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Tuesday march 4, 2014 vol. cxxxviii no. 23
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‘The jury and the prosecutors’
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In Opinion Benjamin Dinovelli suggests we should abandon the negative associations we have with quitting, and Barbara Zhan discusses Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp. PAGE 5
Today on Campus 7:30 p.m.: The WhigCliosophic Society will host a debate of the resolution “Princeton is Flunking Mental Health.” Pizza and refreshments will be served afterwards. Whig-Clio Senate Chamber.
The Archives
March 4, 1977
Master of Wilson College Norman Itzkowitz responded to a petition formed by New New Quad freshmen asking for permission to eat inside Wilson College dining hall. Itzkowitz said the plan was “not feasible.” He stressed the importance of maintaining a sense of community for members of Wilson College.
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Tape of hearing reveals that concerns over presumption of guilt continue to mar Princeton’s disciplinary process. The first in a three-part series. By Luc Cohen editor-in-chief emeritus
The central question facing the Committee on Discipline one night last year — a question that would contribute to the eventual verdict in a student plagiarism case — focused on a time stamp. If the time stamp on the student’s computer science assignment was altered, it would indicate the student had plagiarized and then presented fabricated evidence to the Committee before the hearing. The issue of the time stamp came up toward the tail end of the four-and-a-half-hour long hearing, late at night on March 13, 2013. In a discussion lasting around one minute, the Committee decided the time stamp could, in theory, have been fabricated. No evidence presented during the hearing suggested that the time stamp had been fabricated. Nevertheless, the student was found responsible for plagiarism and suspended for a year with a note of “censure” on her punishment for having presented fabricated evidence. Debates over the fairness of the Committee on Discipline’s procedures are decades old. But, for the first time, The Daily Princetonian has obtained an audio recording of a hearing, provided by the student from the March 2013 hearing on the condition of anonymity. A review of the hearing provides rare insight into the largely opaque process and calls into question whether the Committee always meets the high standards of evidence that it holds itself to in order to find a student responsible for a violation. Moments in the tape bolster the arguments of detractors who suggest that some of the questions the Committee asks during hearings are designed to prompt accused students to make self-incriminatory statements. During the reporting process, the ‘Prince’ sought to use the hearing to shed light on the disciplinary process in general — a longstanding campus-wide debate that previously lacked any documentary evidence. University officials explained that the ‘Prince’
9
Number of students arrested at the White House last weekend.
News & Notes Chen ’14, Japanwala ’14 win Dale fellowships Vivienne Chen ’14 and Natasha Japanwala ’14 won the Martin Dale Fellowship, which will allow them to pursue independent projects after graduation. The fellowship provides each student with a $33,000 grant, and was created by Martin Dale ’53. The grant money is intended for the pursuit of “an independent project of extraordinary merit that will widen the recipient’s experience of the world and significantly enhance his or her personal growth and intellectual development.” Chen’s project will be a continuation of her senior thesis — she will use the money to travel to China and complete her novel, set in 1930s. Japanwala will launch an online publication, an exhibition and a collection of short stories exploring the experiences of Pakistani immigrants. Last year Flora Thomson-DeVeaux ’13 was awarded the fellowship to continue her senior thesis research on Argentinian butler Santiago Badariotti Merlo. In 2012, Zachary Newick ’12 and Shivani Sud ’12 were corecipients. The selection committee is chaired by the Dean of the College, and is comprised of faculty and administrators.
Too harsh or too lenient? The student’s hearing was one of an estimated 25 to 40 cases heard each academic year by the Committee, which adjudicates most violations of University policy, from cheating on homework assignments to sexual assault. The Committee has previously been criticized both by those who claim it is too harsh on accused students and those — namely advocates for rape victims — who claim it is too lenient. In addition, some argue that the University’s limited range of penalties result in punishments that do not fit the crime. Deignan, who was secretary of the Committee for 17 years after her arrival at the University in 1984 and has chaired the Committee since 2001, argues that there are good reasons behind many of the most commonly criticized aspects of the Committee’s work. She said the Committee sets a higher standard of evidence than most civil court cases and peer institutions’ disciplinary bodies in order to minimize the risk of a false conviction, and argued that a limited range of punishments is necessary to uphold the academic and intellectual values of the Princeton comSee TAPES page 2
0:04
The student begins her opening statement, where she argues she uploaded the wrong file by mistake. “It was an honest mistake. I had no intent to submit someone else’s code,” she says.
0:33
Gordin asks the student to walk him through how she wrote the code “from the moment you turned on your computer to the moment you turned it in, step-by-step.”
2:39
The Committee telephones the student's preceptor as a witness. He confirms that many aspects of the student's code had been working fine at office hours.
3:41
The student’s adviser suggests one important piece of evidence might be missing: the timestamp on the file. Deignan dismisses this, noting that Committee knows students can alter the timestamp.
4:08
“Huge ambiguity” surrounds the course's collaboration policy, says the student's adviser “Well, the Committee will decide whether or not it thinks there’s ambiguity,” Deignan replies.
4:11
The student’s adviser gives his closing statement, followed by the student’s. Deignan excuses them, and the Committee begins its deliberations. HANNAH MILLER :: SENIOR DESIGNER
Timeline of a Committee on Discipline hearing that went on for four-and-a-half hours, according to audios obtained by the ‘Prince.’
BEYOND THE BUBBLE
U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S
9 students arrested at Pipeline protests
U. administrators to present data on peer advising system
By Anna Windemuth
staff writer
staff writer
PRINCETON By the Numbers
did not have access to the internal deliberations of the Committee, nor the evidence itself, neither of which are disclosed to the public, which is similar to the American judicial system. Chair of the Committee and Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan explained that the observations and discussions presented at these deliberations, without accused students present, can put the Committee’s decisions in full context. Deignan said she and other Committee members could not discuss the details of this case, or any specific case, due to policies protecting students’ privacy. Nonetheless, Deignan emphasized that the accused student is always presented with all evidence and has the opportunity to respond. All Committee hearings are recorded for the purposes of an appeal.
Nine students were arrested in front of the White House at a youth protest against the Keystone XL Pipeline on Sunday. The students joined around 1,000 other participants to protest phase 4 of TransCanada’s pathway for crude oil, which is still pending President Barack Obama’s approval. If approved, the final leg of the pipeline would have a capacity of 830,000 barrels of oil per day and constitute 329 miles, according to the project’s website. The students were among 398 youths who were arrested and charged with infractions for strapping themselves to the White House fence and blocking sidewalk passages, according to Nikolaus Hofer ’17, who left for Washington, D.C. with a group of 12 students on Saturday morning. Hofer said it was the largest single-day act of civil disobedience at the White House in a generation. The students embarked on a two-hour march from Georgetown University, walking past Secretary of State John Kerry’s house and through Lafayette Park, where they staged a
rally with speakers from various institutions, Hofer said. A smaller group continued to protest in front of the White House. They anchored themselves to the fence with zip-ties and staged a “human oil spill” on the sidewalk, lying down en masse on black tarps for up to six hours. Alex Bi ’17 and Hofer were arrested for taking part in the oil spill protest. Katie Horvath ’15, Mason Herson-Hord ’15, Dayton Martindale ’15, Lucie Wright ’14, Courtney Reyes ’17, Divya Farias ’15 and Damaris Miller ’15 were arrested for tying themselves to the fence. Parth Parihar ’15, Rachel Parks ’15 and Thaddeus Weigel ’15 were not arrested apparently because they only marched, and they did not tie themselves to the fence or take part in the mock oil spill. “We knew full well that we would be arrested,” Hofer, who is also a member of the College Democrats, said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. After repeated warnings from the police, Hofer was arrested, patted down and stripped of his belt and belongings. “If we hadn’t had the money to pay the fine [of $50], then we would have spent about a week See PROTESTS page 3
By Ruby Shao University administrators will soon present data on the peer academic advising system that was implemented across all residential colleges in the 2012-2013 academic year. The peer advising program had been extremely limited before the 2011-2012 school year, Dean of Wilson College Anne CaswellKlein said. Under the old system, A.B. freshmen only met a Peer Academic Adviser on course enrollment day in September and did not interact with them for the rest of the year. B.S.E. freshmen did not have Peer Academic Advisers at all. “After working with peer advisers in that system for several years, a lot of them expressed frustration about not getting to know the freshmen better, and feeling like they had a lot more that they would be happy to offer to the lives of freshmen,” CaswellKlein explained, adding that they were “also hearing from freshmen, ‘Oh, I met this really nice person during course enrollment but then I never saw her again, and I don’t remember her name.’ ”
ACADEMICS
Caswell-Klein, the Director of Studies at Rockefeller College at the time, said she tried to improve the system by launching a pilot program in September 2011 in Rocky, Forbes and Whitman. The pilot assigned Peer Academic Advisers to advisee groups, commonly referred to as “zee groups,” to increase the sense of community between underclassmen and their peer advisers. The program also expanded to include B.S.E. advisees and B.S.E. Peer Academic Advisers. Before, B.S.E. underclassmen had only received guidance from peer interactors, and B.S.E. upperclassmen had only been able to serve as interactors, not advisors. Director of Studies at Whitman College Justin Lorts helped lead the project after coming to the University in early 2012. The pilot program expanded to all colleges in the 20122013 academic year. The new system standardized training across residential colleges, Lorts explained. Before orientation, Peer Academic Advisers now receive input from directors of studies and representatives of services that they often refer freshmen to, including tutoring, See ADVISING page 4
LOCAL NEWS
Female chemistry professors call Public Safety arrests two in for boycott of chemistry congress response to trespassing By Elizabeth Paul staff writer
Director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment Emily Carter is joining two other female theoretical chemists in a call for the boycott of the 15th International Congress of Quantum Chemistry because its preliminary list of speakers did not include women. Laura Gagliardi, chemistry professor at the University of Minnesota, and Anna Krylov, chemistry professor at the University of Southern California, composed an open letter with Carter. The petition, an appeal to “condemn
gender-biased discriminatory practices of which ICQC-2015 is the most recent example,” amassed 1,645 signatures by Monday evening. The petition was in response to a partial list of speakers published on the ICQC website, Krylov said. Among the 24 speakers and five chairs mentioned, the list featured no women. Carter, who began drawing attention to this issue by personally boycotting conferences 14 years ago, said she was in disbelief when she received emails from Krylov and Gagliardi explaining the lack of women at the ICQC. “There’s a lot of work to be
done to raise consciousness so people realize that there are outstanding women in all fields today,” Carter said. “There’s really no excuse for having a conference of any size that doesn’t have at least some outstanding female speakers.” Krylov said the organizers of the conference submitted a letter of apology in response to their petition and published a new list on their website including five women. However, she added that although she is glad the organizers of the conference are “patching the problem,” she finds it unacceptable See BOYCOTT page 4
By Chitra Marti staff writer
Two arrests were made on campus last week by the Department of Public Safety, according to the daily crime logs published by DPS. The first of these arrests was made in front of the UStore on University Place shortly after midnight on Monday morning. Ernst Delma, 30, of Princeton, was arrested and charged with defiant trespass. He was also issued a persona non grata, University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua said. Mbugua added that Delma had been issued a previous persona non
grata that was still in effect. Delma has been arrested before for consumption of alcohol in a public place, criminal interference, aggravated assault, shoplifting and resisting arrest. Three DPS cars and one Princeton police car were at the scene, according to reporters at the scene. However, the arrest was made solely by DPS. According to Princeton Police Sergeant Michael Cifelli, the town police were called to the scene to assist DPS and Princeton First Aid with an intoxicated person. Although the U-Store is See ARRESTS page 4
The Daily Princetonian
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Tuesday march 4, 2014
Committee on Discipline criticized for presumption of guilt How the Committee works
There are two bodies for adjudicating violations of University policies and standards, as outlined in the “Rights, Rules, Responsibilities” document: the student-run Honor Committee, and the Faculty-Student Committee on Discipline. The Honor Committee, formed in the late 19th century in response to rampant cheating on exams, applies only to alleged cheating on in-class examinations. All other academic violations, such as cheating on homework assignments, as well as non-academic violations such as sexual assault or drug use, go before the Committee on Discipline. The Committee on Discipline is chaired by the Dean of Undergraduate Students, Kathleen Deignan, who asks questions during hearings but only votes in the event of a tie. Its secretary, Associate Dean of the College Victoria Jueds, is responsible for collecting evidence and presenting it in its entirety to the accused students before the hearings, but does not speak or ask questions during the hearings. The Committee consists of six faculty members and five undergraduate students, though not all are present at every hearing. The faculty members are nominated by the Faculty Committee on Committees and asked to serve by Dean of the Faculty David Dobkin. The students apply to be members of the Committee and are selected by a panel of current Committee members. In hearings, the Committee employs the “clear and persuasive” standard of proof, which generally means that at least 80 percent of the evidence must suggest the defendant is guilty in order to find them responsible. Hearings are recorded for the purposes of an appeal, which the student may file to Dean of the College Valerie Smith or to the Judicial Committee. An appeal must either present new evidence that came to light after the decision was made, or present evidence of procedural irregularities during the hearing. Jueds calls in students who have been accused of violations and presents to them any evidence against them. The student then has the opportunity to suggest other evidence he or she believes the Committee should consider, and Jueds will collect it. It is then up to the student to find an adviser, who can be any member of the University community. Frequently, a staff member of the student’s residential college serves as the student’s adviser. Outside attorneys are not allowed although a faculty or staff member who happens to be an attorney is an acceptable The hearing begins with an opening statement. Committee members then begin asking questions of the accused student, and of the accuser, who is also present during the hearings. The student may suggest additional witnesses for the Committee to call in, either in person or over the phone, to speak about the specific case. The student is also permitted to nominate a character witness, who speaks generally about the student but not about the case in question. The adviser is not permitted to answer a question for the student, but is allowed to clarify and elaborate upon answers to question the accused student has given. The adviser may also ask the student questions the Committee has not asked if he or she feels the answer to the question is in the student’s best interest for the Committee to know. After the student makes a closing statement, the Committee deliberates, and votes on whether the student is guilty or not, and if so, what penalty the student should receive. Only the Committee is present during the deliberation. Penalties range from a dean’s warning for a minor infraction, disciplinary probation in instances where the individual is found responsible but the Committee believes a reasonable person would not have realized he or she was committing a violation, suspension for one to three years, or expulsion, in more serious instances. Censure can be added to any punishment to indicate that the Committee believes the student was being uncooperative. The Committee currently does not publicize the total number of cases it hears. During the last three years for which data is available — 2009-2010, 2010-2011 and 2011-2012, the Committee has issued anywhere between 32, 31 and 22 punishments for academic violations, and issued 15, eight and four suspensions or expulsions for offenses including drugs, alcohol, assault, sexual assault, fraud and disorderly conduct. Harvard’s Administrative Board, by contrast, issued anywhere between 14 and 20 suspensions for academic violations between 2005-2006 and 2009-2010. During those five years, the Ad Board issued between eight and nine suspensions for so-called “social violations,” including drugs, alcohol and sexual assault. Lesser offenses such as illegal downloads of copyrighted material or first-time alcohol violations generally do not make it to the Committee. They are referred to the Residential College Disciplinary Board, which can only issue dean’s warnings and sentences of disciplinary probation.
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munity. Courts adjudicate most civil cases based on a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, meaning that the defendant can be found guilty if more than half of the evidence points against them. The University applies a higher “clear and persuasive evidence” standard instead, which is analogous to the “clear and convincing” standard used by the courts in some cases. Criminal cases employ a still-higher “beyond reasonable doubt” standard, which some said was too high for the Committee’s purposes. Princeton is somewhat of an outlier among peer institutions when it comes to standards used to adjudicate campus disciplinary action. All other Ivy League institutions except Harvard utilize the “preponderance of the evidence” standard. Harvard uses a “sufficiently persuaded” standard, which requires more evidence than the preponderance standard but does not correspond to any particular outside legal standard and has been criticized as vague. However, students who have gone through the process and the professors and lawyers who advise them say the process is marred by a presumption of guilt and inconsistent application of a respectably high standard of evidence. “We don’t do the criminal justice system in that manner, and we shouldn’t do it [that way] at Princeton,” R. William Potter ’68 said. Potter is a local attorney who has advised students going before the Committee. “And let’s face it. Something like suspension or expulsion from the University is a kind of quasicriminal penalty. It’s a form of exile.” “And certainly it is a scarlet letter on the person’s record for the rest of their lives,” Potter added. Such criticism of the Committee strikes at the heart of the debate over the role of campus discipline committees, which are not in any way unique to the University. Deignan said the University treats discipline as an educational process, noting that the way the procedures are designed and the way the Committee members ask questions are intended to help the students learn from their alleged mistakes. Critics contend that this approach ignores procedural fairness, violating student rights. Harvey Silverglate ’64, a Massachusetts criminal defense attorney who runs the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, argued that the educational language formally describing the mission of the Committee helps the Committee avoid being held accountable for seeming violations of due process. “It’s an exercise in the students learning that they’re hopeless in the face of the Leviathan,” Silverglate said. Deignan said that during her time at the University, the Committee has never wrongfully convicted a student, attributing this fact to the high standard of
proof the University sets. However, she noted that Committee has probably let guilty students off in the past due to lack of evidence. “Your instincts are telling you that this doesn’t feel quite right, but the evidence wasn’t there,” she said. Uncertainty over timestamps At the hearing, as well as in a later interview, the accused student who provided the recording of her hearing to the ‘Prince’ maintained that the whole situation had been an accident. She admitted that she had downloaded code as reference for the assignment, but added that rather than intentionally plagiarizing she had accidentally submitted the downloaded file, which had the same file name as the file that contained her own work. In her defense, the student and her adviser, a computer science graduate student, argued that she had saved the file containing her own work before the assignment’s deadline, pointing to the file’s timestamp as evidence. But the Committee questioned that line of defense, instead at one point suggesting that student only created the second file after she learned that she was accused of plagiarism. Committee members noted that it was possible to alter the timestamp on the file, but did not present any evidence that the student in this particular case had in fact altered the file’s timestamp. Deignan outlined the main question the Committee had to answer: whether there was clear and convincing evidence that the student had intentionally submitted the plagiarized file and only completed the assignment after the due date. Deignan’s statement was the last mention of the possibility of altered timestamps in the entire hearing. However, this particular moment in the hearing apparently weighed significantly in the Committee’s decision. The decision letter sent to the student the next day explained that “the Committee was persuaded that the code you brought to your second interview with [Associate Dean of the College Victoria Jueds] on March 12 constituted fabricated evidence.” Jueds, as secretary to the Committee, does not vote on a case’s outcome, but collects all evidence related to the allegations and presents it to the student before the hearing. “You explained that this was original code, written without the use of any [impermissible] outside source, and that this was the code you intended to hand in,” read Jueds’ letter. “The Committee found this explanation implausible, and instead agreed that the original code could not have existed when you first [met] with me, let alone when you handed in Assignment No. 2.” The letter acknowledged that there were some “unknowable” things about the case, such as why the student would have plagiarized given that her code was largely working when she visited a preceptor during office hours before the assignment was due. The preceptor had confirmed this fact during the hearing. Nevertheless, Jueds wrote that “these uncertainties did nothing to diminish the clear and persuasive evidence of your violations.” The student in this case was suspended from the University for one year. The Committee added “censure” to her punishment to indicate their belief that she had been dishonest with them. She has now spent two semesters away from the University, and permanently has a note on her transcript indicating that she was suspended for plagiarism. The Committee also argued that the course’s policy prohibited consulting online resources in completing assignments, and thus the student was in violation of course policy simply by searching for information online. The student and her adviser disputed this, arguing that course policy was ambiguous and that students frequently searched for hints and tips online.
Students and faculty currently serving on the Committee either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. A stacked deck? Before the hearing, the student had previously met with Jueds, who had presented her with the evidence against her. During the hearing, Committee members said they thought that she only wrote her own code after this meeting, which could potentially explain why the student did not inform her professor that she accidentally submitted the wrong file until 36 hours after she met with Jueds. The student appealed the decision to Dean of the College Valerie Smith, who can receive appeals on the grounds that there is additional information that could not have been permitted during the hearing or that the penalty imposed is inconsistent with previous penalties for similar cases. In her written appeal, the student detailed her activities and alibis in the days after she met with Jueds, arguing that she would not have had time to write the file. The verdict and punishment came as a surprise, the student said in an interview, adding that the burden of persuasion had been placed on her to prove she had acted honestly, where it should have been the Committee’s responsibility to prove she had altered the timestamp. In the meeting with Jueds, the student did not immediately recognize that the supposedly plagiarized code was not her own, she and Jueds both said in the hearing. The student argued this was because she didn’t spend much time looking at it. Committee members suggested that if she had really submitted the code by mistake, she would have instantly recognized the code was not hers, and questioned why she did not spend more time looking at it. “You’re told that you’re going before the Committee on Discipline for this code, and you don’t look at it?” history professor and then Committee member Michael Gordin asked during the hearing. Asked why she waited 36 hours to inform her professor, the student said it was because he would not have replied to the message. “He wouldn’t what?” a shocked Deignan said in response. “You waited until Thursday to tell him you made a mistake, and you submitted a code and you’re being accused of plagiarism, for two days … Why? Because he wouldn’t check his email?” Gordin asked. The way the Committee members asked some of their questions, which the student said mixed accusations and questioning, left her wondering whether she’d already lost her case. “They’re the jury and they’re the prosecutors,” she said in an interview. Gordin, who declined to speak about this particular case although he agreed to answer general questions about the Committee, said statements such as these reflected his genuine surprise, not a presumption of guilt. “It would be nice if we were able to be completely dispassionate, but sometimes someone says something and I’m like, ‘Oh, that just seems like not how I would behave,”’ Gordin said. “That’s not dispositive. That doesn’t say that someone’s guilty.” Potter, the local lawyer and occasional adviser to students, said the roles of questioner and decision-maker were conflated during a case he witnessed after accusing a student of plagiarism in a politics course he was precepting. This is concerning because the Committee becomes invested in its own arguments, clouding its judgment of others’ cases, he said. Wilson School professor Stanley Katz, who attended Harvard Law School and has advised several students accused of violating University regulations, said the Committee’s bias in favor of its own arguments results in a presumption of guilt. “That’s in my mind a violation
of the basic principle of fairness in a quasi-judicial proceeding,” he said. Deignan said the Committee “absolutely” presumes innocence, and that the burden of persuasion rests squarely on the Committee to demonstrate clear and convincing evidence. She said she understands some students feel the deck is stacked against them, but that this perception comes from the strength of the evidence the Committee collects before finding a student responsible. Deignan pointed to the Committee’s “clear and persuasive” standard as an indication that it does not take its work lightly. She explained the Committee recognizes that suspension and expulsion are severe penalties, and that this makes it crucial to be confident in a guilty verdict. While some accused students claim the deck is stacked against them, other critics contend that the system goes too far in protecting certain perpetrators. Advocates for rape victims have criticized schools like Princeton that continue to employ a clear and persuasive standard in sexual assault cases, making it more likely an alleged rapist will avert consequences. A 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter issued by the federal Department of Education recommended using a preponderance of the evidence standard. Princeton did not lower its standard in response, noting that the recommendation did not carry the force of law. ‘And then what happens?’ Despite the high standard of evidence, some students who felt they were wrongly accused said Committee members’ actions during hearings were not fair, no matter what ideals the Committee purported to hold. During her hearing, Committee members frequently asked the student to provide a detailed walkthrough. In this case, this included everything that happened from “the moment you open the file to the time you turn it in,” Gordin said. During the student’s explanations, Gordin asked for more and more detail, prodding her to “be a little bit more precise about your memories” and saying “when I said detailed, I meant really detailed,” following a question about what time she went to bed on a specific date three weeks before the hearing occurred. The hearing is peppered with a constant chorus of phrases such as “Then what happens?” and “and then what?” Potter, the local attorney, characterized such practices as “inviting confession.” “They should not be asked to spill their guts in front of the Committee,” he said. The student said the system perversely encourages self-incrimination. “Censure wouldn’t have been added if I had said, ‘Yes, I did it,’” she said. “I tried proving the truth and this is what they did to me.” However, Gordin said that committee members are instructed to ask for very specific details, Gordin said. “That method of trying to be really specific is a standard practice just to actually figure out what happened,” he said. “I imagine some students might interpret that as trying to get a confession out of them, but if they don’t remember, they honestly don’t remember, and that’s sometimes true.” Deignan pointed out that the Committee’s purpose is meant to be educational for the accused students, rather than punitive. Since the hearing is not a court of law, the implications of self-incrimination are not as severe as they are in the U.S. legal system, she said. Given the academic setting and the Committee’s educational goals, Deignan said members expect accused students to be “honest and straightforward.” She said the Committee is not sympathetic to a student whose “main objective is simply to avoid punishment and therefore thinks he or she shouldn’t have to … incriminate themselves.” Limited penalties Katz, the Wilson School professor, said he had no problem See COMMITTEE page 3
The Daily Princetonian
Tuesday march 4, 2014
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Judicial courts side with U. disciplinary system Protestors’ families COMMITTEE generally supportive Continued from page2
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in theory with an approach that treats discipline as an educational matter. However, he added that because the stakes are so high — students who are found to commit minor acts of plagiarism often face a one-year suspension — more due process must occur. Princeton’s range of penalties is more limited, and the punishments are more severe than many of its peer institutions. A review of the University’s annual disciplinary reports for the past three academic years indicates that most students found responsible for academic violations are suspended. Students receive disciplinary probation when the Committee determines that a “reasonable person” may not have realized they were committing plagiarism. By contrast, Brown University’s academic code allows students who committed less severe acts of plagiarism to fail the assignment they plagiarized, or fail the course in which they plagiarized. Harvard’s Administrative Board has these options as well, and also allows the student’s professor to determine the penalty in certain cases. At other peer institutions, probation and suspension are the only options, but students may be suspended for less time; at Princeton, the minimum suspension for any violation of University policy is two semesters. Deignan said these penalties are appropriate in an academic community, where academic integrity is a core value. “These are longstanding responses to violations the University thinks are serious,” she said, noting that harsh penalties even in less severe plagiarism instances are necessary to uphold the community’s values. At a place where academic integrity is a “foundational value,” a suspension is a punishment that fits the crime, she argued.
She also cautioned against allowing faculty members to determine punishment for the cases they bring up to the Committee, since the University wants to make sure that penalties are equitable across courses and departments.
After the hearing The student suspended last March submitted her written appeal to Smith one day after the hearing. The appeal argued that the fabricated evidence conviction was based on a presumption of guilt, and the Committee had no evidence besides a hunch. Smith denied her appeal, noting that the student submitted copied code without addressing the question of whether she intended to or not. “You copied code from the internet and submitted it without attribution for Assignment #2,” Smith wrote. “The Committee on Discipline therefore found you responsible for plagiarism.” The student returned home for the final weeks of the spring semester and the entirety of the fall semester. If she had decided to sue the University, her chances in court would have been slim, whether or not the University reached the right conclusion. “There’s a very strong sense of judicial deference to the University in administering its own affairs,” Potter said. Katz said he has frequently advised the parents of suspended students not to pursue legal action against the University, since “their first instinct is to think that they ought to sue the University. And they’re not going to win.” Silverglate said that although universities’ written disciplinary codes constitute a contract that courts have recognized, the judicial system has held schools only to the codes’ general spirit, not to the letter. Thus, students suing on grounds of procedural unfairness don’t stand much of a chance. The University’s disciplinary
system has been challenged in court many times, including two seminal cases in the early 1980s. In both cases, judges upheld the University disciplinary bodies’ decisions, reaffirming the University’s right to discipline students how it sees fit. In Napolitano v. Princeton University, Gabrielle Napolitano ’82 alleged the Committee on Discipline wrongly convicted her of plagiarizing a Spanish assignment. A New Jersey appeals court found that courts should not serve as a “super-trier” in University due process cases. Robert Clayton ’82 sued the University in 1980, claiming the student-run Honor Committee had not afforded him due process before suspending him for cheating on a biology lab assignment. In 1985, after multiple appeals, a federal district judge ruled that the University had given Clayton “fundamental fairness,” which is “all that the law requires.” These cases have served as precedents for New Jersey Superior and Appellate courts in more recent cases. University General Counsel Peter McDonough pointed to six cases since the Clayton decision in which courts have sided with the University’s right to conduct its affairs independently, most recently in 2010. Proposals for change For those who believe the Committee should reform its practices, the main question is how to strike a balance between the need for greater due process and the benefits of more expeditious and informal hearings. Potter said he understood that “overjudicializing” the system could have adverse consequences, but that since the penalties were so severe, accused students deserve more due process than they are currently getting. He noted that students should not be prompted to reveal everything that happened during their initial meeting with the associate dean, since they are
not adequately informed that what they say can be construed as evidence of a confession. Instead, he proposed that the University set up an independent office called “Student Advocate” or “Student Ombudsman” to confidentially consult with accused students, go over the evidence with them and help them prepare for the hearing. Katz said he is sympathetic to the concerns about making the process too judicial, and suggested that reforming the penalty scheme could make the procedures fairer. He said the insistence on harsh punishments makes the system punitive, rather than educational, in nature. “None of it would bother me so much if we more frequently slapped people on the hand,” Katz said. “But so long as we give what seems to be really severe penalties, for what I think are not trivial but essentially venial kinds of offenses, then it’s a system I think that can’t achieve an appropriate educational goal.” Deignan said that overall, the presence of both students and faculty members on the Committee helps ensure procedural fairness and an accurate outcome. She noted that the student and faculty members of the Committee are respectful of one another’s views, and that the faculty do not exert any sort of pressure over the student members as some outside observers may expect. She said the decisions in most cases were unanimous, and whenever there is a split vote, it is rarely students on one side and faculty on the other. “Particularly with respect to academic cases, a faculty member is bringing a case before the Committee and a student is being charged, and having the perspectives of students and faculty is so important, and while they represent different perspectives, they are remarkably aligned in their assessment of the facts,” Deignan said. “It’s a wonderful process.”
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in jail,” he explained, adding that the infraction would not become a part of their criminal record. The public information office of the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police declined to comment. Hofer said he was disappointed in Obama after campaigning for his reelection in 2012. “It kind of disgusts me that he’s still considering [the pipeline project],” Hofer said. “This is a battle that we are willing to wage, and this is not something that we’re just going to sit idly by and let happen. We believe that a peaceful protest involving a lot of civil disobedience is the best course of action.” The protest was a collaborative effort by institutions along the East Coast and as far west as Iowa, Herson-Hord, who is a Princeton United Left member and New Jersey liaison for the pipeline protest, said. He was also one of the arrested students. “It was definitely pretty exhilarating. People there were a combination of excited and angry,” he said of the protest’s atmosphere. Activists are concerned about the local impact of spills, groundwater poisoning and the extraction process, as well as the global effects of carbon dioxide emissions, Herson-Hord explained. “This is a much lower quality fuel than what we usually can get out of conventional oil drilling. When it’s burned, it releases 17 percent more carbon dioxide than conventional gasoline,” he explained, referring to the environmental impact of tar sands. “If we lose the climate change battle, all the other victories don’t really matter.” Several protestors said their families were generally supportive but had concerns about their safety. “I felt like, like it’s more of a symbolic gesture,” Martindale said of the arrests, adding that the process was “streamlined,” making it feel less like a real detainment. “I actually didn’t talk to my parents until after. I knew they would support me
and support the cause, but I didn’t want them to be waiting for a phone call saying I was in jail.” Apart from rejecting the final phase of the pipeline, Herson-Hord said that students would like to see Obama implement effective taxation on carbon dioxide emissions and drastically increase investment in renewable energy sources. “At this rate we’re not going to transition in time, and the longer we wait, the faster and more destructive that transition will have to be,” Herson-Hord said. The Princeton University College Republicans president Evan Draim ’16 argued that the project would create jobs and provide a safer alternative for a pipeline that would be built underground in offshore Canada if Obama does not approve construction. “There have been many fewer instances of spillage when the pipelines are over ground,” he explained, adding that building the pipeline in the United States would allow for more effective monitoring and regulation. Draim also said that building the pipeline would improve national security. Draim is a former news contributor for the ‘Prince.’ “I think it makes sense for us to be getting our oil from a stable ally like Canada rather than having to rely on Middle Eastern dictators,” he said. College Democrats copresident Miranda Rehaut ’16 said she did not have a definitive position on the pipeline. “I think that people who consider only the environmental, or only the economic, or only the foreign policy side of this issue should expand their horizons and look at it from a holistic perspective,” Rehaut said of the pipeline, adding that environmental issues are particularly potent for college students. “Because we realize we’re the ones who will be footing the bill, we care more.” Rehaut is also a Street writer for the ‘Prince.’ The Princeton United Left hosted a meeting on Monday night to discuss the protests.
The Daily Princetonian
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Tuesday march 4, 2014
Satisfaction with advising rising Petition amasses 1,645 signatures ADVISING Continued from page 1
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Disability Services, Counseling Services and the Writing Program. They also receive training together with residential college advisers. All other decisions about the peer advising system are left to individual colleges’ deans and directors, Lorts said. Peer Academic Advisers are expected to lead study breaks for their zee groups and contribute at Major Choices events throughout the year, Lorts and Director of Studies at Forbes College Patrick Caddeau said. Caddeau also noted that he checks in with Peer Academic Advisers to ensure they stay in contact with their zees. “The tricky part is that I know that they have those good intentions, but it’s keeping it high enough on their to-do list that they actually schedule study breaks, and that they actually show up to spend time with the students that they’re working with,” Caddeau said. He also said that zees need multiple opportunities to get to know their advisers since everyone on campus
is busy. Wilson College peer academic adviser Wilhemina Koomson ’14 said she has found arranging oneon-one meetings with zees to be more effective than trying to coordinate the entire group’s schedule. Her experience as a student allows her to help many freshmen overcome their anxiety, she said. “[Saying] ‘we’ve been through it too and it’s rough, but here are your different options, here’s what we can do’ — I think that’s been the most beneficial way, just because it lets them know they’re not the only ones facing this, and it makes it less overwhelming if they feel like someone has gone through the exact same thing,” Koomson explained. Koomson said that if zees’ academic interests differ from her own, she feels prepared to direct them to other resources for department-specific questions. All of the administrators interviewed said they considered the system successful. Lorts noted that surveys have shown a consistent rise in underclassman satisfaction with peer advising in recent years. He said that,
specifically, he has seen improvement in that students who know who their peer adviser is, have spoken with their peer adviser and feel comfortable approaching their peer adviser with questions. However, some students expressed dissatisfaction with the system. “I think we met [our Peer Academic Adviser] once at the beginning of the year, and that was kind of it. Our RCA is way more helpful, and even a professor who’s an academic adviser is a lot more helpful. I feel like we just don’t really have much interaction with her at all,” Linda Liu ’17 said. “It might be nicer if they were a little bit more active in reaching out,” Eric Li ’17 noted. “I know I need a lot of advice on picking majors, because I’m stuck between six or seven right now.” Hun Choi ’17 said he was not aware that he had a peer academic adviser. Lorts and Senior Associate Dean of the College Claire Fowler will present results from three years of advising program surveys at the Council of the Princeton University Community meeting on March 10.
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that the culture surrounding women in science is changing so slowly. “The whole pattern is sending a very wrong message,” she said. “You first invite real speakers and then you say, ‘Okay, if you want your diversity. Here, have your diversity.’ And that has to change.” Josef Michl, president of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, oversees the organization of the 2015 ICQC, while Zhigang Shuai of Tsinghua University is responsible for actually putting together the list of speakers. Michl explained that the early publication of the list was a mistake and the list would typically only be published after several academy members had approved it. He added that, in response to the open letter, Shuai sent Michl and other academy members the partial list asking for sug-
gested additions, especially women. The previous conference held in 2012 had one woman for every seven men, Michl said. The 2015 conference in Beijing will show an improvement, with one female speaker for every five male speakers. “That, in my opinion, exceeds the number of leading women in the field. But we think that that is good because it kind of promotes the cause of attracting more women to the field,” Michl said. However, he also said that the notion of composing an initial list without women was odd. “They did not fully acknowledge the deep issue that women scientists are not inferior. That there are enough women scientists to be included from the very beginning, not an afterthought,” Krylov said. The core of the problem lies in the hidden biases against women and minority groups, Krylov said. “That’s why I think it’s ex-
tremely important to raise these issues and educate people, because many people do not want to discriminate but they have these hidden bias which play a role,” Krylov said. Education for combating gender bias suggests scientists evaluate other scientists more quantitatively based on their contribution to the field, she added. This approach promotes women, she said, because using more subjective means to evaluate research might cause people’s gender bias to interfere with their perception of research women had done. Michl said there is a deeper issue behind the selection of women presenters at major conferences: the treatment and retention of women in science. “The fact that did happen gives us an opportunity to focus on the issue of how women are treated in science,” Michl explained. “I think that the most important thing is to attract highly competent people into the field.”
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COURTESY OF NIK HOFER
Nine students were arrested, along with 389 other protesters in Washington, D.C. last weekend.
technically off-campus, it still falls under the jurisdiction of DPS, according to an agreement of operating procedures formed in May 2013. The details of the agreement were not released to the public. Under the agreement, the Princeton Police Department will not respond to incidents on University property but outside of the main campus. At the time, PPD Captain Nick Sutter said the agreement could serve as an example to other communities dealing with ‘town and gown’ policing. However, in 2012, a U-Store employee was arrested by the
then-Borough police for allegedly engaging in theft and prostitution in the store after hours. Mbugua said the change in police jurisdiction had been a result of the new agreement of operating procedures. In an unrelated theft earlier last week, a U-Store customer reported that her wallet had been stolen while she was at the store. Its contents were estimated to be $85, according to a press release issued by the PPD. Last Wednesday evening, Steven McCarthy, 54, of New Brunswick, was charged with defiant trespass in Frist Campus Center and was issued a summons. Mbugua said McCarthy had been issued a persona non grata before as well.
The second of these arrests involved a bicycle theft. Shortly after 6 a.m. on Monday, a student reported to DPS that his bicycle had been stolen from Henry Hall. The suspect, Raleigh Kelly, 50, of Garfield, was then located on Nassau Street by DPS. He was arrested there on charges of theft and possession of burglary tools. Mbugua said the items Kelly had in his possession were related to the bicycle theft. Four other bicycle thefts were reported in the last week from 1927 Hall, West Garage, Forbes College and Whitman College. Two other reports of shoplifting from the U-Store, one on Saturday and the other on Sunday, were filed as well. All of these cases are still under investigation by DPS.
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Opinion
Tuesday march 4, 2014
page 5
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }
‘What’s wrong with you?’
Barbara Zhan columnist
What the WhatsApp acquisition means
F
acebook’s recent announcement of its deal to purchase WhatsApp for $19 billion dollars has sent shockwaves through the tech world. While supporters of the deal laud Facebook for gaining 450 million monthly active users, analysts point out that WhatsApp has been overpriced. To put it into perspective, WhatsApp is now worth 10 percent more than Sony’s market cap and more than Southwest Airlines or Marriott International. For $19 billion dollars, each WhatsApp user is worth $42, even though the app is free and only generated revenues of around $20 million last year, a hundredth of Facebook paid to acquire it. But the acquisition of WhatsApp is just the latest in a series of deals by big tech companies, including Yahoo!’s acquisition of Tumblr, and Facebook’s Instagram purchase. Although the other deals were valued around $1 billion, a much cheaper price than WhatsApp, they all represent a precarious trend that these Internet tech companies have to maintain high growth just to survive. All of these deals are not purchases of products, but purchases of customers. Since these companies rely on an advertising model to monetize, they constantly need fresh users to replenish their audience for ads. They also need to battle every f lashin-the-pan app that starts gaining users quickly, because those startups could be taking customers. Unlike other companies mentioned, such as Southwest Airlines or Sony, Internet companies have extraordinarily low barriers to entry, sometimes requiring just a college kid with a laptop and a dream. This means that every small startup could be a competitor. While product companies sit comfortably on their large market shares, companies like Facebook have to be constantly vigilant. These big Internet companies fill this need for users and stave off the competition by periodic acquisitions. In essence, Facebook saw purchasing WhatsApp as a way to simply survive. Unfortunately, the costs of these acquisitions show that this strategy is unsustainable in the long term. WhatsApp’s acquisition is more than just a pricey Facebook buy, it may also signal that Silicon Valley is in a tech bubble that is bound to pop. Advertising is a fickle monetary strategy, relying on users to keep using the product at all times. Although product sales can rely on repeat buys (think household products, which also have more brand loyalty), people are less inclined to switch haphazardly from one brand to another, while any small dissatisfactions can uproot teenage social media users to seek another platform. If the only revenue stream for a company is in advertising, that is a problem. The companies that survive are the ones that will diversify from that revenue model. Google, for example, does a great job of doing this. Even though the lion’s share of their current revenue comes from advertisements, other areas of their revenue are also growing, namely in the Google Play store and in their hardware developments. Google has expanded its business from a simple search engine and Internet services like email to include increasingly popular Chromebooks, the Google Play store (now the biggest app store) and other projects like Google Glass. It has also acquired a series of robotics companies like Nest Labs, maker of automated home thermostats, Boston Dynamics, maker of robots for military uses, and SCHAFT Inc., creator of disaster-relief robots. This expansion into hardware shows a diversification strategy into areas of tech that benefit people in concrete ways and doesn’t rely on teenagers’ clicks. Many of these companies are the ones heavily recruiting Princeton graduates, building strong reputations with heavy campus involvement and hard interview processes, but a good reputation doesn’t always translate to longevity. Students have to recognize that glamour and publicity don’t mean success, but instead are something to watch out for in the future, especially in the tech field. Barbara Zhan is an Operations Research and Financial Engineering major from Plainsboro, N.J. She can be reached at barbaraz@princeton.edu.
Ben Dinovelli columnist
J
ust one of the many texts and missed calls I received when I woke up last fall after my friend, as a light-hearted prank, had changed my Facebook status to “Leaving for the semester, can’t wait to see you guys next year!” While I quickly resolved the confusion, informing my very worried mother and my less concerned friends that I was in fact not leaving for the next semester (probably to the dismay of my more vocal and critical readers), the response from those close to me left a lasting impression. Instead of being a potential for alternative growth or creativity, the idea of leaving was considered a rash judgment. To them, my announcement was not just simply a change in location but conjured up words such as “giving up,” “failure” and “wasted potential.” The initial treatment I received were questions over what went wrong, as if the mere idea of leaving in and of itself were irrational. And who can blame them? Respected role models like former President Bill Clinton, saying the “main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit,” or businessman Ted Turner, suggesting that winners never quit, leaves a longlasting impression. To leave is to give up — a public admittance of defeat. This is especially true at Princeton, where our obsession with achieving success, getting good grades and obtaining
internships consumes many of our peers. College is not just a place for intellectual enhancement on an individual level but also an opportunity to improve oneself relatively before pitting ourselves against each other in a limited and sluggish job market. We acknowledge the competition and place the benchmark of four years in our head as the norm, seeing any deviation from that as a sign of something gone awry and the beginning of the path towards failure. Princeton is especially strong in promoting the four-year course. From its strict policy of not admitting transfer students to its residential college system, Princeton goes to great lengths to tie our identity to the four-year mentality. This differs from larger state universities, which are much more flexible with the time it takes to graduate, allowing for early graduation for some and offering five-year plans for others. And in the process we make ourselves conform to a pre-determined standard. Even though my Facebook status was simply over a simple break, a deviation from the norm, it was viewed as sacrilegious. While many acknowledge that academic stress can often be hard and for some even unbearable, the option of quitting as a legitimate choice seems to escape the minds of many. When news spreads that someone takes time off or even leaves entirely, questions arise over why the person would risk their degree. The assumption quickly forms around the idea that the decision may be rash or not fully thought out. We have failed to empathize, and in doing so, we have marginalized those who “quit.” Through collective dismissal, we have delegitimized what to many may
be a reasonable or even preferable option. To leave Princeton for a semester to work or try something new almost never crosses the minds of our peers. We are programmed to follow the four-year course. In the process, we kill potential innovation. From the well-known dropouts, such as Harvard’s Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, to one of Princeton’s own dropouts, Seth Priebatsch, who would have been in the class of 2007 and now owns SCVNGR, a mobile game start up, many who have “quit” in the past have found success in unconventional ways. Yet when we repeatedly create this societal expectation that we need to finish college to be successful, we disincentivize those who may be able to better improve themselves outside the collegiate system. But what if that is not the case? Maybe it is time to redefine what quitting means. After all, some of the most successful leaders and innovators have quit in their past — either for the purposes of taking a break or to explore alternatives. For many, quitting is not equivalent to failure but rather an attempt to find one’s calling or to try something new. Now is a time for exploration and growth. Especially when the pressures of trying to pay rent and living day-to-day are much less of a concern, it is better than ever to experiment and take risks. Maybe this concept of quitting as inherently negative is an endemic part of our culture that we may never be able to remove. However, history has shown there are multiple paths to success. We should realize quitting may not always be the end, but can, for some, also be the beginning. Benjamin Dinovelli is a sophomore from Mystic, Conn. He can be reached at bjd5@princeton.edu.
Showing off the MErchandise jon robinson gs
vol. cxxxviii
Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 editor-in-chief
Nicholas Hu ’15
business manager
BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 vice presidents John G. Horan ’74 Thomas E. Weber ’89 secretary Kathleen Kiely ’77 treasurer Michael E. Seger ’71 Craig Bloom ’88 Gregory L. Diskant ’70 Richard P. Dzina, Jr. ’85 William R. Elfers ’71 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 John G. Horan ’74 Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Betsy J. Minkin ’77 Alexia Quadrani Jerry Raymond ’73 Annalyn Swan ’73 Douglas Widmann ’90
138TH BUSINESS BOARD business manager Nicholas Hu ’15 head of advertising Zoe Zhang ’16 director of national advertising Kevin Tang ’16 director of recruitment advertising Justine Mauro ’17 director of local advertising Mark Zhang ’17 director of online advertising Matteo Kruijssen ’16 head of operations Daniel Kim ’17 head of finance Charles Zhou ’16 comptroller Denise Chan ’17
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accounts receivable manager Eugene Cho ’17
NIGHT STAFF 3.3.14 news Carla Javier ’15 copy Julie Aromi ’15 Jacob Donnelly ’17 Do-Hyeong Myeong ’17 Joyce Lee ’17 design Hannah Miller ’16 Sean Pan ’16 Julia Johnstone ’16
A model of constructive discussion Katherine Zhao
contributing columnist
L
ast weekend, I took a break from the Orange Bubble and went to the East Coast Asian American Student Union conference, which was held at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. ECAASU is a nonprofit whose mission is to “inspire, educate and empower those interested in Asian-American and Pacific Islander issues.” Every year for the past 36 years, ECAASU has had an annual conference dedicated to bringing together Asian-American college students to discuss issues that are relevant to us in a series of workshops, as well as to create a forum for Asian-American students to share and discuss their experiences. On Friday afternoon, some Princeton students and I squeezed into two rented vans and made the four-hour drive down to D.C. The conference effectively brought together students from different schools with different experiences to discuss relevant AsianAmerican issues, spreading ideas and inspiring each other. The topics that were brought up for discussion were also topics that are usually brushed over, ideas that go through our heads
at some point but are too big to bring up and talk about during our stressful daily lives at Princeton. The workshops introduced topics such as self-identity, Asian-American feminism and leadership. The first workshop I went to, “How Far Have We Come?” addressed the presence of Asian-American studies departments at various universities. This workshop consisted of a panel of students from different universities who were all involved in either pushing for an Asian-American studies program at their respective universities, or were a student in the Asian-American studies program that already existed at their school. Evan Kratzer ’16, current copresident of the AsianAmerican Student Association at Princeton, was a panelist in this workshop as one of AASA’s main missions is to create such a program at Princeton. Princeton currently has no Asian-American studies program, only an option to focus on Asian-American studies within the American Studies program, and the creation of the program is in the preliminary stages of planning. At a conference like this, ideas are spread when student leaders get together and share their experiences about creating Asian-American studies programs at their schools, and because the development of
Princeton’s own Asian-American studies program is currently in the works, such discussion is especially constructive. At Princeton, it’s hard to discuss big topics like these in everyday conversation, especially when the student body is so diverse and has so many different interests. A conference like ECAASU is effective and productive because it brings together people who share similar goals and thoughts in a setting to discuss important political issues that are often under-discussed. The second workshop that I went to was called “#notyourasiansidekick,” and the speaker was an AsianAmerican feminist. We talked about stereotypes of Asian-Americans in the media: Asian-American women are portrayed as either the Dragon Lady or the delicate china doll, and Asian-American men are similarly portrayed as either the martial artist or the nerd. These binaries that are so prevalent in the media in turn create images of us that the public holds, and these stereotypes prevent us from achieving individuality. We talked about issues like misrepresentation and underrepresentation of AsianAmericans in the media; the appearances of Asian-Americans in Hollywood are often limited to small roles of foreigners, requiring them to speak foreign
languages when in fact, the actors and actresses are born and raised in America and speak perfect English. In other places, discussions like these are rarely held because they are only relevant to the Asian-American community. Being able to hear the thoughts of Asian-American women from different areas of the East Coast was especially enlightening. This highlights the importance of gaining new perspectives from as many angles as possible, something we rarely give a second thought to. The conference was especially effective in that it brought together Asian-American students from up and down the East Coast, and it created a space to discuss specific Asian-American issues. By both bringing a number of diverse perspectives together and creating a concentrated forum for discussion of specific issues, the ECAASU conference provided a unique opportunity for what might be the most effective type of discourse possible. In the future, student organizations at Princeton should strive to promote this sort of discourse on any and all important issues. Katherine Zhao is a freshman from East Brunswick, N.J. She can be reached at kz2@princeton.edu.edu.
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Tuesday march 4, 2014
Brown pulls off upset, keeps Tigers in tie for first BBALL
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with a 41-30 advantage. Princeton finally rediscovered its shooting stroke streak after making fewer than 40 percent of its shots each of the last four games. The Tigers made seven of 14 from distance, a throwback to the early season version of this team that hit at least 40 percent of its three-pointers in half of its first 10 games en route to a 9-1 record. Princeton would go on to achieve that threshold for the first time in its last 15 games with a nine-for-21 performance. Eleven points was the same halftime lead the Tigers held against Yale two weekends ago, before choking and losing in overtime. The second half fade was still present, but this time, the Tigers closed it out strong as they did several times in November and December. Making about a quarter of its shots, Princeton allowed Brown to claim a 61-60 lead with five minutes left. But six made free throws down the stretch and zero made shots from the Bears gave Princeton the five point win. Bray led the team with 21 points, seven rebounds and six assists. Bray is now 69 points short of the vaunted 1,000 career points mark with three games left. Weisz continued his string of solid performances with 13 points and five rebounds. The duo was rewarded for their performances with a sweep of the Ivy League player and rookie of the week awards. “I don’t usually believe in luck, but it’s about time for us to get some of those bounces,” Henderson said in reference to the last few plays of the game. Princeton heads to New York next weekend to take on Cornell and Columbia. If the Tigers win out and Harvard handles Brown on the road,
Princeton will find itself in a three-way tie for No. 3 in the league with a winning conference record. Women trounce Yale, lose to bottom-feeding Brown A week after earning sole possession of first place in the Ivy League standings, Princeton suffered its own bewildering defeat at the hands of then-last-place Brown. The 6158 loss is the first in five years to an Ancient Eight team not called Harvard. The Tigers (187 overall, 9-2 Ivy League) comfortably defeated Yale 85-63 on Friday in New Haven, before turning in their worst shooting performance of the season on Saturday in Providence.
“I don’t usually believe in luck, but it’s about time for us to get some of those bounces.” men’s coach Mitch Henderson ‘98 “It’s remarkable that we still control our own destiny. It shows how hard we’ve played all season long,” head coach Courtney Banghart said. “Four [games] on the road in a row is tough, but if we get better over the next week, then we’ll be playing for an Ivy title.” Princeton rode its momentum from the previous weekend into the first half against Yale. The Tigers simply could not be stopped, shooting 67.9 percent from the field, while holding Yale to a pitiful 25.7 percent. The halftime score was 48-26, as Princeton was on pace to equal its seasonhigh scoring output and best its 41-point margin of victory set last week at Dartmouth.
The advantage got all the way up to 35 with just under nine minutes to play, before a Yale rally brought it back to 22 at the end. It might not have meant much with the game already decided, but the slide rolled over into the next night’s contest. Princeton outshot Yale by 18 percent in the second half, but 15 offensive rebounds from the Bulldogs and 11 more free throws resulted in the teams tying at 37 apiece after the break. Five Tigers reached double-digit scoring figures, led by senior forward and captain Kristen Helmstetter’s 17. She and sophomore forward Taylor Williams led the team with seven rebounds apiece, and junior guard Blake Dietrick contributed six assists and two steals. “The kids were really dialed in — they took away the transition game and played aggressively with the ball,” said Banghart. “This is a tough team to play on the road, and they played hard.” The last time Princeton faced Brown, the Bears scored four more points than the Tigers in the second half. Though insignificant at the time, it may have provided the spark Brown needed to come out fighting in this contest. The Bears led 35-27 at the half after making two-thirds of their shots, including six three-pointers. Princeton’s shooting went from bad to worse in the second half, as it made just 29.4 percent of its shots. The Tigers made up for it by hauling in 15 offensive rebounds and snatching a huge season-high of 15 steals. They actually held a 46-42 advantage with 10 minutes left, at which point the game seemed safely under control. But guard Lauren Clarke scored 10 of her game-high 24 points down the stretch, while Princeton missed three shots from behind the arc on the same possession to end the game. Helmstetter again
led the team with 20 points and eight rebounds, and although Dietrick put up 13, it came with a price tag of 19 shots taken from the field. “It was a frustrating game for us on both ends,” Banghart said. “They have two really good players that combined for 39 points. Offensively, we didn’t get enough production — our post players were absent and we didn’t get our usual production from our wings.”
“It’s remarkable that we still control our own destiny. It shows how hard we’ve played all season long.” Women’s coach Courtney Banghart Banghart did, however, reserve some praise for her captain’s performances in both games. “Kristen played her heart out. She played a lot of minutes this weekend and played like a senior during them. Not enough people around her brought their game,” Banghart said. Next up for the Tigers are games against Cornell and Columbia on Friday and Saturday. The Big Red is a distant fourth place in the standings with a .500 league record, while the Lions are tied for sixth with a 3-9 record. Assuming neither Princeton nor Penn slips up this weekend, the two teams will face each other a week from today in a winner-take-all regular season finale that will function as a playoff game. This contest at Jadwin Gymnasium will be one fans will not want to miss.
Swimmers place second in Ivy League SWIM
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up with 75 individual points in the meet, the highest total of any Tiger. The top individual performance of the meet was Brown’s Thomas Glenn, swimming 1:42.35 in
the 200 f ly, good for a meet record and eighth-fastest in the NCAA. Senior captains Daniel Hasler and Mark O’Connell capped their careers with 72 and 51 points, respectively. Hasler finished fifth, sixth and seventh in the 400 individual medley, 100m breast
and 200m breast, while O’Connell took a careerbest second in the threemeter diving and seventh in the one-meter. NCAAs are three-and-a-half weeks away in Austin, Texas, though no Tigers have yet achieved the marks necessary to qualify.
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The Daily Princetonian
Tuesday march 4, 2014
page 7
SPORTS SHORTS
Women stay undefeated on season By Andrew Steele and Jack Rogers sports editor and associate sports editor
Crimson unable to get past undefeated Tigers According to the national rankings put out at the beginning of the season, Princeton’s water polo team, ranked No. 7, is the lone top10 team on the East Coast. Compiling a perfect 11-0 record to start the season has been no cakewalk. This past weekend’s showdown against Harvard (7-2) proved this talented and deep roster can overcome adversity, having fought back from a 6-4 Crimson lead in the early second period. If it were controvertible before, this weekend likewise proved there is no better college goalie in the country than sophomore Ashleigh Johnson. The US Junior National Team competitor and gold-medalist compiled 17 saves and two steals in the winning effort against Harvard. Reigning Southern Division Player of the Year senior utility Katie Rigler has also been outstanding, notching three goals this past Saturday at DeNunzio Pool. Though the squad will visit Cambridge, Mass. this upcoming weekend for the Harvard Invitational, they will not get a rematch with the Crimson until April. Baseball sweeps in weekend series at UCSB A rainout on Saturday did not change the momentum for the baseball team over the weekend, as the Tigers (0-3) suffered a three-game sweep over the course of Friday and Sunday to open the season at University of California at Santa Barbara (7-1). The first game on Friday saw the Tigers fall 9-1 to the Gauchos, as the Tigers
put a slew of rookies onto the diamond to test their grit against UCSB. Playing at first base and right field, respectively, freshmen Nick Hernandez and Paul Tupper recorded their first career hits in the first inning, which also accounted for the Tigers’ first two hits of the season. Things unraveled quickly, as the Tigers gave up three walks and three runs to fall into a 5-0 hole that proved too great to recover from. In the first game of a Sunday doubleheader, the Tigers and Gauchos exchanged slews of offensive outbursts, as both teams had tallied ten runs apiece by the sixth inning. But eight UCSB runs over the seventh and eighth innings put the game out of reach as the Tigers fell 18-10. The Tigers struggled at the plate in the second game of the day, as they only managed five hits compared to the Gauchos’ nine-hit, 11run performance. Sophomore infielder Danny Hoy had two hits, three walks, two RBIs and a run over both of Sunday’s games, and freshman outfielder Danny Baer recorded three hits, two runs and a walk over both games. Softball sweeps in UCF Tournament The softball team had a rough start to the season in Orlando, as the team lost all five of its games over a threeday span. The Tigers (0-5) first squared off against University of Central Florida (10-7), but fell 4-0 to the Knights in the first meeting between the teams since 2002. Junior centerfielder Rachel Redina, junior shortstop Alyssa Schmidt and senior third baseman Tory Roberts each recorded a hit, but no other hits from the
rest of the lineup led to a scoreless start to the Tigers’ season. The Tigers’ largest margin of loss came against the Stetson Hatters (8-3) on Friday when the Tigers gave up 12 runs on 11 hits to lose 12-4. Senior catcher Maddie Cousens went 2-3 at the plate with an RBI, but only four hits for the rest of the team made for a lackluster offensive response to the Hatters. The Tigers lost both games on Saturday and their final game on Sunday by close margins, falling by four, one and two runs respectively in matchups against the University of Tennessee at Martin, College of Charleston and Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. But the team’s meager four total runs over the course of the three games could not back up strong defensive play. Buffalo and Stony Brook fall to men at Jadwin, women sweep all opponents A trio of losses to very competitive and highly ranked southern opponents two weekends ago put a damper on the men’s tennis team’s (8-4) hot start to the season. The squad got back on track this past weekend with a pair of wins against the State University of New York at Buffalo (6-2) and SUNY Stony Brook (32) at Jadwin Gymnasium by match scores of 4-3 and 7-0. Junior Zach McCourt continued his impressive form with two wins at the first singles spot (6-1, 6-3; 7-6, 6-1). His national rank of 108 makes him the only Tiger currently on the NCAA Division I singles rankings. Freshman Tom Colautti has likewise continued to impress. He followed a 6-3, 6-4
win over Buffalo’s Pablo Alvarez at third singles with a 6-0, 6-1 win over Stony Brook’s Raphael Termat at second singles. Head coach Billy Pate mixed up the top two doubles pairings on the day. Freshman Alexander Day played with McCourt at the first spot against Buffalo, while seniors Augie Bloom and Dan Davies matched up against Stony Brook’s first doubles spot. The former pair won in a convincing 8-2 pro set, while the second duo lost in an 8-5 contest. And yes, there are indoor tennis courts in Jadwin. The Tigers will host the University of Denver and Penn State this upcoming Friday and Saturday before heading to sunny San Diego over spring break. On March 29, they will begin their Ivy League schedule at Penn. Along with the men’s action, the women put together an impressive set of three 7-0 wins over Stony Brook (3-3) and Seton Hall (1-4) on Friday and SUNY Albany (54) on Saturday. The Tigers were more or less dominant across the board. Junior Lindsay Graff dropped the first set to Stony Brook’s Polina Movchan, but won the next set and won the 10-3 tiebreaker to take the match. Otherwise, Jadwin’s courts saw very few game wins for the visiting side. A weekend trek will take the Princeton women to Columbus, Ohio to take on Ohio State. Spring break will take the Tigers to Florida for a pair of matches. When they return, they will face seven consecutive Ivy League opponents as they look to improve upon their 4-3 in-league finish last season.
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Sports
Tuesday march 4, 2014
page 8
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } BASKETBALL
MEN’S SWIMMING AND DIVING
Ivy final sees men’s five-year streak broken By Eddie Owens associate sports editor
CARLY JACKSON:: FILE PHOTO
The pair of Ivy wins over Yale and Brown marks the first time in this calendar year that Princeton men have won two in a weekend.
Women upset, men win two By Edde Owens associate sports editor
Men sweep Brown and Yale in final weekend of home conference play After the weekend it had, the men’s basketball team must be wishing the Ivy League had a playoff system. Princeton (17-8 overall, 5-6 Ivy League) defeated Yale 57-46 Friday night before holding off Brown 69-64 on Saturday. The win over No. 2 Yale (15-11, 9-3) ensured that Harvard would earn at least a share of its fourth-straight Ivy League title, while the defeat of Brown (15-11, 7-5) pulled the Tigers within spitting distance of third place.
“Getting to 20 wins would be nice, but we’ve still got three tough games left,” senior forward Will Barrett said after the Brown game, his first double-digit performance in two weeks. “I’m happy to get two wins this weekend, and I hope we keep it going,” head coach Mitch Henderson ’98 said. The win over a strong Yale squad was especially impressive because Princeton was finally able to play well the entire second half. The score at the break was 27-26 in favor of the Tigers, despite the fact them having been outshot by six percentage points. The team’s shooting actually worsened in the latter half, but playing their best defensive half of the
year more than offset it. Princeton kept Yale to an ice-cold 20.7 percent shooting in the second half and kept Justin Sears to three points after he exploded for 19 in the opening period. Senior guard and captain T.J. Bray scored 12 of his 19 points after the break, as the team used a late 10-0 run to put away the Bulldogs. Freshman guard Spencer Weisz had an outstanding night, with 14 points and team highs of seven rebounds and three assists. The team picked up where it left off against Brown the next night, twice achieving a 15-point lead in the first half before heading to the locker room See BBALL page 6
Men’s swimming and diving picked up four wins at this weekend’s Ivy League championships but fell to Harvard 1495-1413. Princeton held a five-year win streak coming into the meet, but the Crimson was able to defend its home pool with nine event wins. The Tigers never got within 50 points after falling into a 105-point deficit after day one. Third-place Penn’s Chris Swanson won Swimmer of the Meet after winning the 500- and 1,650-yard freestyle events and placing second in the 1,000. Day one saw Princeton’s best event of the meet amid some of its worst performances. The sophomore trio of Teo D’Alessandro, Marco Bove and Byron Sanborn swept the 200m individual medley, with D’Alessandro setting the pool record at 1:45.45. Meanwhile in the 500m freestyle, freshman Sam Smiddy’s sixth-place finish was the only Tiger performance to achieve doubledigit points. In the 50m free, Harvard took four of the top six spots, and junior Harrison Wagner was unable to defend his title in
the event, finishing fifth. Princeton won three events on day two but could only shrink the deficit to 82 points, as the score stood 1011-929. The medley success from Thursday rolled into Friday as the Tigers won the 200m relay and Smiddy won the 400-yard individual event, both with pool records. Junior Michael Strand made himself a double winner by defending his 100m backstroke title in near school-record time after contributing a leg on the relay. Wagner, Bove and junior Connor Maher joined him on the relay and each scored in the A final for his individual events. Still, Harvard took five of the top seven spots in the 200m free to maintain a safe lead. Princeton and Harvard tied with 484 points apiece on the final day after the Crimson topped off its meet-winning performance with a near-NCAA A-cut and 2:53.64 in the 400m freestyle relay. It was one of four Crimson winning performances, highlighted by Jack Manchester’s meet record of 1:42.62 in the 200m backstroke. Right behind him in Princeton record time was sophomore En-Wei Hu-Van Wright, who ended See SWIM page 6
THE
AROUND I V I E S
Even as the snow melts or continues to fall along the East Coast, Ivy League women’s lacrosse still gives fans the chance to catch their favorite squad tear up the turf. After two weekends of play, here is how the teams of the Ancient Eight stack up:
1.
Penn (1-1): As we said of the men last week, there can be no shame in losing to the country’s No. 1 overall team this early in the season. The top ranked University of North Carolina Tar Heels handed Penn a 13-8 defeat in Chapel Hill. Impressively, the Quakers kept the score within two goals until the 9:42 mark in the final period while the Tar Heels managed to pull away in the final 10 minutes. Now ranked No. 15 in the country, Penn jumped Princeton in the Coaches’ rankings.
2.
Princeton (1-2): This high a ranking for a team with a below .500 record seems somewhat inappropriate. However, it is readily apparent that the Tigers have faced the toughest schedule in the league through three games. The road will not get easier for this talented side, with three of their opponents over the next two months currently ranked inside the top 10. Ouch. An away matchup at rival Brown should help get the women of Princeton back on track. The attack unit is one of the country’s best, led by last season’s Ivy Attacker of the Year junior Erin McMunn.
3.
Yale (3-0): The computers at LaxPower.com have the Bulldogs just above Princeton, but their first three earlyseason victories came as easy wins over clearly inferior competition. Attack Kerri Fleishhacker notched a teamhigh five goals in their Ivy opener at Dartmouth. These top three teams are most likely the only sides who will compete for the league title. Harvard (2-1): Midfielder Maeve McMahon notched a hat trick in her side’s home opener against Cornell. The 10-7 winning effort showed that this team has young talent to reload after a very disappointing season in 2013. Their away meeting with Penn this weekend will be one of the weekend’s most exciting.
4.
Brown (3-0): Similar to Yale, Brown pulled off two wins against inferior competition. The next weekend the women traveled to face a perennially struggling Columbia side in a game which the Bears led throughout. Brown’s defenders will have their hands full with Princeton’s attackers this upcoming weekend, and it is unlikely that their offense will challenge a solid Princeton defensive unit.
5. 6.
Cornell (1-1): A convincing 17-9 win over Temple was followed by a disappointing showing at Harvard. This side and the two above it will remain very close in the rankings, but a league title is not in the cards for the Big Red. Out of league, the Cornell women will face rough competition from ranked opponents Syracuse, Penn State and Stanford.
7.
Dartmouth (2-1): An impressive win over Connecticut saw the Big Green hold on in rough winter conditions. The New Hampshire side hosted Yale and was thoroughly dominated throughout. Despite a 5-2 Ivy record and 11-8 overall mark last season, it appears unlikely that the Dartmouth women will remain competitive in the league.
8.
Columbia (1-1): Lacrosse is not the strong suit of this New York City school. Their men’s side does not play at the varsity level, and the women failed to pull off a league win in 2013. The squad picked up a 20-11 win over Long Island University: Brooklyn, which does not mean much. Unfortunately for the Lions, Columbia lacrosse will likely remain in the basement of the Ivy League.
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