April 28, 2017

Founded 1876 daily since 1892 online since 1998

Friday April 28, 2017 vol. CXLI no. 53

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

YDS marches for campus workers’ rights

By Claire Thornton staff writer

On Thursday, April 27, the Young Democratic Socialists of Princeton hosted a Students for Workers’ Rights march in support of campus workers affected by snowstorms this winter. The YDS clarified in a Facebook post that individual workers approached the group and that they coordinated with these workers to plan the march.

Dining hall workers also wrote a letter to the editor of The Daily Princetonian regarding their concerns about how campus workers were treated by University administration as a result of severe weather during the winter season.

On Facebook, the YDS stated that it demands the University back-pay workers who worked anytime on February 19 or March 14 during the snowstorms on those days but did not receive overtime pay because their shifts were outside the “emergency period” of 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. In the post, YDS noted that workers had to drive through severe weather to arrive at the University for work, but they still were paid their normal hourly rate. Workers who stayed on campus during these hours and slept on cots in the multipurpose room of Frist Campus Center or Forbes College, were, however, paid overtime.

The YDS also demanded that the University guarantee its workers comfortable private accommodations in hotels in future emergency events. During the events of this winter, managers were put up in hotels, two people to a room, while entry-level workers slept on campus in cots.

Approximately 100 people attended the march that began on Alexander Beach outside Richardson Hall and ended in the Frist Gallery.

Protestors carried red signs displaying messages such as “Demand back pay now!” and “In the service of who?”

David Hungerford, a retired high school math teacher, came all the way from Montclair, N.J., to attend the protest and support Princeton’s workers.

“I heard about this and I’m always glad to see students

doing what they should do,” said Hungerford.

Speaking about the need to support issues of social justice and civil rights, Hungerford said, “There’s always something. It’s like, what I do.”

At the start of the protest, a student leader from YDS led students in chants of “What do we want? Back pay! When do we want it? Now!” Other chants included “Princeton admins are no good, pay the workers what you should.”

Tashi Treadway ’19 spoke to the ‘Prince’ about the importance of the work that dining hall staff do for students on a daily basis.

“They do a lot for us and we should definitely be appreciative,” said Treadway. “We live in this perfect bubble because of them.”

Treadway is the Cartoon Editor for The Daily Princetonian.

Casey Waterman, a librarian at the Princeton Public Library, put it even more simply, saying, “It’s a labor action. I stand for workers’ rights.”

Two graduate students at the protest noted that they had been following events relating to the March 14 snowstorm closely, and that the YDS had helped them to stay informed about developments.

Marcus Johnson, a sixthyear graduate student in politics, noted that he had also stayed involved through a petition following the snowstorm that encouraged students to send supportive cards to dining hall workers.

Johnson said that when he learned details of the University’s treatment of workers, he was shocked. He saw a big disparity between the resources available to the University and its students and the resources that were made available to its campus workers.

“I thought it was egregious, given the resources you see on the daily,” said Johnson.

Mochi Liu, a graduate student in quantitative and computational biology, gave an additional perspective. Having received his undergraduate education at Berkeley University, he said the YDS protest seemed relatively

ON CAMPUS

ALLIE SPENSLEY :: DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Students protest outside of Alexander Hall during Princeton Preview on April 27.

PPPD Coalition holds protest during Princeton Preview

By Allie Spensley staff writer

The Princeton Private Prison Divest Coalition held a demonstration outside of Alexander Hall on Thursday.

The protest, which follows a PPPD walkout at a Council of the Princeton University Community meeting on March 27, was aimed at showing prospective freshmen that the University community is concerned about mass incarceration and antiimmigration polices, as well as reminding administrators that the coalition will continue to organize for full private prison divestment.

Participants in the protest held up signs and handed out papers outlining PPPD’s mission. In these handouts,

Humanities Sequence covers Western canon

Eisgruber sees higher attendance at office hours

By Katie Petersen staff writer

In Opinion

Today on Campus

Guest contributor Crystal Liu explains why Princeton should disinvite the notorious Martin Shkreli, and the Editorial Board opposes part of an Honor Committee amendment. PAGE 4

See PPPD page 2

U . A F FA I R S

Protestors marched from Alexander Beach to Frist Campus Center.

CLAIRE THORNTON :: DAILY PRINCETONIAN

“Primarily [the protest] is to show the campus community that this is an issue that people continue to care about,” Micah Herskind ’19 said. “Part of this is to show that there are still people on the ground who really care and are going to continue to spread the message as we also pursue other channels.”

“There are a lot of administrators in [Alexander Hall] right now and a lot of students that might be coming here next year, and I think we want to show them that Princeton can be a place where people care about issues and justice and human rights,” Herskind added.

“Unfortunately, by 2019, 25 percent of black Americans who are going to be

ACADEMICS

“One of the great tragedies in Russian literature,” Chloe Kitzinger said recently to a lecture hall full of students and professors in HUM 217: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Western Culture I: History, Philosophy, and Religion, “is that Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy never met, although they had several acquaintances in common and even close friends.”

Kitzinger is a member of the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, specializing in Slavic Languages and Literature.

One of the great strengths of the HUM sequence (short for the Humanities Sequence, encompassing HUM 216: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Western Culture I: Literature and the Arts and 217) is that there the two authors meet, as Kitzinger enlightens her students by comparing the impulses, focuses, interests, and conditions of the Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. And it doesn’t stop there — in this 21st-century Princeton classroom, the 19th-century Russian contemporaries also meet the classical, medieval, and Renaissance writers whom the students have studied over the past year, Kitzinger explained.

According to the Universi-

See YDS page 2

PPPD listed a meeting with the University’s Board of Trustees as its primary goal and also noted that they seek “formal divestment and dissociation from private prison and detention corporations.”

The handouts also provided general information on private prisons and faulted private prisons for incentivizing incarceration and posing issues to inmate and public safety. They stated that PPPD believes “that conditions in both private and public prisons are often degrading, inhumane, and unconstitutional” and that “the problem is exacerbated with private prisons, which are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, and thus do not have to provide public records of prison operations.”

ty’s Humanistic Studies website, the sequence “is a teamtaught, double-credit, super course that examines Western history, philosophy, and literature from antiquity to the 20th century.” This year, it celebrates its 25th anniversary.

Put simply, “the HUM sequence is sort of like an emergency recovery plan,” according to Will Nolan ’19, who took the sequence during his freshman year.

Nolan said that some, but not all, high schools give a foundation in classical texts in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. “HUM is sort of a catch up course for people who didn’t get that in high school,” he noted.

“Before you can begin to answer questions about where we are today, what direction our society is headed, those kinds of things (which are super pertinent, and present, and relevant), you sort of have to get the foundation first.

And I think that’s what HUM’s trying to accomplish,” Nolan said.

Yelena Baraz, an associate professor of classics at the University who has taught the course since 2012, said that the course gives students a synoptic overview of the Western tradition —“a slice of it.”

Baraz is an incoming BehSee HUM page 3

1:30 p.m.: Eric Schurenberg, president and editor-in-chief of Inc., will deliver the keynote address for the second annual UPitchNJ, a statewide collegiate business model competition, in Friend Center, Room 101.

By Jeff Zymeri staff writer

22 students gathered in the Class of 1998 Rectangular Private Dining Room in Whitman College to converse and have lunch with University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83.

According to the Office of the President’s website, “The purpose of these meetings is to give students an opportunity to discuss with the president issues that affect them and the University.” These “Conversations with the President,” as they are called, are hour-long informal meetings, and they are held at the residential colleges and also at the Graduate College.

Once per semester, the Office of the President also allows students to sign up for “individual meetings with the president during scheduled office hours” at Frist Campus Center, specifying that topics must be provided in advance.

“It’s best for the president to know the topic in advance so that he can gather relevant background and be prepared to have a substantive conversation with the student,” Daniel Day, the University’s assistant vice See EISGRUBER page 3

WEATHER

ON CAMPUS

HIGH

83˚

LOW

60˚

Cloudy chance of rain:

10 percent

The Daily Princetonian

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Dining hall worker: Students stand up for us because we’re at the bottom YDS

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mild.

“This stuff is really tame by my standards. I want to see more of this stuff, but bigger,” said Liu. The number of people participating in the YDS march seemed to grow as it made its way through East Pyne Hall, past the Woolworth Center for Musical Studies, and finally into Frist.

A University security officer and University administrator escorted marchers into the large building as students held open the large double doors to make way for protestors.Students who were previously undistracted in the Frist TV lounge suddenly found themselves face-to-

face with protestors speaking into bullhorns.

In the Frist Gallery, members of the graduate student union, PGSU, spoke about the need for graduate students to work in solidarity with campus workers. One graduate student said that the rights of these two groups are fundamentally united.

Dining hall workers also voiced their concerns with University policy.

One dining hall worker who wished to remain anonymous said, “I feel like the students appreciate the service we give them. They’re standing up for us because we’re at the bottom.”

The worker is an immigrant to the United States from the Caribbean, and she has been in this country since 1991. She said that many

dining hall workers are too busy to put on the kind of protest that students are able to orchestrate.

“We have kids who go to college; we have bills to pay,” she said.

Workers at the protest also spoke to the fact that the University only gives them yearly raises of 50 cents per hour.

Other workers mentioned that some workers only received 25- or 15-cent raises this year.

Speaking about the precedent that may be created by the YDS protest, one worker said, “Today is the beginning of a new era here.”

A University administrator escorting the protest declined to comment.

The protest took place at 4:15 p.m. at Alexander Beach on Thursday, April 27.

Friday April 28, 2017

Done reading your ‘Prince’?

Recycle

Herskind: Demonstrate and act with us on campus PPPD

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high school seniors will have grown up with an incarcerated parent,” another organizer said. “I can’t imagine what that’s like, but I’m sure it has an adverse effect on your ability to educate yourself. And for an institution that claims education as its mission, I don’t see how we can support the carceral system in any form if it’s so racially charged.”

Organizers at the event emphasized that the protest’s proximity to the tents set up for Princeton Preview was not to discourage prospective students from attending the University, but to demonstrate the kind of activism that is happening on campus.

“This is not at all a way to try to push people away from Princeton,” Herskind said. “If anything it’s saying,

‘come to Princeton, demonstrate, and act with us.’”

The student groups that comprise the PPPD Coalition include Students for Prison Education and Reform, the Alliance for Jewish Progressives, the Black Justice League, the DREAM Team, the Muslim Advocates for Social Justice and Individual Dignity, the Princeton University Latinx Perspectives Organization, and the Princeton College Democrats. The coalition’s primary goal is to call on the University to divest and dissociate from private prison and immigrant detention corporations.

Although University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 has said that the University is currently not invested in private prisons, the group requests a formal statement from the Board of Trustees instructing the Princeton University Investment Company not to invest in the industry at any point.

Day: President’s time is now being used effectively EISGRUBER Continued from page 1

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president for communications, explained. “It’s a courtesy and it is meant to ensure that the discussion is both on point and productive.”

However, the system as it exists came into its current formulation a short time ago, in December 2015. Before that, the president’s office hours took the form of individual meetings with students, all held in Nassau Hall, the dates and times of which were previously published in The Daily Princetonian. This was also the case for former University president Shirley Tilghman.

The old office hours system included many more specific times when students could meet with the president. There were 15 hour-long time slots available in the spring of 2013, when Tilghman was still in office. In the spring of 2015, two years after Eisgruber had taken office, there were 10 hour-long time slots available. This semester, there are four.

However, as Day explained, “There may be a lower number of specific dates but, overall, interaction with President Eisgruber has increased.”

Day explained that an important factor in the change was that the president’s previous office hours “were poorly attended.”

“There were multiple times each year in which no one at all showed up,” Day explained. Day did not provide exact numbers for before and after the change, but he explained that the new

system allows for more attendees by facilitating larger group meetings. He did not specify office hour attendance rates under Tilghman’s administration.

For example, Day noted that were 22 students in attendance at the last office hours event in Whitman College. Last fall, a relatively large group of students was also in attendance at an office hours event in Rockefeller College.

“There was a sense that the president’s time, which is very precious, was not being used in the most effective way, and now, it is,” Day said.

The decision to move the location of president office hours to many different places was also motivated by specific reasons.

“The sit-in was one factor in the decision to hold office hours outside of the president’s office,” said Day, referring to the November 2015 sit-in on racial injustice that was held in Eisgruber’s office. The Black Justice League, which held the sit-in, presented Eisgruber on that occasion with a list of demands for the University regarding fostering a more inclusive campus.

Today, the Office of the President is quite happy with the current state of affairs.

“Our sense right now is that the current structure and office hours are meeting student demand and also realizing the goals for office hours, which is to provide opportunities for students to interact with President Eisgruber on a range of topics that matter to them and the University,” Day said.

Friday April 28, 2017

The Daily Princetonian

Schor: This course is invariably illuminating HUM

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rman Professor in the Humanities.

“That’s one of the things the students gain,” Baraz said.

“They get the sense of continuity and tradition, and they see how the texts connect with each other.”

In addition to operating as a sweeping introduction to Western tradition, the HUM sequence is also a naturally interdisciplinary endeavor, connecting not only Tolstoy to his contemporary, Dostoevsky, but also to both of their predecessors and to different perspectives on their work.

“Teaching with people who have a different set of critical terms from you, what’s observed is just different,” explained Esther Schor, professor of English and inaugural Behrman Professor in the Council of the Humanities.

Schor has taught the course for five years.

“It’s invariably illuminating. We refer to each other’s lectures in our lectures. When I write a lecture I’m always thinking, ‘What did Dan Garber say about Machiavelli?

What did Michael Gordin say about Marx?’” Schor said.

Schor said that he and other professors encourage students to think constantly draw connections. “In precepts, they say, ‘A few months ago, we read this, but I didn’t realize until now what the implications were.’ So they’re also reaching back,” he explained.

Nolan noted that the HUM sequence is reading-intensive, sometimes as much as 500 pages per week. He said that some criticize the course as too wide or too fast an approach, not going deep enough into the particulars of the great works that it covers.

“When you try to read 75 books in two 12-week semesters, it’s bound to be just a survey course,” Nolan said. “[That] is all it claims to be. And so in many ways it’s just an introduction to a lot of these works.”

“But,” he maintained, “it is an important introduction.

You’ve got to start somewhere, and returning to those texts later in other courses, I’m actually more familiar with them than I realize.”

Matthew Igoe ’20, who has taken the sequence this year, said that he believes sometimes students are frustrated with the sequence because it moves quickly, covering a vast amount of material in little time.

“But I’m going to be a humanities major and I think that when I do encounter [these texts], I’m not only going to have an initial understanding of them, but I’m also going to have a sense of where they fit in their historical context and in the Western tradition more broadly,” Igoe said.

Besides, Nolan said, “Since HUM, no reading at Princeton has scared me.”

And even with such a demanding load, the sequence’s enrollment continues to grow from year to year.

“Students who are looking for a good value in their education — and why shouldn’t they be? — know that they’re getting it here,” Schor said.

For starters, students emerge with a sense of community. After spending two semesters together, “they get to know one another very well; they even get to know how one another thinks,” Schor said.

“It means that they’ve internalized other perspectives and other ways of thinking about things.”

“I think students also come away with enormous confidence,” Schor added, “which is never a bad thing in life or at Princeton.”

This confidence is natural after the HUM sequence, Schor explained. “[Students] have read a body of work; they have written about 10 texts indepth; they’ve been examined on dozens of others; they’ve discussed many others. They have a frame of reference that’s deep and broad and historically rich.”

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Opinion

Friday April 28, 2017

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{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

EDITORIAL

Expanding and confirming Honor Committee membership The Editorial Board is an independent body and decides its opinions separately from the regular staff and editors of The Daily Princetonian.

The Board answers only to its CoChairs, the Opinion Editor, and the Editor-in-Chief. It can be reached at editorialboard@dailyprincetonian. com.

T

he University is, first and foremost, an academic community.

It strives to maintain an atmosphere that is conducive to intellectual achievement and discovery. To accomplish this, the members of the University rely on a shared ethos of academic honesty, as expressed in the Honor Code. The enforcement of this code is vital to the success of this University, and students should take great interest in any proposed changes to the Honor Committee.

Two amendments concerning the Honor Committee were recently proposed to the Undergraduate Student Government.

The first amendment, which has already passed, amends the Honor Committee Constitution to expand the committee from 12 students to 15; two of the new slots will be filled by freshmen each year. The Editorial Board supports this amendment, as it will reduce the burden placed on individual members of the Honor Committee and allow for increased institutional memory and academic diversity. The second amendment, proposed

by USG Class Senator Andrew Ma ’19, would change the USG Senate Constitution to require a supermajority, rather than a simple majority, of the USG Senate to confirm nominees to the Honor Committee. Furthermore, the amendment would require that the Senate vote on Honor Committee nominees in a closed session. The Board

opposes this amendment, as it unnecessarily raises the bar for membership confirmation and reduces transparency.

Each Honor Committee member performs a vital job for the University; a student’s academic record, and, furthermore, our academic community, is at stake in each Honor Code decision.

It is, therefore, essential that the Committee is able to operate to the best of its ability. The Board believes that increasing the committee size from 12 to 15 members will better allow the committee to investigate and adjudicate cases. With this expansion, individual members will have fewer responsibilities, thus allowing for better attention to detail and increased efficiency in the deliberation process.

Furthermore, the Board supports the initiative to increase freshman representation on the Honor Committee. This will allow more members to serve on the committee throughout their four years at the University, giving them more experience and enabling them to better mentor future committee members.

The importance of institutional memory should not be understated; it allows a body to maintain its precedents and standards and will ensure that Honor Code deliberations remain consistent for years to come.

Additionally, the Board urges the committee to emphasize increased academic diversity during the selection of new Honor Committee members.

The Honor Code operates on a “reasonable student” standard, a standard that can vary from department to department. Subject-area expertise can be crucial in deciphering exam content in order to understand the details of the evidence in cases. As such, it is beneficial for the committee to be composed of members

across a range of academic departments, so that committee members are better informed of what could constitute a reasonable action in a given class.

In his USG Senate amendment, Ma proposes both that the bar for the confirmation of an Honor Committee nominee be raised from a simple majority to a two-thirds majority and that all Honor Committee confirmation votes must take place in a closed executive session (preceded by an open discussion session). The Board believes that a two-thirds confirmation threshold is too high and gives too much power to a minority of the USG Senate (only a third) to deny committee nominees who have already undergone a rigorous nomination process. Ma argues that the supermajority would ensure that nominees are qualified and that they are “in line with the student body’s opinion.”

However, the opinions of USG members on individual committee nominees are not necessarily indicative of the opinions of the broader student body; most members of the USG Senate were not elected based on their views on the Honor Committee. Further, the Honor Committee selection process already carefully vets potential members before sending them to the Senate for confirmation. As an alternative, the Board encourages increased USG participation in the Honor Committee selection process, which will give senators more say without unnecessarily raising the burden for confirmation.

While Honor Committee members are best qualified to assess applicants given their own personal experience with how the committee operates, it could be beneficial to add a third USG member to the selection committee (in addition to the president and academics committee

chair, who currently participate) to contribute additional outside perspectives to the selection process.

The Board strongly opposes the executive session requirement in Ma’s amendment. An open session allows for increased transparency in the confirmation process, thus ensuring Honor Committee nominees are fairly considered before being either confirmed or rejected.

Ma argues that his amendment would “allow voting members to speak and vote freely without fear of retribution.” This hardly seems to be a sufficient reason to mandate a closed session; Senate members ought to be assured enough in their beliefs and their votes that they can defend them without feeling the need to hide them from the students they represent. For a body that views itself as representative of Princeton undergraduates, it seems counterintuitive that members of the USG Senate believe it is necessary to discuss the confirmation of nominees in executive session away from student scrutiny.

The Honor Committee is a crucial component of academic life at Princeton. The Board supports increasing the size of the Honor Committee to reduce the burden on individual members and to better preserve institutional knowledge. However, the Board believes that requiring a closed session and a supermajority vote of the USG Senate to confirm committee nominees will unduly restrict a transparent and fair confirmation process.

We strongly urge the USG Senate to reject this amendment.

Carolyn Liziewski ’18 recused herself from the writing of this editorial.

William Pugh ’20 abstained from the writing of this editorial.

Disinvite Shkreli (again) Crystal Liu

Guest Contributor

T

he “most hated man in America” is coming to Princeton. For those who are unfamiliar with Martin Shkreli, he first faced public outrage for raising the price of Daraprim, a drug used by HIV patients, by over 5,000 percent.

The disgraced former CEO, once a hedge fund manager, has also been accused of running a Ponzi scheme. Arrested in December 2015, Shkreli is currently out on $5 million bail, but he must respect federally mandated travel restrictions. He lives in New York, where he has taken to the internet to spread his vitriol.

Shkreli is scheduled to appear on Friday at an event hosted by the Princeton Corporate Finance Club. He had been invited to speak earlier this year by the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, but the event was canceled in January after Shkreli sexually harassed a journalist and was banned from Twitter.

Tickets to Friday’s free event sold out in less than a week.

It is disturbing to think that sexual harassment, denying medication, and general vulgarity have only served to skyrocket an

exploitative pharmaceutical exec’s popularity among students. Why do people want to see him? Why was he invited at all?

In emails sent to residential college listservs, PCFC notes that this Friday’s event is “non-partisan” and that PCFC “neither endorses nor opposes” the speaker. The club has been unclear, though, about the stated goal of the event, which has been publicized as a “conversation” with Shkreli.

PCFC’s website states that the club’s mission is to “serve as an educational and networking platform for students interested in ... corporate finance.” It is unbelievable that Shkreli — who awaits trial for securities fraud charges related to his now-defunct hedge funds — meets PCFC’s standards for educational speakers.

As publicity for the event has made clear, however, Shkreli’s renewed invitation to campus might be better explained by his public notoriety and internet fame.

The poster for PCFC’s event includes two photos of the “pharma bro”: one is from his Congressional hearing last February; the other depicts him with his arms thrown up, wearing a black hoodie with “CEO,000,000” printed on it. The poster also features screenshots that allude to Shkreli’s short-lived stint in the Facebook group Princ-

eton Memes for Preppy AF Teens.

Shkreli joined this group this past March, but he was removed by admins after complaints of provocation and harassment. Students, for their part, would often engage with him in a part-ironic, part-serious banter, to the general amusement of the group. One screenshot of a student’s direct message conversation with Shkreli gained upwards of 180 likes.

For some students, Shkreli is appealing because of his extreme accessibility. Students may not support his actions, but internet fame can be seductive. They’re curious — and curiosity seems like a pretty neutral position.

What is dangerous about engaging with Shkreli, however, is that every meme, every screenshot, and every like adds to his accumulative visibility. Mass media empowers those who are seen and heard, no matter the content.

Irony and detached interest, meanwhile, do not cut through, resist, or in any way challenge Shkreli’s morally deplorable actions. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with Shkreli, engaging him indirectly supports him and his views. It legitimizes his nonsense by making him ever more visible.

PCFC’s event enacts a physical realization of the joking, ambiva-

lent, and ultimately blind banter that attracted students in the Facebook group. Shkreli is coming to campus because he is internet famous. Students are going to see him because he’s creepy and crazy.

None of these reasons justify giving him a platform at Princeton.

Controversial figures have been invited to campus before, and it is manifestly valuable to debate people you disagree with, but this situation is not a question of free speech.

This is not a debate between two members of the corporate world who have differing financial practices and ethical stances.

This is not a talk given by a controversial but reputable scholar or politician. This event, so obscurely publicized, is not even obviously dedicated to discussing anything of significance.

There is no defensible argument for inviting Shkreli to speak, especially given his pattern of poor character, dishonest business practices, and utter disregard for ethical drug pricing. PCFC should cancel the talk on Friday. No refund needed.

Crystal Liu is a philosophy major from Princeton, N.J. She can be reached at mengqian@princeton.edu.

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Sarah Sakha ’18

editor-in-chief

Matthew McKinlay ’18 business manager

BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88 secretary Betsy L. Minkin ’77 treasurer Douglas J. Widmann ’90 William R. Elfers ’71 Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 Joshua Katz Kathleen Crown Kathleen Kiely ’77 Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Randall Rothenberg ’78 Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 trustees emeritus Gregory L. Diskant ’70 Annalyn Swan ’73 Michael E. Seger ’71

141ST MANAGING BOARD managing editors Samuel Garfinkle ’19 Grace Rehaut ’18 Christina Vosbikian ’18 head news editor Marcia Brown ’19 associate news editors Abhiram Karuppur ’19 Claire Lee ‘19 head opinion editor Newby Parton ’18 associate opinion editors Samuel Parsons ’19 Nicholas Wu ’18 head sports editor David Xin ’19 associate sports editors Miranda Hasty ’19 Claire Coughlin ’19 head street editor Jianing Zhao ’20 associate street editors Andie Ayala ’19 Catherine Wang ’19 web editor Sarah Bowen ’20 head copy editors Isabel Hsu ’19 Omkar Shende ’18 associate copy editors Caroline Lippman ’19 Megan Laubach ’18 design editors Rachel Brill ’19 Abigail Kostolansky ’20 editorial board co-chairs Ashley Reed ’18 Connor Pfeiffer ’18 cartoons editor Tashi Treadway ’19

NIGHT STAFF 4.27.17 copy Jordan Antebi ’19 Minh Hoang ’19

Friday April 28, 2017

The Daily Princetonian

Plant forward, literally

Alex Wheatley

Guest Contributor

C

ampus Dining is brilliant.

When you walk through the buffet, have you noticed that the options are usually ordered in the same way, at every dining hall, at every meal? You receive vegetables first, then grains and proteins.

This isn’t an accident. It’s a subtle, powerful policy choice.

Campus Dining has embraced “plant forward” menus that highlight great f lavors and healthy, sustainable ingredients. As part of the Culinary Institute of America and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Menus of Change program, this plant forward approach is Princeton’s way of integrating optimal nutrition, environmental stewardship, and social responsibility into the meals we

eat each day.

“Plant forward” means that dining hall menus often promote vegetable-heavy dishes and diets. With the assistance of the Greening Dining student group, Campus Dining has been encouraging healthy eating through signs in the servery, f lyers inside napkin holders at tables, and buffet architecture. This architecture may be the most powerful — yet least appreciated — component of the plan. By literally placing vegetables in front of meats and grains in the buffet line, students are “defaulted” into filling up space on their plate with vegetables. It shifts consumption patterns toward more vegetables, which are healthy for the human and the planet, and away from everything else. It’s light-touch intervention: For those truly motivated to avoid vegetables, loading their plates with meat requires walking forward two more steps. But for the veg-

etable-neutral, distracted, or apathetic dining hall consumer, beginning the meal with a serving of vegetables is the easiest option. This default is a subtle, but powerful, Campus Dining strategy.

As Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein highlight in their 2008 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” default options matter. Regardless of the quality of the default option, loss aversion and mindless choosing typically prompt a larger-than-expected portion of any given population to end up with the default option. This is true even in large, seemingly significant decisions. The most striking example of this, I think, is organ donation: Johnson and Goldstein (2003) found that countries with opt-out organ donation systems, where the default is presumed consent to organ donation, had far higher donation rates than countries

with opt-in systems. To compare two similar countries, Germany had an opt-in system and 12 percent of people donated. Australia had an opt-out system; 99 percent of people donated. Authors re-created the choice architecture in experiments and found that an “opt in” default led to a 42 percent organ donation rate, while an “opt out” default led to an organ donation rate of 82 percent. Defaults are not inconsequential. People are cognitively lazy.

This is why Campus Dining is brilliant. Without resorting to draconian health or sustainability policies, they have moved the average Princeton student to a healthier, more sustainable diet. I wish there were data on how much plate compositions have actually changed with this policy, but I have a hunch that if tomorrow’s buffet offered the meat entrée first, campus would eat a little less healthily and a lit-

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tle less sustainably. Maybe this is a good space for a class project and an eating club; to see how defaults affect diet choices, use ChooseMyPlate.gov guidelines to compare plates before and after enacting the policy in an eating club. How much do plates change? How much have Princeton students (unknowingly) benefitted from Campus Dining’s buffet architecture?

So this week, the last of Campus Dining’s Sustainability Month, thank the dining staff. How you fuel your body is one of the most important health and environmental decisions you make each day; a simple, carefully-designed policy has defaulted you into a healthy choice.

Alex Wheatley is a first-year MPA student at the Woodrow Wilson School from Newtown, Pa. She can be reached at ajw2@princeton.edu.

Seeing the big picture: Diversity in eating clubs Chang Che

Guest Contributor

R

ecent opposition to the USG eating club referendum — a proposal to collect demographic data on club membership — has largely focused on three main aspects: the challenges of implementation, the effect on the student body, and the fear of misinterpreting the cause of the demographics. Together, these issues have convinced the Editorial Board to largely dismiss the positive arguments for the referendum that are centered on appeals to inclusivity and diversity. Neither side of the argument has understood the full importance of diversity.

By internalizing the idea that we live in a “bubble” shielded from racial violence and socio-economic injustice, we have failed to see the manifestations of these phenomena on our very own campus. In reality, the eating club system continues to ref lect larger societal issues by allowing membership to be inf luenced heavily by factors of race and class. If we truly want to set ourselves apart from society, we must recognize the role of diversity in combating these systemic issues. Releasing

demographic information on our eating clubs is therefore a necessary step in diversifying them.

We have become so desensitized to the words “inclusivity” and “diversity” that they have become utterly trite. They are, as the Board refers to them, a product of “the committee’s stated goals” — as if they could be equated to personal goals like going to the gym: positive but inessential. As a result, the appeal to “diversity” on the side that favors the referendum has been deprived of its proper gravity; diversity has become a social amenity that can be abandoned with sufficient pushback. We have lost sight of the big picture, and our hypocrisy is painfully evident given that the conception of diversity as a counter to systematic oppression began on college campuses.

Affirmative action — the epitome of regulatory diversity — is a redistribution of resources that levels the playing field for disadvantaged groups. According to our very own professor Dara Strolovitch, “the principle of affirmative action recognizes that equitable representation for disadvantaged groups requires proactive efforts to overcome the entrenched but often subtle biases that persist against

marginalized groups in American politics.” Thus, the original motivations for inclusivity and diversity on college campuses were nowhere near as superf luous as “committee goals.” They were one of the only effective measures against a world of systematic oppression — one that continues to inf lict harm on the most vulnerable of Americans: women, blacks, gays, lesbians, and people with disabilities.

Indeed, in order to implement affirmative action, it has been necessary for colleges to ask students uncomfortable questions of racial identity, which the Board has already cited as a reason against the referendum. Yet, in the context of affirmative action, the momentary discomfort of applicants reducing their identities to a single category pales in comparison to the lifelong barriers experienced by millions of Americans facing systematic oppression. As a means of access toward greater opportunities in life, colleges realized that they have a responsibility to shape the society at large — it is no longer okay to be complicit in the system.

We have come a long way since the initial controversies surrounding affirmative action. It is now generally ac-

cepted that affirmative action is necessary in combating the controlled access to education by privileged groups. We recognize that if colleges do not take active measures to combat societal trends within their own population of admitted students, they will continue to ref lect the inequality that plagues society at large. It is shocking that we do not see the parallels now.

Just as colleges discovered that to do nothing was to perpetuate and exacerbate the existing problems of society, so too are eating clubs perpetuating the racial and class segregation that persists on our campus. The disparity in access to Bicker clubs among races is the direct result of this segregation. In a 2007 survey, the Bicker acceptance rate for whites was 67 percent, while only 34 percent for nonwhites. These entrenched biases ref lect the very societal inequalities that our current admissions committee actively combats every year through affirmative action.

What is at stake in the referendum, therefore, is an opportunity to challenge the harmful status quo — one that has left minority members without equal access to an important part of most students’ Princeton experience. We lose

i hope no prefrosh read this rita Fang ’17

.................................................

sight of the big picture when we believe that eating clubs should release their demographics simply because diversity and inclusivity are “good things.” We must think of our eating club demographics as the ref lection of our problematic campus culture and, consequently, the expressions of a problematic society.

By making demographics transparent, we bring race into our consciousness, allowing ourselves to work toward combating rather than perpetuating these systematic injustices. We can no longer afford to think of diversity as just another goal to be placed among the other goals for the semester. If the University is to address its discriminatory campus culture and acknowledge its role in perpetuating existing inequalities among their social groups, then we must take diversity as seriously as college admissions. Because releasing demographic information on club membership is the first step toward acknowledging these issues, it is also the first step toward a more equitable future.

Chang Che is a comparative literature major from Ann Arbor, Mich. He can be reached at changc@ princeton.edu.

Friday April 28, 2017

Sports

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{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } TRACK AND FIELD

Men’s and women’s track and field take on the Penn Relays this weekend Miranda Hasty associate sports editor

Both the men’s and women’s track and field teams are competing at the 123rd annual Penn Relays on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

Senior Julia Ratcliffe kicked off the meet for the women’s team in the hammer throw. Sophomore Steven Sum, freshman Viraj Deokar, junior Rob Stone, junior Kenan Farmer, and freshman Perrin Hagge ran the 5K at 9:25 p.m. to begin the tournament on the men’s side.

Senior Alexandra Markovich, sophomore Allie Klimkiewicz, and junior Melissa Reed competed in the women’s 3K, and senior William Bertrand, Sum, and Stone competed in the men’s 10K to wrap up Thursday night.

Senior Jared Bell, junior Mitchel Charles, and senior Christopher Cook are scheduled for the men’s discus for

Friday’s first event. Sophomore Andrew Diehl and Cook will compete after that in the men’s high jump championship and men’s shot put college, while Bell and Charles will return to the field at 1:15 p.m. for the men’s shot put college event. Freshman Joey Daniels will be the last Princeton competitor of the day, running in the men’s 110m hurdles heats.

The last day of competition is going to be an eventful one for the Tigers. Senior Xavier Bledsoe will compete for the men’s high jump championship, while sophomore Adam Kelly will look to take the men’s hammer throw title. Seniors August Kiles and Ben Gaylord will both be competing in the men’s pole vault championship, and junior Gabe Arcaro and senior Vic Youn will finish off the tournament in the men’s hammer throw college event.

The men’s team will also be competing in the Lions Invitational at The College

of New Jersey on Friday and Saturday in Ewing.

This exciting weekend has come one week after the Princeton Multi-Event Meet and the Larry Ellis Invitational. The Multi-Event Meet was cancelled for the women, but the men had an impressive run with freshman Harry Lord’s decathlon win with 6,504 points and freshman Justice Dixon’s secondplace finish. Bledsoe won the high jump in the Larry Ellis Invitational, while junior Spencer Long won the 400 hurdles with a personal record of 52.61 seconds.

On the women’s side, senior Allison Harris took first place in the pole vault and junior Christina Walter won the 200m race at the event.

The Tigers will look to continue this momentum through the rest of the Penn Relays and into the TCNJ Invitational this weekend before heading to the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships next week.

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Julia Ratcliffe, Alexandra Markovich, Allie Klimkiewicz, and Melissa Reed are representing the women’s track and field team at the Penn Relays this weekend.

W O M E N ’ S W AT E R P O L O

Women’s water polo heads to Indiana for CWPA Championship Audrey Spensley staff writer

The women’s water polo team, ranked No. 9 by the Collegiate Water Polo Association, is entering the CWPA Championship from April 28 to April 30 with strong momentum and an incredible showing from the senior class. The team is tied for the No. 9 spot with the University of the Pacific, and it will be entering the championship as the No. 2 seed, behind only the University of Michigan. In its most recent game, the last home match for the Class of 2017, the Tigers defeated the George Washington Colonials 16-6, putting their overall record at 22-3 and their CWPA record at 7-1.

The University of California at Los Angeles is currently ranked first nationally, followed by Stanford, USC, Arizona State, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Irvine, Michigan, Hawaii, and University of the Pacific. Michigan is the highest-ranked team in the CWPA. After celebrating their final victory at home, the seniors are gearing up for the CWPA Championship and aiming to take home the win. Seniors Hannah Lapkin, Morgan Hallock, Syndey Saxe, and Olympic gold medalist Ashleigh Johnson have secured .851 win percentages with over 131 victories, including two CWPA titles, throughout their time at the University.

Johnson and junior Haley Wan were also both named to the CWPA’s All-Conference first team, a strong signal of the Tigers’ dominance going into the Championships.

Johnson, who helped take the United States team to gold-medal victory at the Olympics last summer, has earned a .696 save percentage for the Tigers, with over 265 stops so far this year.

Wan has blown away all expectations this season, swiping 34 passes, earning 30 assists, and drawing 25 ejections. This

Tweet of the Day

builds off of her strong performance last year, when she led the team in goals, shots, and steals, and was named All-CWPA Second Team and All-CWPA Tournament Second Team. The entire team has elevated its level of performance, with six players winning at least 20 goals.

With a strong showing across

the board, the Tigers are looking to improve from last season’s third-place finish at the CWPA Championships. After defeating Harvard 12-8, the team lost in a close 9-8 battle against Michigan, who went on to win the tournament. The Tigers then rounded out their tournament play with a 17-10

victory over Hartwick, securing third place.

Princeton will begin tournament play on Friday at 1 p.m. at Indiana University. They first face No. 7-seeded Bucknell. If the Tigers win, they will face No. 3 Hartwick and No. 6 Brown on Saturday, followed by the championship match on Sun-

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The women’s water polo team hopes to clinch the CWPA Championship title this weekend against Bucknell.

Stat of the Day

3.86 goals

“Recap - Princeton scores 4-2 road victory over No. 22 St. John’s #GoTigers #TIgerUp” Olivia Hompe from women’s lacrosse Princeton Baseball @PUTigerBaseball

day.

Although the Michigan team will present stiff competition for the Tigers, the Tigers are hungry for a victory. With an astonishingly productive and ambitious senior class leading the charge, the Tigers have a strong chance at taking over the CWPA title this year.

leads the nation in goals per game at 3.86.

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