September 26, 2019 by The Daily Princetonian

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Thursday September 26, 2019 vol. CXLIII no. 76

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ON CAMPUS

Doctors speak on Ukraine’s healthcare system By Kris Hristov Staff Writer

For Ukraine’s medical system to thrive, how resources are spent is more important than how much is allotted, neurosurgeon Dr. Ihor Kurilets said in a lecture on Wednesday. Kurilets, a resident at the International Neurosurgery Center in Kiev, Ukraine, and Dr. Luke Tomycz, M.D., Pediatric Neurosurgeon at Morristown Hospital, N.J., spoke at the University about international medical cooperation in Ukraine since the 2014 crisis in Crimea, as well as about the country’s corruption and the difficulty of giving aid to warstricken regions. Kurilets began with an introduction to the current situation in Ukraine’s medical sector. In Ukraine, the Soviet-era centralized medical system is rampant with graft — public hospitals are poorly funded, and doctors have little training and a high incentive to either leave the country or engage in corruption. Moreover, numerous legal hurdles, such as laws that prohibit operation on cadavers, have hampered efforts to modernize. According to Kurilets, another major issue has been the ways in which Western nations have funneled aid to Ukraine. “Imagine you see a homeless man on the street and give

HALEIGH GUNDY / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Dr. Ihor Kurilets and Dr. Luke Tomycz spoke about international medical cooperation in Ukraine.

him 1,000, even 3,000, dollars. It is likely that he will be back on the street within a month,” Kurilets said. Kurilets stressed the need for foreign aid to be deployed correctly: rather than relying on the short-term capital and expertise of a few foreign doctors, local Ukranian surgeons should be encouraged to shadow them and learn to perform complex surgeries on their own.

U . A F FA I R S

Kurilets and Tomycz have made a substantial contribution to remedying the problem with the Razom Foundation, a Ukrainian American non-profit organization. Razom is responsible for educating Ukrainian doctors through exchange programs, providing critical medical equipment, and subsidizing surgeries for those who cannot afford it. Razom’s major project since

2012 has been the construction of a private hospital campus for the International Neurosurgery Center in Kiev, the first one in Ukraine to be supervised by doctors, rather than the government. The building includes two operating rooms and 40 beds. Surgeons are presently being trained through an exchange program with Rutgers University. Tomycz, a surgeon in New Jersey, has been influential in

promoting Western aid and teaching local surgeons pediatric and orthopedic surgery procedures. “So far we have organized ten trips to Ukraine, sent students to work there, given eight didactic lectures, consulted on five hundred patients, seventy major procedures, and purchased $500,000 in medical supplies,” Tomycz explained. Several issues have persisted, as Ukraine’s lack of preventative care makes surgeries on larger, more persistent tumors more dangerous. In addition, a Ukrainian surgeon must be present at all times during an operation performed by a foreign doctor. Despite the difficulties, Kurilets emphasized that individuals with the will to make a difference might be more effective than any governmental organization. “As US citizens, your accumulated knowledge and experience is the most valuable thing,” he explained. The lecture, titled “International Medical Cooperation: The Case of Ukraine,” was cosponsored by the Razom Foundation, the Program in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. It was held at 4:30 p.m. in the Louis A. Simpson International Building.

ON CAMPUS

Joint Committee, External Review reports on Title IX to be released in October Head News Editor

A press release from the Office of Communications confirmed that the deliberations of the Faculty and Student Committee on Sexual Misconduct and the University Student Life Committee will likely be released next month. The release also stated that the results of the external review conducted over the summer by “professionals with extensive relevant experience at other universities” will likely be available next month. Both the external review and work of the joint committee came in the wake of a ten-day protest, organized by Princeton Students for Title IX Reform, outside of Nassau Hall last May. The joint committee’s primary concern is the Title IX process at the University, along with creating additional support structures for students. The external review’s goal is to “provide useful clarity and strengthen trust in the University’s Title IX process,” according to the initial request for the review by Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity Michele Minter. The press release noted that the joint committee has already endorsed a new web portal, launched by the Office of Gender Equity and Title IX Administration, designed to help students “access information about support resources and the sexual misconduct investigation/ad-

In Opinion

judication and appeal process.” According to the Office of Communications, as a result of the Joint Committee’s deliberations, an expansion of the SHARE staff is under consideration, and Vice President for Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun is “bringing together relevant campus offices to examine how to streamline the process for students to apply for funding to help with mental health or other medical needs.” The joint committee is cochaired by Calhoun; undergraduate Nicolas Gregory ’22; graduate student Mai Nguyen; graduate student Abigail Novick; and J. Nicole Shelton, Stuart Professor of Psychology and Head of Butler College. Since May, the joint committee has held more than 18 meetings “with a variety of students and administrators.” According to the Office of Communications, the joint committee also worked with an “outside consultant,” who facilitated focus groups with “RCAs, SHARE Peer officers, student leaders from the Centers (Fields Center, LGBT Center, and Women*s Center), Graduate Women in STEM, and student protest delegates.” The external review, meanwhile, was requested by Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity Michele Minter and Director of Gender Equity and Title IX Administration Regan Crotty. See TITLE IX page 2

Columnist Sebastian Quiroz argues for the merits of going independent, and the Editorial Board castigates CPUC for removing the open question-and-answer period. PAGE 4

HALEIGH GUNDY / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Brown University’s Professor Amanda Anderson argued that rumination can be productive for ethical thought.

Prof. Anderson of Brown University argues for interdisciplinary study of rumination By Haleigh Gundy Staff Writer

Rumination — repetitive and obsessive thoughts — are widely considered by the field of psychology to be pathological, associated with neuroticism and anxiety. However, in a lecture on Wednesday, Sept. 25, Professor Amanda Anderson offered a different view. Drawing on the field of literary analysis, she argued that rumination can also be productive and essential for ethical thought. Anderson, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English and Director of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University, addressed a full hall of students and faculty with her interdisciplinary talk, which critically examined rumination through

the lenses of cognitive science, psychotherapy, moral theory, and literature. Described by Anderson as “an understudied form of moral thinking characterized simultaneously by intermittence, persistence, distraction, and obsession,” rumination is difficult to convey. Yet, the medium of the literary novel has often served as a means through which to “acknowledge and represent” rumination, argued Anderson. Through structures such as stream-of-consciousness writing, repetitive structure, and other literary forms, novels can replicate the state of rumination. Ruminations are the result of “moral shock or disturbance,” explained Anderson. “They involve attempting to come to terms with these situations,

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and often involve acute ethical dilemmas.” The complicated processes of rumination, argued Anderson, is not adequately represented by psychology, in which rumination is often rendered feminine, associated with bitterness, and thought treatable with medicine. Anderson offered positive counterexamples of rumination in novels such as “Middlemarch” and “Mrs. Dalloway” by George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, respectively. In Eliot’s “Middlemarch,” “there are noteworthy instances where ruminations are viewed as productive for moral insight or acceptance,” explains Anderson. In certain cases, ruminations can serve as “a psychological coming-to-terms with the gap between a decisive moral See RUMINATION page 2

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Thursday September 26, 2019

External review committee members selected based on extensive relevant experience

JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity Michele Minter responds to a question during a CPUC meeting in May 2019.

TITLE IX

Continued from page 1

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

According to University Deputy Spokesperson Mike Hotchkiss, the reviewers were chosen by University Provost Deborah Prentice. “As stated in our May 10, 2019 update, Provost Deborah Prentice oversees the external Title IX review process. She selected the external review committee based on their qualifications and extensive relevant experience in this area,” Hotchkiss wrote in an email to The Daily

Princetonian. The members of the external review are “Amy Adelman, Deputy General Counsel, Office of the General Counsel, Emory University; Howard Kallem (Ret.), formerly the Director for Title IX Compliance, Office for Institutional Equity, Duke University, who also has nearly two decades of prior experience in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights; and Laura Rugless, Executive Director and Title IX Coordinator, Equity and Access Services, Virginia Commonwealth University.”

Anderson: Rumination can be productive in leading a moral life RUMINATION Continued from page 1

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

action and the psychological complexities and backlash that can accompany it.” Contrary to what the field of psychology might profess, analysis of rumination through literature can show the reality of productive rumination. “It leads to renewed commitment, or to the determination to act in a way that is expressive of that commitment,” she said. Anderson then contextualized these ideas within Hannah Arendt’s theories of thinking expressed in “The Life of the Mind.” “Arendt argues that the modern age has substituted willing for thinking, elevating action above thought,” explained Anderson. Thinking, and thus, ruminat-

ing, is necessary for moral life, she concluded. Anderson went on to contextualize ruminative thought within the stream-of-consciousness writing of Virginia Woolf and the writings of Iris Murdoch on moral reflection, decision, and choice. Anderson finished her lecture by returning to the idea that productive and intrusive rumination are “bound up in one another.” Rumination can at once be worthwhile and troubling; such is the nature of moral thought. The lecture, entitled “Moral Thought in the Age of Therapy,” was held at 4:30 p.m. in 106 McCormick Hall, and was open to the public. The lecture was sponsored by the Department of English and the Humanities Council, and was followed by a question-and-answer period.

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Opinion

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On independent life Sebastian Quiroz Columnist

he prospect of independent life can

certainly be daunting. That was, at least to some degree, true for me. After having been on the required underclassman meal plan, I decided to join an eating club for my junior year. When I arrived in September for my last year at Princeton, I was returning an independent. What I have found so far has been a campus with so much more to offer and a living experience that gives me much more control over my eating options. The most obvious difference between this meal option and any of the other available ones is what I have found to be the wonderful exploratory power it affords you. This is not an ability unique to independents — certainly, anyone can go explore outside of the Orange Bubble. But given the nature of the independent life, it becomes not only a common occurrence — exploration becomes vital.

For some independents, this means exploring the options available on Nassau and beyond. The quality and diversity of the food available to us just outside of campus is incredible. You can find Mexican food at Taste of Mexico, Japanese food at Tomo Sushi, Middle Eastern food at Mamoun’s and certainly traditional American fare. For others, exploration could also take the form of looking for food to cook for yourself. From the Saturday and Sunday Shoppers, to the Princeton FreeB, to the Farmer’s Market on Thursdays, we have many options should we choose to cook. For others, still, exploration might mean something completely different. My point in writing this has little to do with telling you about all the different options available to you. I have only been an independent for about three weeks and there is so much more out there for me to discover. I simply want to suggest that being an independent is not only possible, it can be deep-

ly enriching. Engaging with the community that exists outside the University can enhance your experience at the University, giving you a perspective that the eating clubs or dining halls simply cannot. In particular, this experience reveals that even as a student on Princeton’s campus, you are able to have control over your choices. It is through exposure to new experiences that an independent student gains this insight. That being said, this eating option might not be for everyone. It is certainly a big change and the challenges we often hear about are present. But the independence gained from both the structures that shape most of our eating experiences and even the campus itself is, I think, liberating in an important way. Students with no meal plan depend less on these structures than students who do have a meal plan. This reduced dependence means that we gain a degree of control over when, where, and what to eat that the other eating options simply

vol. cxliii

cannot afford you. Moreover, as already suggested, the vital exploration teaches you about that control and it becomes valuable itself. Now, no meal option that currently exists is going to give a student full control and choosing one option is going to mean sacrificing the control that comes with another. I can no longer walk to the club I was a member of entirely freely. In fact, eating in any club becomes more difficult, as I can no longer use the meal exchange platform. I am also limited to two swipes a week in the dining halls, unless I can convince a friend to use one of their guest swipes to get me in. This sort of control, I concede, is lost. But all things considered, the control I have gained over the consumption of my food — a central part of our daily lives — has been worth it all. Convinced? Let’s grab a meal. Sebastian Quiroz is a senior from Deltona, FL. He can be reached at squiroz@princeton. edu.

EDITORIAL

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

No further questions

n Monday, Provost Debor ah

Prentice announced that the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) has dispensed with its long-standing practice of allowing the public to ask questions during its quarterly meetings. Trivial though the decision may seem, its undemocratic precedent should not be ignored. In lieu of the open-question policy, which had been in place for longer than “anybody’s living memory,” community members must now submit their questions at least three days in advance. According to Prentice, the Council’s official rules never authorized an open question-and-answer period,

but the University had permitted the practice nevertheless. Apparently, CPUC suffers open discourse no more. While the prior practice fostered dialogue between administrators and members of the community, the new policy precludes any open conversation. CPUC meetings serve as a gauge for public sentiment, and by eliminating the question-andanswer session, U. administrators have removed any element of dialogue and community input from the Council’s meetings. The new requirement will further allow members of CPUC — foremost among them, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 — to manicure, polish, and calibrate platitudes in ad-

vance. Council meetings will degenerate into PR. Worse still, there is no way to ensure that the Council will even address, much less disclose, the questions it receives and chooses not to answer. It is difficult not to view this decision in light of the frequent sparring between administrators and students at last year’s CPUC meetings. Members of the student-activist group Students for Prison Education and Reform (SPEAR) peppered Eisgruber with questions about the University’s refusal to remove the criminal-history box from its application. During the last meeting of the academic year, members of SPEAR staged a disruptive protest, which violated University policy. Nonetheless,

the University’s subsequent response, to remove all opportunity for conversation, is both unwarranted and unproductive. We encourage members of CPUC to reconsider their illdisguised attempt to evade difficult questions. They should not fear the students they serve. Board Chairs Chris Murphy ’20 Cy Watsky ’21 Board Members Samuel Aftel ’20 Arman Badrei ’22 Ariel Chen ’20 Rachel Kennedy ’21 Ethan Li ’22 Madeleine Marr ’21 Jonathan Ort ’21

editor-in-chief

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Sports

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

Once a Tiger: Ian Thomson ’09

BEVERLY SCHAEFER / GOPRINCETONTIGERS.COM

Ian Thomson ‘09 starred in hurdles and 400-meter races at the University.

By Josephine de La Bruyère Assistant Sports Editor

Ian Thomson ’09 is worried about this profile. He peppers his interview with pauses, with ums, with wait-just-a-seconds. He apologizes: “I’m trying to think about what I should say because I’m on the record here.” He asks about this piece’s angle – three separate times. Thomson has reason to be wary. Jezebel called him a “dick.” According to Bustle, he’s “shockingly terrible.” CeleBuzz proclaimed him “hypocritical,” “scary,” and “obviously not a feminist.” And to E!, he’s “sexually frustrated,” “shady,” and “epically nonsensical.” Darker corners of the internet are less kind. Only a decade before Thomson found himself facing the wrath of America’s online feminists, he was heading to his first year of classes and races at the University. He’d just graduated from Massachusetts’ prestigious Deerfield Academy, a prep school that had “changed [his] life,” set him on an academic path he could never have imagined, and introduced him to sprinting. Thomson graduated from the University as one of its finest hurdlers and 400-meter racers. Named First Team All-Ivy his senior year, he’d nabbed as well the Ivy League title in the 400 meter relay. He was a history concentrator with a certificate in African American studies, a proud member of both the 21 Club and Cap and Gown Club, and totally clueless about what career he wanted to pursue after college. So instead of deciding, he earned a year-long fellowship with Princeton in Asia. Like Clare Gallagher ’14, an-

other subject of this series, he ended up teaching English in Bangsak, Thailand – a tiny fishing village where there was “literally nothing to do.” Thomson bought himself a drill and a jigsaw, challenged himself to build a home’s worth of furniture, used his high school physics skills to rewire his house, and learned Thai. But when it came to his professional aspirations, his twelve months in Bangsak “did not help clarify things. At all.” He returned home to San Francisco and, still unsure of his future ambitions, got himself an internship at a digital media publisher. For the five months after his return stateside, he plodded through his days. And then, as Thomson walked down the street one August afternoon, a car going 60 miles per hour plowed straight into him. Take it from Thomson: “this part is important.” The crash broke both his legs on impact, dislocated his shoulder, broke his elbow, and smashed his face. For a block, Thomson held onto the hood of the car. It whipped around a corner and threw him off, breaking his left arm. He lay on the ground, dying. The ambulance that picked him up measured his level of consciousness at a three on the Glasgow Coma Scale (a score of eight and below typically qualifies a patient as having suffered a severe brain injury). The man admitted to the emergency room immediately before Thomson was a shooting victim in critical condition. His doctors were urgently seeking an organ donor, and there lay Thomson: a visibly fit former Division I athlete with a fractional chance of sur-

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vival. They started pawing through his wallet to find an emergency contact and his donation status – when all of a sudden, a resident stopped short in her tracks. She had pulled out Thomson’s Princeton ID. She, Elizabeth Inkellis Langhammer ’07, realized that she knew this man; that her little sister in Kappa Kappa Gamma was Thomson’s best friend. Convoluted though it was, the connection got Thomson removed as an organ prospect, rushed into the OR, and pieced back together. Doctors tried to amputate Thomson’s legs. He refused. They told him he might never walk again. He spent only a month in a wheelchair. They told him that he was lucky even to be alive; a future with running was too much to ask for. He hit the gym every day. His knowledge from his time as an athlete (with help, he acknowledges, from his natural gifts) allowed him to rebuild his body, muscle by muscle. “The idea of dying,” he says, “the idea of failing – it just didn’t occur to me. And that is what allowed me to move on.” And – save for the titanium rods in both his legs, the bar in his left arm, the two screws in his right elbow, and a faint scar by his eyebrow – he made a full recovery. He started a new job at a global recruitment firm, headhunting Chinese executives for 20th Century Fox. He loved the work, loved Los Angeles, and loved his boss. The car accident, he says, was nothing compared to what came next. Here’s how Thomson tells it: he was walking down the street with his boss one LA morning, looking like a “cool guy – light grey suit, white shirt, fancy glasses.”

“This woman comes up to me” – he emphasizes that last word – “and she says ‘Oh my God. I do casting for The Bachelorette. I think you should be the next Bachelor.’” Was Thomson surprised? Not quite. He’d modeled before, done a commercial with Jerry Rice, and seen himself on a Times Square billboard. “These things just happen to me,” he says. And while he was wary at first – of the isolation, the eight weeks off work, the professional implications – his boss nudged him to take the woman up on her offer. “Why not?” Thomson remembers himself saying. “I’m along for the ride.” He shouldn’t have been. Thomson traveled to Agoura Hills to join 29 other men in a franchised quest for Kaitlyn Bristowe’s heart. It went well for him, at first. “Ian is one of the most compassionate guys,” gushed Bristowe in a thirdepisode confessional interview. “He’s been through a lot and he knows what he wants. I am beside myself with this human being. I can’t figure out what it is. It’s just how he makes me feel. It’s attractive.” Three episodes and a handful of scored, nationally-televised make-outs later, Bristowe’s flame with Thomson petered out. Things went downhill. “I don’t understand why Kaitlyn wouldn’t want me,” Thomson informed the cameras. “Princeton graduate, former model that defied death and has been around the world a couple of times.” And, he added – to his audience of six million viewers – “She’s not half as hot as my ex-girlfriend … Like, I have a good time in my own life. And I meet chicks, and

I have a lot of sex in my own life.” Cue Thomson’s expulsion from the mansion. Cue an explosive exit interview. Cue his national excoriation. How would Thomson – educated, collected, mature and, from this reporter’s perspective, genuinely kind -- describe his time on The Bachelorette? Manipulative? Coercive? Authentic? “Ever heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment?” He asks. “I can’t say too much, but I would refer you to that. It’s a method that these people have perfected over twenty seasons. They know what they’re doing. It’s not intended to be fair. It’s intended to be a show.” When a team of doctors gave up on him, Thomson rebuilt himself from the ground up. When a nation gave up on him, he did the same thing. He took two weeks off work, reflected on just where he’d gone awry, and got back down to business. It’s been four years since Thomson’s time in the Bachelor Mansion. He can’t quite yet laugh about his time on ABC, but he’s accepted it. “If you’re to look at your life,” he says, “all these things are so meant to be. Everything comes full circle. There’s nuggets of wisdom throughout every process.” As for his advice for Princeton students seeking those nuggets of wisdom, it’s twofold. First, he says, “be social. Meet people. Take advantage of the opportunity you have at Princeton – and it gets so much better when you graduate.” And second? “If someone loves you or if you love someone else, do not let them go on reality shows.”

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