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Thursday April 18, 2019 vol. CXLIII no. 49
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U . A F FA I R S
Campus roadway to be named after Rivers ’53
IN TOWN
Dinky scheduled to resume service May 12
By Benjamin Ball head news editor
By Rebecca Han staff writer
The University will name the roadway between Firestone Library and the Andlinger Center for the Humanities after alumnus and Princeton native Robert J. Rivers ’53, one of the first black undergraduates admitted to the University. The Council of the Princeton University Community’s (CPUC) Committee on Naming recommended the name “Rivers Way” to the Board of Trustees. In its recommendation, the committee said that the name had a double meaning, honoring Rivers while encouraging campus visitors to live their lives “River’s Way.” Rivers, a retired professor of clinical surgery and associate dean for minority affairs at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, studied biology as an undergraduate before attending Harvard Medical School and serving in the Navy. He became the University’s first black trustee in 1969 and received a “Doctor of Humanities” honorary degree from the University in 2016. “He is a true Princeton pioneer,” his honorary citation reads. “[H]e paved the way toward a University increasingly committed to diversity and inclusion, and he did it with dignity, grace, integrity and a lifelong devotion to this University’s highest values.” A longtime resident of Princeton, Rivers and his family also have close ties to the University and local community. See RIVERS page 5
ALBERT JIANG / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
The Dinky train sits in the Princeton station.
NJ Transit has announced that the Dinky will return to service on May 12. The Dinky’s return was formerly slated for May 24. This new date will allow students moving out of their dorms for the summer shortly after Dean’s Date on May 14 and during the spring term examination period to fully use Dinky services. According to a press release from NJ Transit, the organization has “accelerated the restoration of services.” They also noted that during the time before the Dinky’s return “test trains and rail equipment will begin to operate on the tracks.” The Dinky line was “temporarily discontinued” on Oct.
14. Its return was scheduled for January, and then rescheduled until an indefinite date in the second quarter of 2019. The reason NJ Transit initially gave for the Dinky’s suspension was to install Positive Train Control. Those changes were completed in December. In a meeting on Feb. 19, NJ Transit officials said the reason for the additional delay was a lack of engineers. The buses that have been shuttling between the University campus and Princeton Junction as a substitute for the Dinky have occasionally stirred up discontent. Common complaints voiced by the student body included discomfort and delays, both stemming directly from their reduced carrying capacity as compared to the train.
BEYOND THE BUBBLE
Ressa ’86, Mueller ’66, Obama ’85 make TIME 100 list
By Claire Silberman
associate news editor
Filipina journalist Maria Ressa ’86, Special Counsel Robert Mueller ’66, former first lady Michelle Obama ’85, Chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell ’75, and activist Ezra Levin *13 were featured in the TIME 100, an annual list of the most influential people in the world. Time Magazine published its 16th list — which includes representatives from a wide variety of fields, from art to science to politics to entertainment — on Wednesday, April 17. Editor-in-Chief and CEO of TIME Edward Felsenthal described TIME 100 as “far more than a list. It is a community
of hundreds of global leaders, many of whom support and challenge one another. And at a time when so many of our problems require cross-disciplinary solutions, they are also uniquely positioned to effect change.” Ressa is the CEO of Philippine news network Rappler, an outlet which has openly criticized Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte’s violent drug war and exposed fake news in the country. Her work has made her a target of the Philippine government. She has posted bail 11 times in the past 14 months for charges ranging from tax evasion to cyber-libel. In a fiveweek period, she was arrested twice.
Ressa was named a Time Person of the Year in 2018 for her work covering the Duterte regime and defending freedom of the press. TIME commended Ressa as an icon. “A new generation of authoritarian leaders is leading a concerted and intentional assault on truth, with serious consequences for journalists,” wrote Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State, who wrote about Ressa for TIME. She noted the importance of journalists such as Maria who are “committed to exposing corruption, documenting abuse and combating misinformation.” TIME classified Mueller in the “leader” category for his
firm sense of duty and his dedication to the Russia probe. In March, the former FBI director delivered a report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. During the two-year investigative process, Mueller “uttered not a single public word” according to Sally Yates, former Deputy Attorney General, who wrote Mueller’s mini-essay. “Distinctly apolitical, he confounds those who can’t comprehend a person driven by his all too uncommon values: honor, integrity, humility, service. He is the inverse image of the man he would ultimately come to investigate,” she wrote. “He called it as he saw it. He did his duty.” See TIME page 3
tors and signals establish a “tool box” of genes that govern proper development in Drosophila. Without them, the fly would not have the proper body segments and appendages, like wings and antennae. According to Wieschaus, similar mechanisms apply not just to flies, but humans and other multicellular organisms as well. “How can you use a laboratory animal, like a fly, to address basic questions?” Wieschaus asked. Wieschaus stated that his earlier contributions were able to help to improve the understanding of birth defects, which is why his work won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Although Wieschaus did not set out to research the question of what causes cancer, he found that embryonic development and tumorigenesis are connected. The same set of genes that controls the decision-making process of a developing embryo also governs decisions made throughout the life of an organism, Wieschaus said. When these genes are mutated in an adult, he added, they can lead to cancer. For example, the hedgehog and armadillo genes that Wieschaus discovered in the 1970s contribute to the development of skin and colon cancer. His current research focuses on describing the mechanics of embryonic development. Wieschaus seeks to answer the question of how cells or sheets of cells are able to form various movements and how the forces that drive that process are generated. Wieschaus remarked that the relationship between the generation of those cellular forces, the
mechanical properties of the cells, and the genetic activities that drive them poses an interesting and important question in biology. “They may in the long run have some significance for cancer,” Wieschaus said of his recent work. “You never really know when you’re doing science. Anything you do, to have any significance at all, other people have to build on it.” After graduating magna cum laude from University of Notre Dame with a B.S. in biology in 1969, Wieschaus earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1974 with the Swiss developmental biologist Walter Gehring as his doctoral advisor. After a series of academic appointments, Wieschaus joined the University as an assistant professor of biology in 1981, and became an associate professor of biology in 1983. Wieschaus was named as a full professor in the molecular biology department in 1987 and appointed Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology in 1993. Since 1997, Wieschaus has also been an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as an adjunct professor of biochemistry at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. The AACR was founded in 1907 and is the world’s first professional organization dedicated to researching, preventing, and curing cancer. The AACR Academy recognizes scientists who have made significant contributions to this mission. This year, Wieschaus was one of 22 newly elected fellows inducted at the AACR annual meeting in Atlanta from March 29 to April 3.
MATTHIAS KUBISCH / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Eric F. Wieschaus was inducted last month as a fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Academy.
Molecular biology professor Eric F. Wieschaus inducted into American Association for Cancer Research Academy By Katie Tam and Allen Shen senior writer and staff writer
Eric F. Wieschaus, Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology and Professor in the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, was inducted last month as a fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Academy. The announcement states that the honor was awarded “for his
In Opinion
Nobel Prize winning identification of genes responsible for controlling embryonic development and their impact on tumorigenesis, and for conducting large-scale mutagenesis screens in Drosophila melanogaster, or the fruit fly, to identify genes responsible for embryonic patterning and development.” Wieschaus’ best-known work concerns the development of Dro-
Contributing columnist Katie Goldman advises prospective students on dealing with imposter syndrome at Princeton, and columnist Morgan Lucey encourages students to surround themselves with views that differ from their own. PAGE 6
sophila embryos. His research involves mutating the genes of flies and assessing them for developmental abnormalities on a large scale. The experiments reveal that the majority of mutations do not cause changes in the flies’ development; only around a hundred mutations result in defects in patterning and differentiation in the embryo. This set of maternal fac-
Today on Campus 4:30 p.m.: Samuel Kortum, Yale University: “In Search of Trade Frictions” Julis Romo Rabinowitz A17
WEATHER
BEYOND THE BUBBLE
HIGH
69˚
LOW
59˚
Cloudy chance of rain:
20 percent