after a court order made them co-ed. Further, occasional lewdness alerts on campus and in the town of Princeton remind female undergraduates that safety is not even guaranteed when going on a
SYDNEY PENG / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
jog on the towpath or walking home from the library at night. Perhaps most disconcerting are the numerous allegations of inappropriate conduct by male professors toward female students over recent years. Although Princeton is safer than many universities, having too great a false sense of security on campus can leave women vulnerable to misconduct in everyday parts of the Princeton experience that we often take for granted. The reality of being a woman at Princeton demands a recognition that “real-world” concerns around gender equality and women’s safety are not absent in the Orange Bubble. Although coeducation began over 50 years ago, there are a number of ways in which gender continues to shape the experiences of women and nonbinary people at Princeton, both in and out of the classroom. In order to better represent what it means to be a woman at Princeton in 2021, I interviewed female undergraduates about their experiences with gender at Princeton. Inside the classroom: Lacking representation For some female students in engineering and the sciences, gender representation in their departments plays an important role in their experiences. While Princeton has admittedly made progress since it first
admitted eight female transfer students to the class of 1970, with over half of current undergraduate students identifying as female or transgender, representation cannot be too readily accepted as an indicator of gender equality in the Orange Bubble. Elaine Wright ’21, an Electrical Engineering student I spoke with, pointed out the lack of female representation within that department, where 6 of 35 full faculty members are women. “Some of my peers in the department have gone all four years without ever having a female engineering professor,” she said. “It is encouraging to have a female professor and the few I’ve had personally have been exceptional, better than most of their male counterparts. It makes me wonder, though, if they have to outperform relative to their peers to make it to the level they’re at.” Only 27 percent of Princeton’s full-time professors for academic year 2020-2021 identify as female, demonstrating a serious underrepresentation of tenured female faculty. Not to mention, just last year, Princeton settled a dispute around allegations of pay disparities associated with gender discrimination, paying over one million dollars to female professors as comSee OPINION for more
Policing is the problem, body cameras are not the answer By Gina Feliz
Guest Contributor
The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. Summer 2020 was a major reckoning for people all across America as yet another Black man, George Floyd, was murdered in an extra-judicial killing by police officer Derek Chauvin. Tragically, Floyd’s story does not stand alone. 1,021 people were killed by American law enforcement officers in 2020 alone. Less than three months into 2021, 213 people have already unjustly lost their lives at the hands of police. After the public witnessed footage of George Floyd’s death last May, protests broke out in over 140 cities across the country. Activists called out not just police brutality but also its deeper cause: systemic, antiBlack racism. As America reckoned with the fundamentally racist history of policing, we witnessed calls for substantive legislative and structural changes across the nation. In the past, protests against police brutality have been driven by calls for better police training, more stringent and better documented use of force policies, and yes, even the required use of body-worn cameras by police officers, like those now to be worn by the 39 sworn
In Prospect
officers of PSafe, in compliance with new N.J. state law. Body-worn cameras first became a hot-button issue following the 2014 murder of 18 yearold Michael Brown. The release of a damning Department of Justice report revealed that the Ferguson Police Department was both financially extorting and brutalizing its low-income residents of color at disproportionate rates. At the same time, legislators stood at the forefront of the public eye as the grand jury chose not to indict officer Darren Wilson — another failure to indict an officer who was directly responsible for the killing of an innocent Black boy. So what then? If justice can’t be had for Michael Brown or his family, how would we make sure this doesn’t happen again? The answer legislators and advocates alike gravitated toward then was required use of body-worn cameras. In theory, body cameras work to increase transparency in police procedure, as well as accountability in cases of police brutality or misconduct. The idea was that body-worn cameras would create an objective record that a judge or jury could return to in instances of misconduct, to compensate for a reliance on eyewitness testimony, which in instances of police killings, is largely unreli-
JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
able and one-sided. People also believed that officers wearing cameras would be less likely to abuse their power and position if each of their actions was “on the record.” In November of 2014, some of the biggest champions of body camera-centric reforms were Michael Brown’s own family. Admittedly, at this time, I also believed that body cameras would be the catch-all solution to end police brutality. I was a freshman in high school when Michael Brown was killed, and all of a sudden, my recitation of “liberty and justice for all” each morning felt hollow. I was a kid who had a lot of hope for the world, but in the face of harsh realities of injustice in America, I looked to seasoned activists, like the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, for guidance in which reforms to support to prevent future police killings. Body cameras were a logical, bipartisan solution
Contributing writer Rachel Hsu reflects on growing up Asian American in a predominately white area and how her experiences made her avoid Asian media and culture, including Korean dramas.
— of course they would yield results. But it was disheartening to read about and watch the continued brutalization of people of color by the police. When I matriculated to Princeton in 2018, I joined a student group called SPEAR (then Students for Prison Education and Reform). As someone who was considering a career in policy, I was drawn to criminal justice reform in an effort to make a real difference in society with pragmatic policy solutions that would work toward the eventuality of a better, more equitable society. As I spent more time reading and learning about the Prison Industrial Complex, of which the police are a part, I came to realize that surfacelevel procedural reforms would never allow us as a society to grapple with policing’s fundamental ties to systemic racism. For the first few years of my college experience, only a relatively small group of class-
In Puzzles
mates and faculty seemed to share this perspective. This past summer, something changed. The window had shifted, and suddenly, community-centered abolitionist organizations like the Black Visions Collective were garnering widespread support, and city council members in Minneapolis were pledging to abolish the city’s police force to reinvest in alternatives to policing. Reformed use of force policies, body camera usage, and improved training regimens were no longer viewed as sufficient to address the role police play within greater systems of race-based oppression in the US. And though some groups did focus on more “reformist reforms” like defining standards for use of force and banning chokeholds, others quickly cropped up to argue that these reforms were not only insufficient, but would negatively See OPINION for more
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