April 3, 2017

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Monday April 3, 2017 vol. CXLI no. 34

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Romero ’87 discusses activism Contributor

“Student activists at the University probably shouldn’t take a fifth course if they really want to engage in inf luential activism,” urged Anthony Romero ’87, current executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He is the first Latino and openly gay person to serve in this position.

A crowd of approximately 200, consisting of alumni, undergraduate students, and President Christopher Eisgruber ’83, gathered in Alexander Hall to hear Romero speak about his time at the University and the importance of political activism today.

The panel began with an introduction by Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ’87, Romero’s former classmate and current judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

“Anthony is and has always been a beacon of light,” Rogers said.

She recalled freshman Romero as being “tall, thin, incredibly warm, big-hearted and always well-dressed.”

Sitting cross-legged on stage, he responded, “Well, I had more hair back then.”

After graduating from the University, Romero attended Stanford Law

School. When asked about his life as an undergraduate, Romero discussed the struggles he faced as a firstgeneration minority student who had spent much of his childhood living in public housing projects in the Bronx.

“Princeton was not an easy place for me initially,” he said.

Unlike many of his peers at the time who had attended prestigious private schools, Romero didn’t know he could go to college. He had attended a vocational high school where he took classes such as auto mechanic woodshop and typing.

Romero recalled feeling embarrassed because of his status as a minority and full scholarship student.

“I remember thinking that I was only here because I was Puerto Rican,” he explained. “But I came here because affirmative action gave me a shot — affirmative action opened the door.”

The audience responded with enthusiastic applause.

“Don’t doubt that you belong,” he said. Romero reassured undergraduate students who may be experiencing similar feelings of alienation not to allow insecurity to creep into their minds and become debiliSee ACLU page 3

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JANE SUL :: PRINCETONIAN NEWS WRITER

The Hon. Sotomayor spoke with students, faculty, and alumni about her commitment to service.

Sotomayor ’87 urges service

By Emily Spalding Staff Writer

The Honorable Sonia Sotomayor ’76 believes that service is of utmost importance, no matter what form it takes — and she urged her listeners to make giving back a central part of their lives.

Captivating the audience with her signature humility, wit, and confidence, Sotomayor shared her insights and advice with a crowd of University alumni and current students on April 1 as part of a conference on the history and experiences of Latino students and alumni at the University. Sotomayor is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and is the first Latina to hold this title.

Accompanied by University Trustee Margarita Rosa ’74, Sotomayor first recounted her experience at the University, telling stories of how others have impacted her personal and professional narratives. She also fielded questions from the audience, walking among audience members on the floor U . A F FA I R S

staff writer

IMAGE COURTESY OF FLICKR CREATIVE COMMONS

Nancy Peretsman speaks at the 2015 Most Powerful Women Leadership Summit.

Q and A with Nancy Peretsman ’76 staff writer

As part of a series for Women’s History Month, The Daily Princetonian sat down with Nancy Peretsman ’76, Managing Director at Allen & Company LLC and trustee emeritus. The ‘Prince’ interviewed Peretsman about why she was inspired to go to Princeton, women in the workforce, and her philanthropic commitment to the University.

question, “How many of us in this room are actively, every day looking for that life within a touch?” she said. “We have a continuing obligation to ensure that we’re actively seeking out those that need that touch forward.”

Describing her time as an undergraduate, Sotomayor explained that she would sometimes find herself feeling alienated or confused by certain social or cultural aspects of campus given her humble upbringing.

“I guess what I learned to do at Princeton was to ask questions. And that has helped me throughout my entire life.

What I didn’t know, I asked,” she said.

“I continue to say that every day I learn things I didn’t know and I see it as an advantage.”

Sotomayor addressed her role in changing the University’s unofficial motto in Oct. 2016 from “Princeton in the nation’s service and in the service of all nations” to “Princeton in the nation’s service and the service of humanity.” In See SOTOMAYOR page 2

STUDENT LIFE

University files amicus USG talks brief challenging Trump prison divestment travel ban

By Winston Lie

By Catherine Benedict

of Richardson Auditorium. As she gave responses, she posed for photos and hugged enthusiastic audience members.

Audience member Angie Freeland ’11 expressed her admiration for Sotomayor. Freeland said that as a young attorney, she saw Sotomayor as a personal inspiration and “an inspiration for the Latino community and to young women across the country.”

In Sotomayor’s discussion with Rosa, the first Hispanic and first female to serve as the commissioner of New York State Division of Human Rights, she highlighted that everyone has at least one thing in common: we have someone to guide us. Thus, everyone should pay it forward — we should be the ones to guide someone else, she said, addressing audience members.

“Someone or something happened to give us that break,” Sotomayor explained. “Someone who saw something within us and guided us.”

With this in mind, she posed the

The Daily Princetonian: How did your time at Princeton prepare you for your career?

Nancy Peretsman: I actually think that Princeton was an extraordinary opportunity for me, because I had not ever had the advantage of having a world-class set of teachers and intellectuals. I grew up in an industrial city going to public school. It was a really See PERETSMAN page 2

The University, along with 30 other colleges, filed a friend of the court, or amicus, brief on Friday supporting the legal challenge to the newest travel ban issued by the Trump administration.

The new executive order, which was signed on March 6, is a revised attempt by the administration to prevent individuals from several Muslim majority countries from entering the United States. The countries affected are Sudan, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.

The latest travel ban differs from the previous one in that Iraq is no longer under the list of barred countries, existing visas will be honored, and the ban is no longer an absolute restriction.

The White House stated that the Department of Homeland Security will be allowed to grant waivers on a case-by-case basis “if a foreign national demonstrates that his or her entry into the United States is in the national

interest, will not pose a threat to national security, and that denying entry during the suspension period will cause undue hardship”.

Earlier this year, University President Christopher Eisgruber ‘83 and more than 40 other college leaders signed a public letter urging the administration to reconsider the first travel ban.

“The order specifically prevents talented, lawabiding students and scholars from the affected regions from reaching our campuses,” the letter reads. “... American higher education has benefited tremendously from this country’s long history of embracing immigrants from around the world.”

There are currently 1,808 international students, both undergraduates and graduates, studying at the University, and roughly 50 students at the University are impacted by the recent executive order, according to a University press release.

In Opinion

Today on Campus

Contributing columnist Emily Erdos denounces sexism in basketball, the Editorial Board opposes divestment, contributing columnist Ryan Born argues that we don’t have to sell out to achieve our personal goals and PPPD calls for private prison divestment. PAGE 4

12 p.m.: Men’s baseball will face off against the Yale Bulldogs at Clarke Field. The Tigers are 6-14 overall but have not yet lost at home. The Tigers swept Brown 3-2 and 11-5 on Sunday, starting off Ivy League play strong.

By Jason Fu

staff writer

The Undergraduate Student Government discussed the Princeton Private Prison Divestment movement in their weekly meeting on April 2.

Princeton Private Prison Divest representatives Daniel Teehan ’17 and Eliot Callon ’20 presented an update regarding PPPD’s current status. The group recently delivered a divestment proposal to the Council of the Princeton University Community’s Resource Committee that was rejected. This was later followed by a PPPD-led walkout during the CPUC meeting last week, during which President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 noted that the University is not invested in private prisons.

Teehan stated that the proposal was crafted to meet the demands of the Resources Committee, including sustained campus support for the issue and a demonstrated conflict with University values. This included a campus-wide referendum, in which 89 percent of undergraduate and 85 percent of graduate students voted in favor of divestment. The Resources Committee nonetheless reached a consensus that it was planning to reject the proposal and failed to provide a reason with the rejection. According to Teehan, the walkout during the CPUC meeting was a reaction to See COACHELLA page 3

WEATHER

By Jane Sul

ON CAMPUS

HIGH

67˚

LOW

49˚

MOSTLY CLOUDY chance of rain:

10 percent

The Daily Princetonian

page 2

Monday April 3, 2017

Peretsman ’76 talks ice hockey, finance, women on Wall Street PERETSMAN Continued from page 1

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unique opportunity for me. It excited me intellectually. Inevitably, what it did, which I think it does for any young person who comes to the University who hasn’t had the advantage of really strong preparatory training, it helped with the ability to think and write critically and hone communication skills. The story I have often shared with people about the decision to go to Princeton was deeply influenced by an encounter when I was a junior in high school.

At the time, the city manager of Worcester [Mass.], where I lived, began to fluorinate the water. They had taken a referendum the prior fall and the electorate voted it down. This really incensed me. Thomas Jefferson had said, ‘what’s the sense of a democracy if you ignore what the people had voted for a few months prior?’

Believe it or not, our family dentist called my mother and asked her to get me to shut up because fluoride was the right answer. I said, ‘it’s not about fluoridation, it’s about how they took this vote,’ and believe it or not, my dentist sent this charming young guy interning with him to argue with me. I remember to this day thinking ‘gosh, if I could just sound like him.’ I knew I was right, but he was far more articulate than I, and I needed to sound like him. He was the first person I had ever met who had gone to Princeton.

It’s a very special opportunity for folks who haven’t had that educational privilege, and it had a very high impact on my life.

DP: What was your experience majoring in the Woodrow Wilson School?

NP: I opted to do the Wilson School in part because I had a specific interest that was interdisciplinary. Now, the students have so many more opportunities to do interdisciplinary studies with all the initiatives and certificates that we didn’t use to have. The appeal of the Wilson School was driven for me by my intellectual interest in the overlap between urban planning and political philosophy, and my

thesis advisor was in the architecture school. Junior year, I took a semester abroad in England and worked on British “New Towns” and urban planning and political economy. It was very interesting, but bore no interest to anything I ever ended up doing in my life.

DP: What activities were you involved in at Princeton?

NP: I played ice hockey in the early days of the women’s team, because I grew up in Massachusetts as a skater. I was involved with a group of people who brought a change about in how the Undergraduate Student Government was structured; we were anti-institutional, but we ran a series of referendums.

DP: Have you felt like finance is a male-dominated industry?

NP: I was just going to say, I attribute in part how I ended up being so comfortable going to Wall Street in the early days as directly connected to my time at Princeton, where there were very few women.

I remembered someone interviewing me, and saying ‘you could be a consultant, or you could be an investment banker.’ I always liked math and economics, and was less of a verbal person. This person said, ‘women don’t go to Wall Street.’ I remember thinking, I just came out of a school where there weren’t that many women, so I wasn’t particularly troubled by the environment.

I wasn’t thinking about it with a political point of view — I didn’t go to Princeton because I wanted to help integrate it.

I felt lucky. if I had been born four years earlier, I couldn’t have gone to Princeton. I felt the same on Wall Street — I was there when they were first hiring women. I was the third or fourth year that these firms brought professional women in. By the grace of God, it was just timing.

DP: Do you feel like Wall Street has becomemore accommodating of women?

NP: I can’t really answer that, because 20 odd years ago I left the big firm and I work for a privately-owned partnership. I can tell you that there’s

a lot of women at our firm doing wonderfully, but I don’t have a handle on the statistics.

The big difference is what exists today that didn’t a generation ago is the role models for success. There are enough women that have succeeded as compared to in my year, where it was a sea of suits and you ventured into new territory. Now any young woman coming into the business can at least look up. Maybe there’s not as many as we would like, but there are plenty of examples of women who have done brilliantly.

DP: You wrote a story for [Facebook COO] Sheryl Sandburg’s Lean In foundation. Do you think her work has been important in establishing role models for women?

NP: I think that what Sheryl, who I have a lot of admiration for, what she is trying to do with that platform is great.

It’s been surprising how many women I’ve heard from based on my story. I’m not that public of a person, Sheryl asked me to do it, and people are drawn to personal stories. If you’re a young woman and you don’t necessarily have access to women who have come before, the stories make it much more accessible.

DP: Did motherhood change anything for you?

NP: Motherhood is one of the great joys of my life. I’d say that even if I had ended up with a child who wasn’t a Tiger [Emma Scully ’12]. We’re very close. I think the most fun thing for me was when she went to Princeton. I remember freshman year, her friends would ask me what it was like “in the old days.’ I texted my rooommates and said ‘this is really sad.’ To go to campus when Emma was there, when Shirley [Tilghman] was president, the institution was not recognizable in regard to the full integration of women on campus.

DP: You founded the Women in Leadership Initiative at Princeton. Can you talk about that?

NP: That was really because when I was a young alumni

trustee, I had a reasonably high profile. I used to tease that it was out of self-preservation that we founded Women in Leadership. There was a period of time, whenever they wanted women alums, they were calling the same three names. We said “this is ridiculous. There are all of these great women. Let’s get them involved.” We got involved with Andrea Jung (’79), Heidi Miller (’74), who subsequently served on the board for years.

The Women in Leadership Initiative gave women an excuse to get back involved, they just needed an opportunity.

It was a wonderful catalyst.

When we had events, there were many women who may not have come to Reunions, but were really attracted to this where they knew there would be hundreds of women on campus.

DP: What was your experience like as trustee?

NP: I actually served three terms as a trustee, for 24 years. I was a Young Alumni trustee then a Charter Trustee. I had some time off, probably for good behavior, then came back from 2005-2015. In the early days, I was involved in the early reports of undergraduate life, and it was from that report that the residential colleges were born. We had an active role in that and saw big changes. I was involved in the South African days establishing the policy of disassociation, of saying that the idea that one would sell stocks as a political protest is not sufficient. We are participants in a larger community, and if there is an entity or corporation doing something that we can’t reconcile ourselves with, we have to think about it holistically and dissociate.

It’s not a symbolic gesture of not just owning their stocks.

I think that’s a policy that Princeton should be hugely proud of, and I was very involved in it. Most recently, I co-chaired the capital campaign with Robert Murley ’72.

It was a great honor when [former President] Shirley [Tilghman] asked me to. I was also on the presidential selection after Shirley announced her retirement.

DP: What inspired you and

your husband’s [Robert Scully ’72] philanthropic commitment to Princeton?

NP: We have been deeply fortunate in our lives, and we had careers beyond our wildest dreams. With financial success comes a general responsibility. Princeton has been a large part of our lives.

We’ve historically done most of what we’ve done anonymously. As a leader of the capital campaign, we waited until the end to see what needed funding, and neuroscience was so important to Shirley.

Shirley encouraged us to make sure, just as she did with Meg Whitman [‘77], that a woman supporting the University was doing it in a public way. Normally, named buildings isn’t where our philanthropy has been historically, but we were sensitive to the desire that the naming can really reflect the increasing diversity of Princeton’s population.

DP: What advice would you give to undergraduates interested in finance?

NP: I had a wonderful opportunity at Solomon Brothers and Allen and Company to serve very exciting growth industries and help entrepreneurs build companies. You go to work every day and can’t believe what human potential allows for. Most of what I’ve done has been specific to a few industries. I can’t think of anything more interesting.

Finance is a very broad field; my husband had a very successful career at Wall Street and our days looked very different from each other. What I would say is that finance as a title is a little bit like medicine as a title, in that it’s in the specialty that you chose.

It’s the subset that you have to pick what is best for you. Money managing is very flexible and good for women, there are great women traders too, and women on the research side of finance. The nomenclature is so broad that it allows for all kinds of different opportunities for people, if you want to work for a big or small company, research, if you’re analytical or mathematical and doing trading models. I would urge people to experiment and see where the best fit for them is within the industry.

Sotomayor tells audience to pay it forward SOTOMAYOR Continued from page 1

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her contributions, she explained how she considered what service and community meant to her on both personal and global scales.

“Service to me meant what my life has been. It’s caring, it’s giving, and that’s where the phrase ‘service in the name of humanity’ came from,” she said. “If we start there, everything else good will follow.”

Sotomayor emphasized the importance of service throughout one’s life, no matter the form it takes.

“I don’t care how you serve. I just want you to serve,” she said.

Sotomayor’s role on the Supreme Court prevents her from answering questions that could compromise her impartiality as a judge. Therefore people’s questions sought Sotomayor’s advice on character and life rather than her opinions on the current political climate.

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When asked what she was most proud of in her life, she addressed her deep connection with her family and those who have touched her life.

“What am I the proudest of? That I’ve never walked alone. That all of the people who I have known have taken every step with me,” she explained.

“It’s great that we are looking back and celebrating what we have accomplished but also at the same time carrying out what still needs to be done,” Freeland said about the conference’s importance.

Sotomayor spoke during the conference “¡Adelante Tigres! Celebrating Latino Alumni at Princeton University” March 30 through April 1. The conference featured presentations, alumni discussion groups, networking opportunities, campus tours, and social events. Featured speakers included President Christopher Eisgruber ’83, American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero ’87, and Secretary of the State of Rhode Island Nellie Gorbea ’88.

The Daily Princetonian

Monday April 3, 2017

USG Social Committee Romero to U. students: to host Coachella on the “Don’t doubt that you Lawn belong” COACHELLA Continued from page 1

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this decision.

“We led a walkout during the meeting so we could engage with the issue in a way that was truer to our values, and reject the legitimacy of the Resources Committee and the way the University, by extension, had been handling the issue so far,” said Teehan.

Teehan and Callon then opened the floor for questions from the USG Senate.

U-Councilor Olivia Grah ’19 questioned PPPD’s decision to conduct the walkout before the question and answer session, in which the Resources Committee did provide reasons for the proposal’s rejection.

Grah stated that the session would have been an opportunity to engage with the Resources Committee in an environment where they would have been held accountable.

“Were [the committee] to engage in tactics of obstruction..., that would be broadly visible to everyone else attending the meeting,” explained Grah.

Callon replied that the PPPD members had watched the recording of the question and answer session and that they did not consider the reasons given as legitimate reasons to reject the proposal. Callon also upheld the reasoning behind the walkout itself, restating the PPPD’s refusal to interact with the Resources Committee. According

to Callon, this refusal is the result of over a year of working with the committee, which “very clearly has not engaged themselves fully with our proposal or with anything we say to them in our meetings.”

Class of 2018 Senator Eli Schechner ’18 inquired as to what the PPPD’s next steps will be following their rejection of the legitimacy of the Resources Committee.

Teehan explained that action was still necessary to be able to change the way the administration interacts with student movements.

Adding to this, he noted that the Resources Committee had originally disallowed a rejected proposal to be submitted again in the same academic year, but due to campus support for the divestment issue, the Committee had since indicated that the policy was to be changed.

Social Committee Chair Lavinia Liang ’18 presented an update on current committee projects. The projects include the Artist of the Year Competition (formerly known as Battle of the Bands). The competition will accept audio submissions of any genre until Friday, April 7. Voting will open for the entire undergraduate body from April 10 - April 14, and the winner will be announced April 17. The Social Committee will also be hosting Coachella on the Lawn, an outdoor showing of the Coachella music festival on April 21 in a location that is to be determined. Liang also mentioned that the Lawnparties reveal will occur sometime next week.

ACLU

Continued from page 1

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tating to their academic experience.

Despite the challenges of adjusting to a new environment, Romero thrived as a student. He maintained excellent grades and even began to engage in political activism on campus by creating a non-profit organization that focused on international development.

Romero said that he considers his time at the University as one of three moments of his life that “fundamentally rocketed [him] into a different dimension.”

“I honed my skills here.

Stanford gave me a credential; Princeton gave me an education,” he said.

After graduating from Stanford Law School, to his dismay, Romero struggled to find employment in public service. In fact, he was even turned down from the ACLU, the very organization he now leads.

“I was thoroughly demoralized,” he said. Romero said he eventually learned that a career in public service isn’t linear. His best advice to students was to “have a little bit of grace and a little bit of presence and power

through.”

When asked about the role of activism in the current political climate, Romero emphasized that “there is so much energy to capitalize on.” He characterized the time we live in today as a golden era for activism and further encouraged students to participate as much as they could.

During the panel, he also criticized the University’s decision to reject the Princeton Private Prison Divestment’s proposal for the University to divest from private prisons in their endowment. The University has said that it has no investments in the companies mentioned in PPPD’s petition, however.

“I think institutions can divest from private prisons and not hurt endowments,” Romero said.

Oscar Guardado ’18 and Marisa Salazar ’17 led the panel.

The event, titled “A discussion with Anthony D. Romero” was a part of the “¡Adelante Tigres!” Conference which celebrated the legacies of Latino Alumni at the University. It was held in Alexander Hall of Richardson Auditorium on March 31. at 5:15 p.m.

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Opinion

Monday April 3, 2017

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EDITORIAL

The importance of opposing divestment

O

n March 27, Princeton Private Prison Divest staged a walkout at the Council of the Princeton University Community meeting to show support for divestment from private prisons. The Board commends the University Resources Committee’s refusal to back down in the face of intense political pressure and urges the committee to provide no commitment to divest from private prisons. We echo our editorial from April 21, 2016, in which we rejected private prison divestment, and we contend that private prisons do not meet the threshold of community consensus and moral unacceptability required to justify divestment.

Princeton University is an educational institution, not a political advocacy organization.

Decisions made by the University must further educational goals, not political ends. The Princeton University Investment Company has a core mission to make investments that will produce high and reliable returns on the endowment, which in turn provide the University with the financial stability necessary to spend money on financial aid, new facilities, and other educational necessities.

Many corporations sell items that are highly objectionable to some members of the community. Environmentalists might object to oil drilling companies and vegetarians to meat-packing companies. Still, it would be false to construe an investment in, for example, ExxonMobil or Tyson Foods, as a moral stance in favor of oil or meat consumption. It simply reflects PRINCO’s understanding that investment in these firms will yield higher or more reliable returns than alternative investments. PRINCO makes investments based on financial considerations, and the decision to invest is made inde-

Emily Erdos

racially driven discrimination and disenfranchisement in South Africa, and genocide in Sudan. In contrast, Princeton Private Prison Divest calls for the University to target the contracting of certain government services to private contractors.

PPPD has highlighted a number of reasons why the contracting of prison services is inefficient as currently organized; it costs more, leads to higher rates of recidivism, and engenders numerous safety concerns. The Board believes that there is a substantial difference between an inherently immoral practice, such as racial discrimination and genocide, and public policies that can have negative, even disastrous, effects, but are not inherently immoral, such as the contracting of certain government services. Racial discrimination and genocide are reprehensible by definition. The contracting of public services is problematic only in cases when it does not work, and the Resources Committee is not positioned to make the political determination of whether and when the disadvantages of private contracting outweigh its benefits.

In a letter published in The Daily Princetonian, PPPD showcased the partisan nature of their complaint when they condemned the University’s investments for supporting “the blatantly racist agenda of the Trump administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.”

Any partisan gain deriving from Princeton investments is purely coincidental, since PRINCO’s purpose is solely to invest in companies that provide the highest and most reliable returns. The letter, by implying that investments ought to align against the policies of President Trump and Attorney General Sessions, implies that University resources ought to

be used to engage in partisan activity.

The University’s strength as an educational institution lies not only in its ability to educate the nation’s brightest minds in state-of-the art facilities, but also in its role as a forum for debate, a pillar of the marketplace of ideas. To maintain its prestige and integrity, the University as an institution must remain impartial and allow students and professors to freely exchange ideas.

Many professors hold views that are outside the mainstream of undergraduate and graduate student political thought.

To subject their viewpoints to a referendum, and call on the University as an institution to condemn their views, would cause irreparable harm to academic freedom. This is why divestment should be used sparingly and only in the most egregious of circumstances.

Not only is there no evidence of universal outrage over private prison divestment, but the Resources Committee also cannot take a stand without politicizing the University. It appears that the protests and sit-ins will continue as the Resources Committee deliberates, and the Board hopes that the Resources Committee will refuse to bow to public pressure and remain steadfast in its commitment to institutional neutrality.

Cydney Kim ’17, Ashley Reed ’18, and William Pugh ’20 abstained from the writing of this editorial.

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 Co-Chairs, the Opinion Editor, and the Editor-in-Chief. It can be reached at editorialboard@ dailyprincetonian.com.

Mad about March Madness

Contributing columnist

I

pendent of the University.

Nevertheless, there have been two instances during which the University has decided to divest following public pressure from the University community; once related to South Africa during apartheid in 1987, and once related to Sudan during the Darfur humanitarian crisis in 2006.

Advocates of private prison divestment are calling on the University to divest for a third time to target private prisons, citing campus consensus and conflict with University core values. While a referendum calling for divestment from private prisons received a commanding majority in April, this referendum did not meet the Undergraduate Student Government’s participation threshold, meaning that less than one third of the undergraduate student body voted on the issue. Advocates of divestment have not shown that there is campus consensus on the issue. They have merely shown that a significant minority of students agrees with them. Even if, hypothetically, it is accepted that the vast majority of students support a divestment proposal, the Board believes that student support is not the primary metric that should be used to decide on the merits of a divestment proposal. Rather, the University’s institutional interests, such as in academic freedom, political neutrality, and core University values, should be the primary considerations.

While it is undeniable that many students and faculty are passionately opposed to private prisons and that there are strong arguments to be made against this practice, it does not follow that investment in private prisons contradicts core University values. The two previous divestments targeted political practices that inherently contradict core moral values;

t’s obvious that women athletes receive biased and inferior media coverage compared to their male counterparts: everything from the #LikeAGirl advertisements to the Cover the Athlete movement to article after article in the news highlights this discrepancy. While some differences between male and female athletes’ salaries, endorsements, and media coverage may be attributable to economics, gender prejudices and discriminatory attitudes are pervasive in sports, affecting and perpetuating sexist treatment of athletes in insidious ways.

As just one example, the salary cap for the NBA is $102.6 million, whereas the salary cap for the WNBA is a mere $913,000. Is this wage difference attributable to the economics of the demand for men’s professional basketball versus women’s? It’s arguably the driving force behind the gap, but what other factors come into play? These questions are just the tip of the iceberg.

Celebrating its 45th anniversary this year, Title IX has worked to erase much of the difference in the collegiate world by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex.

Princeton is one of the most egalitarian schools in terms of gender and athletics. Facilities, funding, and academic support are comparable for male teams and their female counterparts. The University men’s and women’s coaches have the smallest pay gap within the Ivy league.

Despite the progressiveness of the University compared to

other schools, one aspect of Princeton athletics still falls short: the Princeton Athletics Twitter page.

Because it’s April and brackets are ever so relevant, I’m going to specifically focus on the Princeton basketball teams.

The claims I make cannot be extrapolated to other teams, but I think these findings in and of themselves are startling and revelatory.

The first discrepancy is the individual Twitter handles.

The men’s team handle is @ Princeton_Hoops and the women’s is @PrincetonWBB. This variation calls attention.

Why isn’t the men’s handle @ PrincetonMBB? I checked, and this handle is not taken. Furthermore, why are the men entitled to the more descriptive handle containingthe word “hoops”? The women use the same hoops, shoot the same hoops, and score on the same hoops that men do.

Beyond just the Twitter handles, there is inordinately more content (tweets and retweets) about the men’s team than the women’s team on the Princeton Athletics Twitter.

But before that, here’s a quick summary and explanation of the past two years for both the men’s and women’s basketball teams.

Princeton teams compete in the Ivy League. Whichever team wins the Ivy League Tournament progresses to the National Championship, or NCAA’s, and has the chance to compete during March Madness. Even if they don’t qualify for the NCAA’s, the season isn’t over. They still have the opportunity to earn a berth at the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), or the “consolation” tournament. At the end of the 2015-2016 season, the

women’s basketball team was the best in the Ivy League and made it to the NCAA Championship. That same year, the men lost the Ivy League title to Yale, but received a bid for the NIT. The end of the 2016-2017 season brought the opposite for both teams: the men triumphed in the Ivy League over Harvard, leading them to the first round of the NCAA Championship. The women narrowly lost to Penn in the Ivy League Tournament, but were invited to the NIT. In short, during the Championship season, the men did what the women did last year (and vice versa).

But on the Princeton Athletics Twitter, this is far from apparent. Starting with a tweet from Mar. 10, 2016 that referenced both teams’ preparation for the Ivy League tournament, I totaled the number of tweets about the men’s and the women’s teams. I stopped counting up to Mar. 22, 2016, when a concluding tweet was released about a “final look” at the women’s season. For clarification, I did not count retweets of the individual teams’ pages as tweets, only original tweets.

I did the same for the 20162017 Championship season, starting with the first tweet about Ivies and ending with a wrap-up tweet for the men.

When the women’s season ended it was a “final look” at their season. But when the men were eliminated from the NCAA championship, it was nostalgically posted, “What a ride it was.”

This is not the only instance of discriminatory jargon in articles on the teams. When the women lost at the Ivy League tournament, they “Were

Tripped Up by Penn”, but when the men were eliminated in the first round of March Madness, they “[fell] to Notre Dame in Nailbiter in NCAA Opener.”

Although “nailbiter” is an accurate word to describe the final men’s game, the women’s game was also hard fought, but descriptive adjectives are left out of their headline, making it all the less scintillating.

Okay, back to the numbers.

Just for ease of reference, let’s say the women were more “successful” in 2016, and the men were more “successful” in 2017.

So when the men were successful, they received twice as many tweets as when the women were successful. When the men were unsuccessful, they still got over twice as many tweets as when the women were unsuccessful.

This is sexism. De minimis, you might say? Not really. We rarely give a second thought to small sexist comments, verbal or written, that surround us daily and undermine gender equality. This “routine” sexism keeps us stuck in the mud by indicating that it’s OK to engage in this behavior. It’s maddening.

Am I saying that “all tweets must be equal” or that we all should be blind to gender when we go to a game, watch sports, or tweet? Not necessarily. Gender and athletic performance are irrevocably intertwined, most obviously in what each individual athlete, male or female, can accomplish. And there are distinctions.

But what we shouldn’t do is categorize, make assumptions, base judgments, or use biased language on the basis of gender alone. Male athletes and teams (or, for that matter female) are not entirely stron-

vol. cxli

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 Gregory L. Diskant ’70 William R. Elfers ’71 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 Joshua Katz Kathleen Kiely ’77 Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Randall Rothenberg ’78 Annalyn Swan ’73 Michael E. Seger ’71 Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73

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

NIGHT STAFF 4.2.17 copy Marina Latif ’19 Sharon Xiang ’20 Arthur Mateos ’19 Sarah Deneher ’20

ger, superior or more capable of outperforming. Women fall, and men trip, too.

We should strive to respect and represent all athletes as universally accomplished and human. It’s our job to honor, tell, and tweet their stories not as gender-based, but as human ones, equal and unbiased.

I applaud Princeton for the progress it has made since the days when it was an all-men’s school.

But Princeton Athletics should reconsider its social media presence and reform it to achieve the standard of equality that the University has exemplified in other areas.

Emily Erdos is a Sophomore from Harvard, MA. She can be reached at eerdos@princeton. edu.

Monday April 3, 2017

Opinion

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

page 5

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

Graphiti Grace Koh ’19

Lack of current investments is not enough

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

An open letter to President Christopher Eisgruber, Secretary Bob Durkee, and PRINCO President Andrew Golden Guest Contributor

L

ast Monday, the Resources Committee of the Council of the Princeton University Community attempted to justify its decision to reject Princeton Private Prison Divest’s proposal for divestment and dissociation from the private prison and detention industry. But before committee chair Professor Michael Littman took the stage, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 made an unexpected address to the audience and stated that Princeton does “not hold investments in the companies that are the current subject of this petition,” and that it does not intend to obtain such holdings.

This informal statement is welcome news to PPPD, but its full implications require official clarification and elaboration. We request a formal statement from PRINCO that Princeton is not invested — either through primary or secondary investments — in the 11 corporations specified in our proposal. Given the lack of transparency from the administration so far, the campus community deserves proof of this significant announcement.

More importantly, lack of investment is not divestment. Even if the University is not currently invested in the industries in our proposal, PPPD’s fundamental demands have not changed. As top administrators have consistently stated, the issue of divestment concerns not only current investments but also the imposition of a permanent negative screen against a certain industry or group of corporations. That is to say, if the University truly has no intent in investing in these com-

Ryan Born

Contributing columnist

Y

ou’re a Princetonian.

You’re about to graduate. Do you take that offer with Goldman, hoping to make millions, or do you go with a nonprofit, making a few thousand but likely doing better for the world? Are you going to sell out?

Princeton, like all Ivy League schools, is highly selective.

It’s elite. There is a startling amount of resources thrown into this establishment, from money to human capital. For many people, an Ivy is the best place to get an education. Yet in societal terms, there is a serious question to be answered.

What are the nation’s “best and brightest” doing with this education? There is a responsibility or a duty to the nation and the world which comes with receiving these resources and opportunities. We should not be selfish and view these pools of resources as merely for our exploitation; we are morally obligated, by duty and responsibility, to create real value for the world. Another ten million in Goldman’s portfolio is not adding real value. This real value we add should be in terms of human development, service, philanthropy. All of us should have this goal.

There is a common conception that a career path at Princeton is divided along two lines:

panies, the Board of Trustees must formalize that intent by officially instructing PRINCO and its managers not to invest in the industry at any point in the future.

That substantive divestment requires imposition of such a screen is the University’s own policy — evinced in statement and practice.

Following President Eisgruber’s statement, University Vice President and Secretary Robert Durkee ’69 clarified that “the question is whether Princeton should adopt a policy of prohibiting any future investment or association with a specified set of companies.” Secretary Durkee compared the present situation to when the University “divested and disassociated” from the Darfur genocide, noting that, “at that time, Princeton had no investments in any of those companies, but the policy provided that there could be no future investment in such companies.” By the University’s own articulated standards, then, divestment is the definitive end to forms of association with industries whose practices conf lict with University values. Until the administration formally undergoes this process with regard to corporations that operate or contract exclusively with prisons and detention centers, it will not have divested or dissociated in any meaningful way from these industries. We continue to demand divestment and the imposition of a negative screen.

As PPPD stated during the CPUC meeting before staging a walkout, this was the first time the University has made a claim that PRINCO holds no investments in private detention, despite over a year of engagement with PPPD about the issue. This is character-

istic of the University’s handling of our campaign thus far, including the Resources Committee’s stunning refusal to articulate specific reasons as to why the proposal was rejected. We are disappointed, but not surprised by the administration’s ongoing evasiveness on this issue.

In fact, even in the days following the show of campus support for divestment at the CPUC meeting, the administration has continued to engage in meaningless semantics, rather than engage substantively with the issue at hand: their refusal to divest. Secretary Durkee has dogmatically insisted that the Resources Committee did not officially “reject” our proposal because the Board of Trustees is the only body capable of making official and final rejections. Whether the proposal fails to move past the Resources Committee due to the Resources Committee’s rejection or the Board of Trustees’ rejection, the proposal was de-

finitively — and shamefully — rejected last Monday.

Professor Littman’s presentation at the CPUC meeting and his responses to subsequent questioning exposed to the campus community what was already clear to PPPD — neither the Resources Committee nor the administration has engaged substantively with our proposal. Rather than engage with the gravity of the issue, the diversity of campus support for divestment, or the mechanisms for meaningfully disassociating from these industries, the Resources Committee has consistently delayed, distracted, and made facetious arguments in opposition to divestment.

The Resources Committee’s conduct has undermined its legitimacy as an institutional channel for deliberation on divestment. As such, we request a meeting with the Board of Trustees.

Princeton has historically and presently attempted to silence student movements

that address the University’s complicity in racial and economic injustice. PPPD rejects this silencing of voices, and will continue to act until the Princeton community’s wishes for disassociation and divestment are met. As Anthony Romero ’87, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, argued just this past Friday at the “¡Adelante Tigres! Celebrating Latino Alumni at Princeton University” conference, institutions like Princeton can and should divest from corporations which imprison oppressed people for profit.

Respectfully, The Princeton Private Prison Divest Coalition Princeton Private Prison Divest is a coalition of University community members united in calling on the University to divest from for-profit detention corporations. The coalition can be contacted at princetonprisondivest@gmail.com.

The noble career post-Princeton to go into service, and to go into business. These are considered mutually exclusive. Finance is the archetype for lucrative but soulless. And that’s exactly how we phrase our choice: It’s a choice of whether or not to “sell out.” It’s a choice between having a human soul and doing good for the world, and making money. We all face this choice at some point or another. But it’s not a real choice.

We should not view our careers as binary.

One way to think about nonbinary career goals is through the perspective of Princeton’s own Professor Peter Singer. As Singer has noted, “My view is that for some people, with a particular skill set and character, going to Wall Street to earn a lot and donate a lot may be the best thing they can do to make the world a better place.”

This is a fairly common view.

People can go to Wall Street for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they are actively passionate about finance. Some have important personal reasons to seek out wealth, for themselves or their families. One dimension of making a fortune on Wall Street can be the desire to give back, as Singer told me, “One of my Princeton students did that a few years ago, and has been able to donate sixfigure sums to highly effective charities every year since graduation.” Singer’s argument can thus be read as the following:

We can make our lucrative pursuits philanthropic, and we ought to do so if possible.

Singer’s emphasis on “effective” is telling and important.

If we are to pursue valuable projects for humanity in our lives, we ought to do the best job that we can. Can donating money provide that? If one goes to Wall Street, does donating money outweigh the opportunity cost of, say, being a Wilson School major, specializing in education policy, and going to run a school district? Mark Zuckerberg famously donated $100 million to Newark schools, which did absolutely nothing. There is a principled argument to be made that Princetonians and other highly educated, intelligent, and skilled people offer certain organizational or conceptual skills that outweigh any monetary effects. Singer does acknowledge this: “Some people may have even better options, if they have a different skillset,” he said. Certain sites like 80,000 Hours are also available for people to examine the impact their careers have.

But it is not enough to say that only those people who make a lot of money or those who go into service should be obligated to give back. All of us should pursue personal goals and try to align ourselves with our values. To further explore this idea, I spoke with Pulin Sanghvi, Executive Director of

Career Services, and Evangeline Kubu, Director of Career Services. Sanghvi and Kubu said that “careers are not binary: we want every student to think about things in terms of themes and portfolios they believe in.” They argue that students should try to view their careers not as a single line, but as a set of stages, where each career stage serves some purpose to an ultimate vision or mission.

Even if it is not obviously the case that you are making the world a better place, keep in mind that this is one of your goals and responsibilities as an Ivy League student. Utilize your career to pursue opportunities to further this goal.

At the beginning of a career in consulting, you may not have the skills, network, or capital to create value for the world. But in some years, you may have the skills, network, and capital to create a non-profit that gives back. Sanghvi in particular wanted to emphasize that “private life isn’t necessarily selling out: you can learn, meet people, create a platform, help support your goals.” Sanghvi and Kubu argue that student interests are diversifying, and that a student’s priority should be “to make connections to a broad range of opportunities and passion for purpose.”

We should continue to allow our interests to diversify, and follow paths that allow us to

achieve our personal projects and do more soulful work.

And the choice to do soulful work is exactly that: a choice.

By viewing our careers as vehicles for us to drive, and for us to work towards our goals, we can make the choice to do good things.

Princetonians should add value to the world. Given our career paths, we will all have the ability to move toward this goal if we are actively looking for opportunities to do so. A synthesis of Singer and Career Services emphasizes that, ultimately, a student should be aware of their skillset and aim to pursue what aligns with their personal sense of self, abilities, and mission. Careers are flexible and provide us with options to give back, even if on the surface they seem like they don’t. Princetonians should be aware that their individual choices and career paths can be aligned with their own personal values. As our seniors move out, juniors move into their senior year, and sophomores continue to choose their academic concentrations, we should all of us think about how to put ourselves in the nation’s service, and in the service of all humanity.

Ryan Born is a sophomore from Washington, Mich. He can be reached at rcborn@princeton. edu.

Sports

Monday April 3, 2017

page 6

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } WOMEN’S TRACK & FIELD

Tigers race at Yale Invitational and Florida Relays

COURTESY OF PRINCETON ATHLETICS

Four Tigers competed at the Florida Relay in Gainesville. Senior Jessica Ackerman led the Princeton effort at Yale with a second place finish in the 800.

By Claire Coughlin Associate Sports Editor

The Princeton Women’s Track and Field team had a busy weekend with a meet in Florida on Friday, Mar. 24 and a meet in Connecticut on Saturday, Apr. 1.

After spending spring break in Florida, four Tigers returned to compete at the Pepsi Florida Relays in Gainesville. The meet consisted of some of the best teams in the nation

and the Tigers performed exceptionally well.

Senior Katie Hanss finished 13th in the 1500 with a time of 4:26.09 — the fastest time run by a Princeton runner this season. Sophomore Anna Jurew clocked a PR in the 800 at 2:10.48, another fastest time run by a Tiger this season and a time that ranks her 19th in the East Region rankings. Anna is currently the team’s top

800 runner and hopes to break 2:10 by the end of the season. Senior Zoe Sims also ran the 800, finishing with a time of 2:12.57. Senior Alexandra Markovich finished the steeplechase with a time of 10:48.86 and 10th place, putting her at 11th-best in the East Region.

On Saturday, members of the rest of the team traveled up to New Haven to compete in Yale’s Mark T.

Young Invitational. Senior Jessica Ackerman ran to a second-place finish in the 800 with a time of 2:21.07, and junior Melana Hammel was just two seconds and two places behind her at fourth with 2:23.34.

Junior Mattie Baron also placed for the team with third in the 400 and ninth in the 200. Senior Maria Seykora was the Tigers’ top 1500 finisher at sixth place with 4:51.81.

The Tigers got a lot of points in the field events, with three fifth-place finishers. Freshman Hadley Wilhoite cleared 1.60 in the high jump, junior Delaney Kerkhof jumped 10.82 in the triple, and sophomore Kerri Davidson leapt 5.25 in the long jump.

The Tigers will next compete at home in the Sam Howell Invitational on April 7th and 8th at Weaver Stadium.

Tigers upset Columbia to win Campbell Cup MEN’S CREW

By Miranda Hasty

Associate Sports Eidtor

The men’s lightweight rowing team faced a significant obstacle this Saturday, Apr 1, racing against the incumbent IRA champion Columbia on Lake Carnegie for the inaugural Campbell Cup in the second half of a regatta with the heavyweights.

There was a turbulent start to the morning race as waves swallowed junior Blake Lange’s oar just before the 500-meter mark and forced his boat to forfeit their considerable lead against the Lions.

Luck was on their side, however, because the team was granted a restart after calling breakage.

The team was able to outpace the champions again after the restart and seal the victory with a late sprint to claim the first Campbell Cup, finishing at 6:30.2 and five seconds ahead of the Columbia boat.

The victory was a historic one, as Columbia had taken 12 out of the last 13 races against Princeton.

Saturday’s race was the team’s third of the season.

The Tigers had a split opener exactly a week before, racing the Naval Academy for the Murtaugh Cup and Georgetown for the Fos-

Courtesy of Princeton Athletics The men’s lightweight crew team beat reigning IRA champions Columbia by five secons to claim the inaugural Campbell cup .

burgh Cup. Though the Tigers kicked the day off slow with a loss to the Midshipmen for the Murtaugh trophy, they claimed the Fosburgh title over the Hoyas with a narrow 2.5-second margin at 6:20.5 for an evening victory.

Tweet of the Day

“Of all the must see sporting events in US history you gotta consider The Great Rush when a Princeton library opens for the day. Unreal energy” Samuel Huffman (@ HamSuffman), Defensive Back, Football

The lightweight rowing team took center stage on Saturday, but other boats also put on impressive performances at Lake Carnegie.

The 2V finished with a 3.6-second win over Columbia; and the 3V, 4V, and 5V

boats each crossed the finish line before the Columbia 3V boat, the last Princeton boat finishing four seconds before Columbia.

The Tigers will look to continue their momentum from this weekend’s exciting results into next week’s

Stat of the Day

5s The Tigers beat reigning IRA champions Columbia by 5 seconds to win the Campbell Cup.

races against Dartmouth and Delaware on Lake Carnegie, the third straight weekend on home waters.

The competition will begin at 10 a.m. on Saturday and will be broadcasted live on the Ivy League Digital Network.

Follow us Check us out on Twitter on @princesports for live news and reports, and on Instagram on @ princetoniansports for photos!