May 3, 2017

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Wednesday May 3, 2017 vol. CXLI no. 56

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } ON CAMPUS

Kopp outlines path from U. thesis to Teach for America and Teach for All staff writer

Wendy Kopp ’89 is the founder of the nonprofit organizations Teach for America and Teach for All. In anticipation of her May 4 lecture, “Wendy Kopp: From Senior Thesis to Global Social Impact,” the Daily Princetonian spoke to Kopp over the phone about her time at the University, the founding of TFA and educational reform in today’s political climate.

The Daily Princetonian: While at Princeton, how did you get the idea to write your thesis?

Wendy Kopp: I think a number of things led me to this idea. One was that I’d become really focused on the fact that where kids are born in this country of ours — that aspires to be a place of equal opportunity — really determines their educational outcomes and, in turn, their life outcomes. As a public policy major, as a Woody Woo undergrad, I had the chance to really engage in that topic and question in the classes I was taking. I actually organized a conference on this issue of educational inequality as part of the Foundation for Student Communication.

At that conference, this idea just struck me because it occurred to me that all these students, from all over the

COURTESY OF SEBASTIAN DERUNGS :: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM

Wendy Kopp speaking at the World Economic Forum in 2012.

country, were all saying that they would love to teach in urban and rural public schools. I think our generation at the time was known as “the me generation,” supposedly we all just wanted to go work on Wall Street and make a lot of money, and I was just

convinced that actually that wasn’t right. All of this came together to lead me to say, why aren’t we being recruited as aggressively to commit two years to teach in urban and rural schools as were being recruited to work two years on Wall Street? I became very

U . A F FA I R S

U. concludes three-year “We Speak” survey program

By Catherine Benedict Contributor

On April 13, the University concluded the administration of the three-year “We Speak” survey on sexual misconduct. The survey, run by the Faculty-Student Committee on Sexual Misconduct, was emailed out to undergraduate and graduate students March 28 and aims to gain a greater understanding of knowledge and experiences of sexual misconduct on campus as well as students’ awareness of University policies, procedures, and resources. Results will be released and publicized in the fall.

The survey was previously administered in the spring of 2015 and 2016 as part of a planned three-year program.

The 2015 survey was completed by 52 percent of the student body and found that about 20 percent of University students had experienced some form of inappropriate sexual behavior. Inappropriate sexual behavior was defined by the University as nonconsensual sexual touching, nonconsensual sexual penetration (commonly referred to as rape), nonconsensual sexual contact that was attempted but not completed, and suspected sexual contact that had occurred while a person was

incapacitated. 34 percent of undergraduate women experienced inappropriate sexual behavior, while 13 percent of students and 27 percent of undergraduate women experienced some form of nonconsensual sexual contact.

The survey revealed that 80 percent of all students were aware of campus resources, with graduate students trailing undergraduate students.

The 2016 survey showed improvements in the campus climate surrounding sexual misbehavior. 15 percent, down from 20 percent, of all students said they had experienced some inappropriate See WE SPEAK page 2

ON CAMPUS

Prof Keohane discusses future of U.S. climate change policy

By Abhiram Karuppur associate news editor

Wilson School Professor Robert Keohane explained that the future of global climate change policy is not bright if the United States lets other countries take the lead on this issue.

Keohane, an expert in international relations, delivered the final Princeton Environmental Institute Faculty Seminar of the year. He said that his talk would focus on the three different scenarios that are possible if the United States “drags its feet” on the issue of climate change.

In Opinion

Keohane explained that the Trump Administration will probably move to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, an Obama Administration regulation aimed at reducing emissions from coalburning power plants. In addition, he noted that while the administration won’t honor the non-binding commitments in the Paris climate agreement, it most likely won’t withdraw fully from the agreement.

“It would take three or four years, and it would be messy,” he said.

Working with these assumptions, Keohane explained that

Columnist Lou Chen advocates for dining hall refunds and Senior Columnist Bhaamati Borkhetaria dispels the myth of conservative persecution. PAGE 4

there are three scenarios that can happen with regard to the Paris climate agreement. The first is the Free-Riding Collapse Scenario, which comes into play if other signatories of the Paris climate accords feel that they signed the agreement simply because the U.S. was also a signatory. These other countries may observe the United States reneging on its pledge, so they too will not honor the pledges they made in the agreement.

“It is possible under this first scenario that U.S. defection can lead to a cascade of other defecSee KEOHANE page 3

obsessed with the idea that that would make a real difference in the lives of kids growing up today, and at the same time I thought there would be a kind of larger power if we took all of these “future leaders” and had their first two years out of college be teaching in low-income communities instead of working on Wall Street. I thought that that would reset their priorities, their career trajectories, and overall the consciousness of the country. I became completely obsessed with this idea and realized that this was the answer to my search for a senior thesis.

As I was looking for an adviser, all the advisers in the Woodrow Wilson School were already committed. Finally, someone sent me over to the sociology department and said I should talk to Marvin Bressler, who was the chairman of the sociology department and an incredibly larger-than-life, revered, kind of icon at Princeton. When I went and talked to him, he said “You can’t propose an advertising campaign for teachers as your senior thesis.”

But he said that if I proposed mandatory national service, he’d be my adviser, because that’s his lifelong passion. I said okay, and I got him to sign on as my thesis adviser.

Then I went back and didn’t do anything about manda-

tory national service. I just researched this thesis and wrote it and then literally I didn’t see him again until I turned it in, thinking I’m sure I’ll get a terrible grade, but at least I developed a plan to start this thing. I was fully intent on actually trying to start this. A week later, he called me, and I went in to see him. He thought the thesis was great, but that there was no way I would actually be able to get this thing started.

He thought I was absolutely delusional.

DP: After graduation, how did your thesis translate into Teach for America? At the start, what were some of the big challenges you faced and how did you adapt to them?

WK: The thesis included a plan for the first year. I had mapped out this plan of how I was going to get this thing off the ground. I developed a budget saying this was going to cost two and a half million dollars. That was my thesis adviser’s main point: he was like how are you going to raise two and a half million dollars? He sent me down to the Head of Development in Princeton to explain to me how hard it was going to be to raise two and a half million dollars. The fact is I had no money to work on. I needed to figure out how to

BEYOND THE BUBBLE

STUDENT LIFE

Alumnae lanch project inspired by “PussyHats”

Populism to be PreRead focus

By Sarah Hirschfield

By Allie Spensley

staff writer

staff writer

A group of alumni have started an initiative to wear an orange-and-black version of the “PussyHats” worn at the Women’s March on Washington in January 2017.

Calling it the “TiGrrrHat Project,” the project organizers, who were inspired by the March for Science, People’s Climate March, and the University’s own Day of Action, launched a website where the hats can be purchased.

Sue Gemmell ’82, who started the project, noticed a number of shared values between the Women’s March on Washington and the University: “critical thinking, respect for free speech, commitment to science and fact, how diversity enriches our lives.”

As her classmate and project organizer Alison Holtzschue ’82 recalled, “the resonance seemed natural to [Sue].”

Holtzschue, who attended the Women’s March in New York City, said she was reminded of the way Reunions bring Princeto-

University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 has chosen “What Is Populism?” by politics professor Jan-Werner Müller for the Class of 2021’s Pre-read. Out of the five books in the Pre-read tradition, “What Is Populism?” is the second to be written by a University professor.

“What Is Populism?” argues that populism is defined by a rejection of pluralism, and that populists are politicians who claim that they and they alone truly represent the people.

Discussing contemporary politicians such as Donald Trump, Silvio Berlusconi, Marine Le Pen, and Hugo Chávez, the book shows that people have used the term “populism” in varied and often inconsistent ways.

Eisgruber said in a press release that he chose the book because “populist movements have implications for political issues that will matter deeply during [students’] time on Princeton’s campus and beyond” and that “according to some definitions of populism, being a student at a very selective college makes you part of an elite class at

See TIGRRRHAT page 3

See PREREAD page 3

Today on Campus 12 p.m.: Guest John Reynolds, Georgia Institute of Technology, demonstrates electrical charge storage with conjugated polymers in redox active devices.

Bowen Hall, Lecture Hall 222

See KOPP page 5

WEATHER

By Allie Spensley

HIGH

61˚

LOW

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Partly cloudy Humidity: 43% chance of rain: 0 percent

The Daily Princetonian

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Wednesday May 3, 2017

McCabe: Attitudes towards sexual misconduct are changing

It’s amazing!

The amount of news that happens every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.

Write for ‘Prince’ News.

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WE SPEAK Continued from page 1

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sexual behavior in the previous year. Nine percent of students, down from 13 percent, noted non-consensual sexual contact in the 20152016 academic year. Almost 90 percent of undergraduates and over 70 percent of graduate students said they knew where to get help on campus for sexual violence, another improvement from 2015.

Kelly McCabe ’18, president of SHARE (Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising, Resources & Education), noted that she was pleased with the survey’s numbers. SHARE did not have a direct role in creating or administering the survey, but there were SHARE peers who were involved in the process on their own.

“Obviously we wish that sexual misconduct weren’t happening on our campus, but we’re glad people feel comfortable reporting and talking about what they’ve experienced,” she said. “Luckily for campus as a whole, the attitudes toward sexual misconduct are changing, people are becoming more aware that it is a problem, and people are more aware of the resources that are available. During the last two years of the survey, we saw an increase in people who told a friend, people who sought out help and knew how to seek out help. So that’s really important to us, and we’re hoping to see that next round of the survey too.”

This year’s Faculty-Student Committee on Sexual Misconduct is chaired by Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity Michele Minter and psychology professor Nicole Shelton. It comprises Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan, SHARE director Jacqueline

Deitch-Stackhouse, graduate student Krupa Jani, Peyton Lawrenz ’19, engineering professor James Smith, graduate student Lisa Tktalych, Wilson School professor Deborah Yashar, and Nicholas Wu ’19.

The “We Speak” survey has its roots in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’s 2014 decision that found the University in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Title IX states, “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Title IX is frequently thought of as mandating equal access to women’s sports, but it also requires universities take steps to combat genderbased sexual harassment and violence. The Office for Civil Rights determined the University in violation of Title IX “for failing to promptly and equitably respond to complaints of sexual violence, including sexual assault, and also failing to end the sexually hostile environment for one student.” As part of the settlement, the University was required to increase education and prevention programs, survey students through the “We Speak” initiative and report to the Office for Civil Rights, improve coordination with local law enforcement, and re-examine all sexual misconduct complaints filed from the academic year of 2011-2012 to Sept. 1, 2014.

Minter, who serves as the University’s Title IX coordinator, explained that the University had already taken steps to improve its handling of sexual misconduct before the Office for Civil Rights resolved its case.

“There was an investigation that had been open for a number of years, as the Office for Civil Rights typically moves very slowly in their investigations. In the meantime, while the investigation was open, the office [changed] their guidance for how colleges and universities should implement their policies,” she said. “By the time they got around to resolving Princeton, they asked us to make a number of changes based on their current guidelines. We said yes, we had already made a number of changes, and we worked out an arrangement for that.”

Minter noted that the required three-year length of the survey initiative posed special challenges due to the sensitive nature of sexual misconduct.

“Three years is great because it gives us a very rich data set that is unusual, you typically don’t see a survey repeated so often,” Minter said. “But we also know it puts additional stress on those who have been victims and survivors to keep answering the questions over and over again. I’m not sure if it’s a best practice to do this intensive survey every year, but we are very appreciative that the students agreed to do it, or chose to do it, since we had a promise to the department that we would carry out the survey.”

The technical aspects of the survey were largely developed by Vice Provost for Institutional Research Jed

Marsh. Marsh noted that the 2016 survey was largely based upon the #iSPEAK survey developed by the Center on Violence Against Women and Children in the School of Social Work at Rutgers University, as well as the survey recommended by the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. The survey also included questions from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Community Attitudes on Sexual Assault survey and the American College Health Association – National College Health Assessment II. 52 percent of the student body completed the 2015 survey, while 47 percent of the 7,875 enrolled undergraduates and graduate students completed the 2016 survey.

“I think we are very happy with the participation,” said Minter. “The first year we had the highest participation, and we’ve done very well. Jed Marsh is very pleased that we got above 50 percent, and I will give a lot of credit to the students who participated in the social media campaign.”

Students such as Lawrenz, Jessica Quinter ’18, and Lydia Weintraub ’18 made videos promoting survey participation in conjunction with the “We Speak” initiative and the Office of Communications.

McCabe noted that the survey has increased campus dialogue on sexual misconduct since the first year of the survey.

“People have definitely become more open to talking about it, people have a clearer understanding of at least the statistics at Princeton. For a lot of people it’s easy to start a conversation by starting the one in four, or one in six statistic. That gives people a stronger base in terms of knowledge,” she said.

With the conclusion of the survey results analysis this summer, institutional attention will now turn toward enacting policy changes with consideration of the survey results.

“We will continue to collect information about what is happening,” said Minter.

“We may not do it with that same survey instrument, as it can be traumatizing, but there are lots of other ways to collect information. We may do some focus groups, we may do some targeted surveys, collect some alreadypresent health-related data.

We will be looking at those in combination with the survey data to see what we can tease out, and perhaps design some more customized questions.”

Minter also said that her office will work with the SHARE office to run substantial programming on what healthy relationships look like.

McCabe is hopeful that the results of the survey will prove helpful not only on an institutional level, but also in terms of SHARE’s education and support work.

“Hopefully in the future we’ll be able to use the information to make our programming better, to increase our programming where it needs to happen, change any policies to how they can improve student lives,” said McCabe.

“Also, given this survey’s additional focus on how much students were aware of prevention and education activities, I think it will really help SHARE’s programming.”

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Wednesday May 3, 2017

Eisgruber ‘83 stresses engagement with PreRead’s topic PREREAD Continued from page 1

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odds with ‘the people.’”

He also said that “all of us at this University need to think about these arguments and what they mean for our responsibilities at Princeton and in the world.”

The Pre-read tradition, first created in 2013 for the incoming Class of 2017, aims to introduce incoming students to intellectual life at the University. First-year students and orientation leaders receive a copy of the Pre-read over the summer, but the entire University community is encouraged to read and discuss the selection. Pre-read discussions are then held in the residential colleges and other areas on campus during orientation week and throughout the academic year. The program’s title mirrors the name of the “Pre-rade,” a ceremony for first-years held during Opening Exercises in order to symbolize the complementary residential and academic components of University life.

Eisgruber’s first selection, “The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen,” was written by University philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah. The book argues that modern democratic movements were driven by changing societal conceptions of honor, exploring how new ideas about honor brought about the end of once-common practices such as dueling in England and foot-binding in China. It uses “honor killings” in Pakistan as an example of how honor can facilitate atrocities in addition to ending them.

Eisgruber’s choice for the Class of 2018 was “Meaning in Life and Why It Matters”by Susan Wolf GS ’78, a philosophy professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Based on a series of lectures that Wolf delivered at the University in 2007 as part

The Daily Princetonian

of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values, the book challenges the division of human motives as either egoistic and altruistic, claiming instead that humans act out of love for objects and derive meaning in life from these actions.

In a press release from the Office of Communications, Eisgruber said that the question of what makes a meaningful life is “at the heart of a liberal arts education.”

“Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do” by Claude Steele, was selected for the Class of 2019. A first-person account of Steele’s social psychological research on stereotype and identity, the book deals with the stereotype threats faced by people of different races and genders. Steele was the executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also served as a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Graduate School of Education.

He traveled to the University during orientation to discuss the bookwith students. Eisgruber wrote he chose the book because “events of the past year underscore the need for all of us to think carefully and critically about how stereotypes affect our campus, our society and the world.”

The Class of 2020 read “Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality” by Danielle Allen ’93, the director of Harvard’s Center for Ethics. The book offered a close reading of the Declaration as a profound, original document arguing for and emphasizing democratic equality. Allen joined President Eisgruber, University professors Melissa Lane and Sean Wilentz, and members of the Class of 2020 for an assembly on “Our Declaration” in September 2016.

Eisgruber wrote that the book “speaks to urgent questions about the relationship of liberty to equality, the significance of historical legacies, and the meaning of political documents.”

Holtzschue: Project brings shared support to Reunions TIGRRRHAT Continued from page 1

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nians together as a community. “[The TiGrrrHat Project] represents a gentle, lighthearted way to bring that feeling of shared support to reunions,” Holtzschue added.

“The hat is iconic in that it refers to dissatisfaction with the direction away from science, away from civil rights,” Gemmell explained. “This is a situation different than any other, this is not business as usual.”

She added that the hats will provide a great sense of unity, regardless of political backgrounds.

“Princeton brings the world together,” she noted.

Addressing the fear that the project will bring politics into the alumni community, Holtzschue explained that Reunions have never been just a party.

“It’s also about community and lifelong learning,” she said.

During her time at the University, Gemmell, a daughter of Australian scientists, was involved with fighting wage inequality after food service workers went on strike, protesting the U.S. involvement in the

Salvadoran Civil War and divestment from apartheid South Africa. She described active discussion on campus about the ethics of “where our money goes.”

“One of the greatest parts of Princeton is the effort they have made to bring people from all different backgrounds,” Gemmell said. “There’s a clear understanding that [diversity] enriches the education we all get.”

Holtzschue added that she’s proud that Elena Kagan ’81 and Sonia Sotomayor ’76 are on the Supreme Court, and that Michelle Obama ’85 was in the White House, nothing that these are all reasons to be proud to be a Princetonian.

“Wearing a hat is celebrating Princeton’s contributions to all of those things ... that are under threat right now,” she said.

The TiGrrrHat Project is a private initiative not affiliated with or sponsored by the University, and wearing TiGrrrHats at Reunions is considered a permitted expression of free speech, as long as the hats do not bear University insignia.

TiGrrrHats can be purchased on the project’s website, where alumni can also sponsor a student’s hat.

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COURTESY OF CHATHAM HOUSE

Prof Keohane speaks at Chatham House, London on rethinking the global politics of climate change in May 2015.

Keohane: Trump is handing Europe and China a huge opportunity KEOHANE Continued from page 1

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tions,” Keohane said. “The other countries will say ‘if the U.S. is defecting, why should we pay?’”

However, Keohane noted that the Paris Agreement contains a network-like structure, where each country decides what level of emissions reductions is in its best interest. He explained that it is this decentralized structure of the agreement which may save it, since the agreement is vague and non-binding.

The second scenario Keohane discussed is the Leadership-Opportunity Scenario. He explained that for the past 75 years, the United States has been “making the rules” for all major agreements and global policies, and has benefited from this status. However, if the United States does not take the lead in climate change policy, other countries will fill the void.

“The Trump Administration is handing Europe and China a huge opportunity,” Keohane said.

“The EU may step up since it needs

some reason to exist ... and China wants to rival the U.S. for leadership.”

He explained that in this scenario, China and Europe could redouble their commitment to combating climate change, strengthening economic ties between the two. The effect of this is that other developing countries, which until now have not done much to address climate change, may not want to be left behind.

Ironically, the United States pulling out of the agreement would make the politics of fulfilling the Paris Agreement in these developing countries more attractive, since many of these societies harbor anti-American sentiments “Reluctance to go along with U.S. initiatives is actually positive for their politics,” Keohane said.

“If the U.S. wasn’t behind [the Paris Agreement], they could show up the U.S. by taking an active role in climate change.”

Optimistically speaking, he added that the United States may reverse its position once it sees other countries fulfilling their commitments and benefiting internationally.

The third scenario, called the Symbolic Alternative Leadership Scenario, is based on China pursuing “symbolic gains” without actually aggressively tackling climate change. Keohane explained that the Paris Agreement has nominal targets and does not require too much transparency from signatories. He explained that this could lead some countries to claim that they are addressing climate change, but there would be no way to validate this. He dubbed this “organized hypocrisy.”

“States would pretend to educate, and others would pretend to believe,” he said. “It’s a common state of affairs in world politics.”

Keohane added that this too could entice anti-American countries to join, increasing the number of active signatories, but the agreement would be less ambitious and transparent with vague commitments.

Keohane’s lecture was titled “The International Climate Regime without US Leadership: Collapse or Multilateral Institutionalization?” and was held at 12:30 in Guyot Hall 10.

Opinion

Wednesday May 3, 2017

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{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

The worst damn deal of them all Lou Chen

columnist

L

ike most freshmen, I signed up for the unlimited meal plan during my first fall semester. Princeton was an embarrassment of edible riches ranging from the sublime (late meal cookies) to the disturbing (any attempt at Asian food). As my waistline expanded, so did my love for Princeton’s dining halls.

But by that spring semester, the novelty had worn off (subsisting only on chicken tenders and burrito bowls will do that to you) and nutritional reality had sunk in. In a last-minute effort to reclaim my body and soul, I decided to switch to the Block 190 plan, the smallest meal plan allowed to underclassmen, and I have been on it since.

At the very end of last semester, I checked my meal plan balance and was surprised to find that I still had 37 meals left. After giving it some thought, however, I realized that it made sense — I had spent a few weekends in New York and often left a few days early for breaks. Unfortunately, I was leaving the next day for Intersession and could not cash in all 37 by that time. Then I began wondering to myself: Why doesn’t the University reimburse students for unused meals?

Consider how much money is at stake. With limited meal plans, the University assumes a fixed price for each meal. For Block 235, that price is $13.14 per meal. For Block 190, $15.55 per meal. Consequently, by not using up my 37 leftover meals, I had lost a whopping $575.35.

To put that into perspective, that’s more than a round-trip airplane ticket to my home state of California.

The situation is even worse for sophomores who have joined eating clubs. On top of paying for our meal plan, we dish out anywhere between $500 and $1000 to dine at our eating clubs a few times a

week (in addition to other social events). Each time we do so, that’s one more meal that’s not being checked off from our meal plan. That’sne more untouched, uneaten, unused meal we’ll have to pay for at the end of the semester.

Yet this financial burden on students is a subtle beast. One of the reasons this issue rarely comes to the fore is that it’s difficult for students to realize it even exists. At the beginning of each semester, we select our meal plan and pay for it in full.

Then we’re good on food for the next several months. Rarely do we keep track of how many meals we’ve used or check our balance, unless we’re afraid we might be going over. The meal plan becomes yet another shrugged-off, fixed cost that is necessary to a Princeton education.

In response to this dilemma, many students have turned to a simple solution: using all of their meal swipes, regardless of whether they are actually in the mood for food. They smuggle brownies out of the dining halls and stock up on fruit cups and ice cream bars from late meal. But I’ve tried that, and I can tell you that all that happens is that a few weeks later, my fridge is filled with spoiled yogurt and my desk drawers with moldy cookies — because I’m not in the habit of forcing myself to eat when I’m not hungry. So, paradoxically, by trying not to waste our meal swipes and thus our money, we end up wasting vast reserves of food. And in many cases, we waste packaged food that might be better served by going to a nearby homeless shelter or re-shelved the next day.

Paradoxically, Princeton prides itself on being a sustainable campus. Indeed, we have an Office of Sustainability whose mission it is to “cultivate the desire in all of us to lead meaningful lives in service of global human and environmental well-being.” I assume that persuading students not to waste food would fall under such lofty rhetoric.

But by refusing to reimburse students for their leftover meals, the University is unwittingly encouraging irresponsible behavior with regards to food consumption that undermines our pro-environment stance. In short, Princeton is pretending, not practicing, what it preaches.

Assistant Vice President for Communications Daniel Day defended this policy by stating in an email interview that “the University designs meal plans to be flexible to a variety of student dining preferences.

To maintain this approach, we do not offer credit for unused meals, but instead encourage students to make the best choice for their specific dining needs each semester.”

Is this the best choice? More like the only choice. We are forced to be on a meal plan for our first two years, and for various dietary, circumstantial, or convenience-related reasons — “specific dining needs” — many of us have no choice but to select the smallest meal plan, which, in addition to charging us more per meal, still swindles us out of an astonishing amount of money at the end of each semester. It doesn’t sound very flexible to me; it’s just profitable for the University.

Much has been written by my editor, Newby Parton, about the price-gouging that takes place every time we swipe into a dining hall — for example, that it would be much cheaper, if not less convenient, to instead dine out at moderately-priced restaurants like Qdoba or Panera Bread. In addition to our ridiculously high individual meal costs, should we really be paying for more than we consume?

If the University decides to pursue a policy of reimbursement, they must eliminate all the different limited meal plans and establish only one.

If not, every student would gravitate towards the Block 235 meal plan, which offers the lowest price per meal, and simply collect their unused meal-

swipe money at the end of each semester.

But perhaps a simpler solution exists: to charge students a fixed amount of money every time they enter a dining hall — unless, of course, they are on the unlimited meal plan, in which case it is impossible to pinpoint an exact price per swipe. This would do two things: first, allow students to be more cognizant of their financial habits, and second, eliminate the need for reimbursement altogether. We would pay exactly as many times as we ate, no more, no less, thus ensuring fairness across the board.

And of course, if it so wishes, the University could cap the number of meals that could be purchased, including those for guests.

I realize that both solutions are likely to face an uphill battle. After all, Princeton has little incentive to reform its dining services while they remain so insidiously profitable. But other universities have been taking small steps to address these criticisms; for example, in 2014 Miami University altered their dining policy so that “the money leftover in students’ meal plans at the end of each year [would] carry over to [their] meal plan for the next year for the duration of their enrollment.” In light of such progressive, pro-student reform from colleagues in higher education, Princeton has no excuse to continue its antiquated policy of non-reimbursement.

Let me ask this: Does the University care about students for whom $100, let alone $500, is a painfully large amount of money? Does the University care about minimizing food waste and ensuring sustainability? Does the University, in short, care?

If yes, it’s time we got our money back.

Lou Chen is a sophomore from San Bernardino, Calif. He can be reached at lychen@princeton.edu.

The conservative persecution complex Bhaamati Borkhetaria senior columnist

T

here is an emerging belief that people who hold conservative views are being persecuted in a way akin to how oppressed groups have historically been. Complaints include an inability to voice opinions without being censored, discrimination based on conservative beliefs, and a fear of being labelled as ignorant.

Breitbart’s bible on the alt-right movement talks extensively about “oppressive hectoring of the progressive Left.” Bill O’Reilly, a voice for the conservative movement, has gone so far as to say that the white male has been “oppressed and marginalized.” In a popular op-ed calling for liberals to check their privilege, Ryan Quinn, a college student at Fordham, argues that “Conservatives have been silenced.

Pop culture makes a mockery of conservatism. Academia pushes liberalism. We are embarrassed, not by our views, but by how our views will be interpreted. We are attacked and shamed for our views, so we grow silent. Because of our silence we think we are alone.

Our silence leads to silence from other conservatives.”

So, the following question arises: Are conservatives being oppressed?

There is one key fact that prevents a comparison between the oppression of minorities and the supposed suppression of conservative

thought: To be conservative is a choice. To be African American isn’t. To be a woman isn’t.

But still, let’s humor the idea that those who voice conservative opinions within liberal majorities are oppressed.

Oppression is defined by Merriam Webster as “unjust or cruel exercise of authority or power.”

Conservative viewpoints inherently aim to hold up the existing power structures. These existing power structures are harmful to large segments of our population — namely anyone who isn’t a heterosexual, rich, white male. Social and even fiscal conservatism in the government often directly contributes to creating an imbalance of power against ethnic minority groups and women.

For example, when conservatives like Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, or Ryan Anderson express a view to “uphold traditional marriage,” they are directly invalidating homosexuality and asking for a government regulation that would take away legal recognition from gay couples. When conservatives make an argument against safe, legal abortion, they are directly harming the health of hundreds, if not thousands, of women who might end up choosing an unsafe, illegal route for terminating a pregnancy.

How could people who support existing, unequal power structures claim that they are being oppressed for not being able to express their views?

Yet, on a large scale, conservatives feel as though they are

being discriminated against when they have to pay for birth control under the Affordable Care Act or if they have to share a bathroom with a transgender individual or if their religion is not represented by corporate America (the alleged “War on Christmas”).

They feel their right to free speech is being violated when their racist, misogynistic, and often ignorant views are labelled as hate speech.

The “so-called alt-right,” an offshoot of conservatism mixing racism, white nationalism, and populism, often makes the claim that they are merely rallying to end their oppression — the oppression of the white man by “black and feminist identity politics.” They are an extreme example of the persecution complex; they rally against the persecution of the existing rights of white men.

The catch is that these existing rights are actually part of a system that allows white men (especially heterosexual, rich, white men) more power than any other group. To evaluate the existing system of power, The New York Times evaluated 503 of the “most powerful people in American culture, government, education and business, and found that just 44 are minorities.” Women, African-Americans, Asians, homosexuals, and other minority groups suffer systemic oppression through harmful legislation, outright discrimination, and historical suppression that white males do not ever experience.

However, the alt-right ignores that, while clamoring

for its right to exist as a white nationalist group. They feel persecuted when a majority of good human beings protest against the figureheads of the white-supremacist movement.

On a slightly less terrifying scale, this persecution complex can also be seen when our very own Anscombe Society jumps to the “social minority” argument when talking about campus culture. Members feel as though opposition to their events is censorship of free speech, which is made especially harrowing by the fact that a vocal majority of campus is socially liberal. Just read the chain of emails on WilsonWire as a response to the Traditional Marriage event that the Anscombe Society hosted. People cited quotes on open discourse and pointed out a purported “hypocrisy… to call the opinions of other’s trash.” Yet, they do not consider that the backlash is present because their events are negatively affecting members of our Princeton community.

This very newspaper is host to many views by conservative-leaning individuals who feel as though their views are suppressed by the liberal majority. Columnist Jessica Nyquist goes as far as saying that she feels a “fear of being classified as ethically and intellectually wrong — objectively immoral and ignorant” should she voice a conservative opinion.

The conservative-liberal divide is artificial — a construction of our political machine. However, should we be

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discussing sexist viewpoints?

Sure. Should you fear backlash if you voice a sexist opinion?

Definitely. It’s not about being conservative or liberal — it’s about doing your homework on historical oppression. That involves a conversation where both sides of the argument are heard but where racism is labelled as racism.

Conservative viewpoints are hardly censored. One can be as racist or sexist as he pleases. The U.S. president is proof of that. But when there is backlash from the people being directly harmed by such sentiments, are those people — “the liberals” — oppressing you?

Bhaamati Borkhetaria is a sophomore from Jersey City, NJ. She can be reached at bhaamati@princeton.edu.

Wednesday May 3, 2017

The Daily Princetonian

page 5

Kopp: People were convinced college students wouldn’t want to teach in low-income communities KOPP

Continued from page 1

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get someone to give me a seed grant in order to spend time working on this. There was a FortuneMagazine article my senior year where the cover story was about “Corporate America Taking on Education Reform,” and I literally wrote to all the executives quoted in the article saying “I have this idea, will you help me with it?” And I got a few meetings off of those letters, and one of these executives agreed to give me $26,000. Another executive offered to let me work out of his offices in Manhattan, and that’s really how it started. So I spent the summer meeting everyone who would meet with me, which was very few people — I mean I had no credibility, no connections. I would send a hundred letters and get two meetings, but one thing would lead to another.

So by the end of the summer I had met a lot of people in education, people concerned with urban education, some people in the funding community, some of those corporate executives, and everywhere I would go people said this is a great idea, but it will never work. The reason they thought it wouldn’t work was that they were so convinced that college students would never want to teach in low-income communities. That was the one thing that I actually had reason to be confident

about, having just been a college senior. So my whole plan became to show these people that college students wanted to do it, thinking that the rest of it would all come together. I found other college students, we all found students at each of a hundred campuses to start a grassroots recruitment effort, and within four months 2,500 people replied to this effort and applied for Teach for America. We sent people around the country in donated rental cars to interview them, to put them through a selection process, and ultimately that generated media, which generated some funding, and literally a year after I graduated I was looking out on an auditorium full of 489 Teach for America corps members who were in training and headed out to teach in six urban and rural areas across the country.

That’s kind of how we progressed the first year.

DP: How did your work with Teach for America inform your decision to create Teach for All? WK: I think the most important thing is just realizing that we have happened upon an idea and an approach that would be a real source of the leadership we ultimately need in order to effect systemic changes. I think we’ve seen a lot of that impact that started inspiring people all over the world to say we want to do this in our countries. I wasn’t thinking about the rest of the world, I had my head down

and was focused on how to make Teach for America better. But about eleven years ago, within one year I had met 13 people from 13 different countries who were just determined to essentially adapt this approach in everywhere from India to Lebanon to Chile to China to the next place, and they were looking for help. That’s really what led to Teach for All, which is a network of independently led organizations in all these different countries — so there’s Teach for India and Enseña Peru and et cetera, which are each calling upon their most promising future leaders to channel their energy into this arena of working with the most marginalized kids and investing in their leadership, initially in two-year commitments to teach but then ongoing after that as well.

DP: With the changing presidential administration, we’ve been seeing a lot of debate on changing federal policy, especially in regard to school choice and charter schools. Do you anticipate any changes in the future of Teach for America because of this?

WK: There’s a lot of uncertainty about what the new administration will actually do. The federal education bill was reauthorized in the Obama administration — the elementary and secondary education act that really governs our federal support of education — so there’s not a lot of unfinished business.

So the question is, will the

new administration initiate changes to that construct, and will Congress decide to prioritize that in the midst of all the other pressing needs?

My overall thought is that most of the work to improve outcomes for kids has to take place in local communities.

We’ve learned a great deal over the last 28 years, and ultimately to really change things for kids we need to take the inequities on in their full complexity. That really requires cultivating collective leadership for change, and I think that means we have to work at the community level so that we ultimately have people working together, from every level of the education system and every level of policy, and across sectors. We’re already orienting our work that way.

We’re working in communities all over the country, and that work needs to go on irrespective of what else goes on. We’re very much staying the course in our work and in our strategy.

DP: What do you think the biggest challenge in fighting educational inequity today is?

WK: As we contemplate the state of the world and the state of the country, including the inequities and prejudices and racism that have become all the more visible over the last several years in communities, I feel greater urgency than ever [to ensure] that the kids in our classrooms today are growing as leaders who can navigate a turbulent

Terms and Conditions Apply Pulkit Singh ‘20

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economy and can solve increasingly complex local and global issues with empathy and compassion and critical thinking skills. It’s very hard to imagine how we are going to ensure our collective welfare, and how the kids in our classrooms today are going to shape better lives for themselves and all of us, if we don’t focus on that. If anything, I think just contemplating the world events and national events of the last couple years have led me to feel still greater urgency [to channel] the rising generation of real leaders and innovators into this arena of working with kids and then supporting them to not only ensure quality education as we know it, but to really reimagine education. When you think of what our school systems are oriented toward — and they’re oriented toward a very narrow set of academic outcomes—that won’t be sufficient to ensure that the kids in our classrooms today can shape a better future for themselves and all of us. So I think we need a real priority around reimagining education, and particularly for the kids facing the greatest challenges in our country. It’s really all of that that makes me feel greater urgency than ever [to ensure] that the real innovators and the real pioneers in this generation of recent graduates are channeling their energy into that direction. If they don’t, I don’t know what our hope is going to be for the future.

Sports

Wednesday May 3, 2017

page 6

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } WOMEN’S LACROSSE

Women’s lacrosse clinches fourth consecutive Ivy League title

By Grace Baylis contributor

Last weekend saw the women’s lacrosse team beat Columbia 18-11 to take home part of the Ivy League title. The team split the title with both Cornell and Penn, all three teams only losing one game each.

The Tigers will now go on to play Penn in the Ivy League Tournament this weekend at Cornell.

Princeton started fast against Columbia, scoring in its first goal less than 10 seconds in. The Tigers went on to score the first five goals quickly into the first half to open up a gap between the two teams, but Columbia did not let Princeton run away with the game. The Lions brought the score to back within one goal at the beginning of the second half.

Sophomore midfielder Elizabeth George and seniors Olivia Hompe and Anna Doherty responded to the pressure by Columbia, with both George and Hompe scoring two goals and Doherty getting her first goal of the game to take the score to 13-7 and reopen the margin that the Tigers had in the first half.

As Columbia continued to fight, freshman Tess D’Orsi buried an eight-meter goal to take her total to 35 for the season so far,

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The Tigers earned their fourth straight Ivy League championship and 13th of all time last Saturday.

and classmate Laura Pansini scored two to deny the Lions a chance of catching up. D’Orsi now sits third in Princeton’s history in both freshman goals and points (46).

The seniors shined on their Senior Day. Doherty scored a hat trick in the win and her defensive classmates Amanda Leavell and Madeline Rodriguez picked

up a total of seven draws and seven ground balls and caused two turnovers.

Leavell leads the team in turnovers with 17 this season and Rodriguez follows just one behind her. Senior goalkeeper Ellie DeGarmo helped the team find its 12th win of the season making a total of eight saves in the game. DeGarmo leads the Ivy League standings

in saves this season with 177, beating her record from last season and averaging nearly 12 saves per game. She ranks fourth in the NCAA standings.

It was a memorable day for captain Hompe. Picking up the final Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week award this week, the match against Columbia saw her tie her career-high

points in a game. Scoring six goals in the afternoon, Hompe’s total for this season now sits at 60, which is a new school record for the most goals in a season. She now needs just six more to tie the overall goal record, which currently stands at 189 and is held by Crista Samaras ‘99. It’s not just goals that Hompe is breaking records with; the senior currently holds the single-season record for points at 85, also with Samaras. In addition, Hompe needs ten more points to match the overall record of points in a career, 270, which Samaras still holds.

The win against Columbia was not an easy one for the Tigers, but the depth of the squad will prove crucial as they enter into postseason competition. The Princeton team is a strong team this year, 12-3 overall, improving from last season’s 11-6 campaign. However, it will be crucial for the Tigers to play well in their game against Penn this weekend and utilize the momentum they have coming off a successful regular season.

The game versus Penn will be played on Friday May 4, at 4 p.m., where, if the Tigers win, they will face the winner of the other semifinal between Harvard and Cornell.

SOFTBALL

Softball faces Harvard in Ivy League Championship Series

By Jack Graham contributor

At the beginning of the season, the Princeton women’s softball team identified its major goal as defending the Ivy League title and winning at least once in the NCAA tournament. Princeton will have the chance to secure one of those objectives this weekend, as they face Harvard in the Ivy League Championship Series for the second consecutive year with the conference title and an NCAA tournament bid on the line. Though playing this season’s series in the friendly confines of Class of 1895 Field, the Tigers will hope for a repeat of last year’s outcome, in which they defeated Harvard in two out of three games.

In this past weekend’s four-game series against Cornell, Princeton secured the best regular season record and home field advantage for the championship series, an accomplishment that Head Coach Lisa Van Ackeren identified as an important achievement.

“That was a next step for them, particularly for the senior class,” she said.

“They identified early that

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The Ivy League championship title and a NCAA bid is at stake for the softball team as they prepare to take on Harvard this weekend.

they wanted to host.”

Despite clinching the Ivy League regular season title, Princeton endured a somewhat up-and-down weekend of games, winning twice by scores of 1-0 and 5-0 and losing twice by scores of 9-7 and 3-0. Van Ackeren conceded that her team, having secured home

Tweet of the Day “One thing Tigers know how to do .. is WIN! Congrats on your first pro-season @annabellyy15 ! #Tigers #WinnerWinnerIn&OutDinner #WelcomeBack.”

Princeton WBB (@ PrincetonWBB), women’s basketball

field advantage after Saturday’s opening matchup, struggled to maintain the same sense of purpose. “I think subconsciously for them, there were some innings with a lack of focus, which just kind of happens naturally without a tangible goal in mind,” she said.

However, she credited their

ability to regain their focus with playing with the quality necessary to win games.

Particularly impressive were pitchers senior Claire Klausner, who held Cornell scoreless through eight innings in Saturday’s victory, and junior Ashley LaGuardia, who followed suit on Sunday for six innings.

Stat of the Day

60 points Named the women’s lacrosse Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week, Olivia Hompe, reached 60 single-season points on Saturday, a record for both the men and women.

The high stakes of this weekend’s series will elevate the usual intensity of the Princeton-Harvard rivalry to an even greater degree. Harvard, which enters the weekend hot after having swept Dartmouth in a four-game series to punch its ticket to the championship series, will certainly not roll over for the team at the top of the regular season standings. Considering the emotion surrounding the series, Van Ackeren emphasized the need for her team to continue to play with consistency and “execute (their) game-plan in a high intensity series.”

The games will take place at the Class of 1895 Field beginning with a doubleheader at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Game three, if necessary, will take place at 1 p.m. the following day.

Facing a talented Harvard team thirsting for vengeance, Princeton is unlikely to become complacent in its most important weekend of the season. However, between their accomplishments, ability and the advantage of playing in front of a raucous home crowd, the team has much to be confident about.

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