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Wednesday April 11, 2018 vol. CXLII no. 40
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Students ‘swiping right’ on Tinder for Cardi B concert, now in final round By Sarah Hirschfield and Linh Nguyen
Associate News Editor and Contributing News Writer
COURTESY OF PEXELS.COM
Cardi B: College students have been huge supporters of me and my music, so I’m super excited to show them some love by performing an exclusive concert on the winning campus thanks to Tinder. BEYOND THE BUBBLE
Don’t be surprised when you see students swiping away at their phones this week. They are swiping right — a “yes” signal — on the dating app Tinder in order to win a concert featuring stripper-turnedrapper Cardi B. But, according to the contest rules, only 200 students from the winning school can attend a performance given by the artist. On March 30, Tinder started the #SwipeOff challenge, in which students from the 64 selected colleges compete with each other to swipe right on the most people; schools with the most right swipes move on as each round cuts the number of colleges remaining in half. The University is now in the finals round, competing against seven other colleges to try and make the championship round. Ans Nawaz ’21 heard about the contest online, and, after verifying that it was legitimate, sent promotional materials to friends, residential college Listservs, Facebook groups, and GroupMes, encouraging students to
“swipe right for Cardi B.” “One of my [hall mates] came up to me yesterday and said, ‘I downloaded Tinder just for you, just to swipe for Cardi B,’” he said, adding that a lot of students have put the phase “swiping just for Cardi” in their bios. Nawaz and his friends bought “Tinder Plus,” an in-app subscription that removes the limit on the amount of right swipes per day. “We take study breaks where we swipe,” said Nawaz, demonstrating how he studies and swipes simultaneously. In an attempt to dispel false claims that USG was promoting the Tinder competition, Social Committee Chair Liam Glass ’19 provided the following statement to the ‘Prince’: “Let me start by saying I’m a huge Cardi B fan, and if we thought that this concert was a fair and good opportunity for students to see her perform, we’d have supported it,” wrote Glass in an email. “Though there have been emails and posts using USG or [the] Social Committee’s names, none of those were officially approved or sent by individuals acting as members of See CARDI B page 2
STUDENT LIFE
Mercer County authorities seize Dale fellowship grant $200,000 worth of heroin, cash recipients announced Contributing News Writer
Last week, Mercer County authorities seized $200,000 in heroin in a joint narcotics investigation, according to a press release by the Office of the Mercer County Prosecutor. According to the press release, surveillance officers positioned in Philadelphia observed Cristian BaezBelliard exit his residence with a large item concealed under his jacket. Officers
followed him to Ewing, NJ, where he met with an individual identified as Daquan Baylor and exchanged suspected drugs, after which the officers promptly arrested them both. “Baylor, 26, and BaezBelliard, 25, were each charged with possession of a controlled dangerous substance and possession with the intent to distribute,” said the press release. “The prosecutor’s office has filed a motion to detain Baylor. Baez-Belliard was released
pending future court proceedings.” After searching Baylor’s vehicle, the report states that officers found 150 bricks of heroin and $20,980 in cash. Because of the incident, officers obtained a warrant to search Baez-Belliard’s residence, in which they found a heroin “mill” containing approximately 819 grams of suspected heroin, approximately 15 bricks (750 bags) See HEROIN page 3
ON CAMPUS
COURTESY OF PRINCETON OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS
Geoscience professor Vecchi compares tropical storm prediction methods By Jasper Lee Contributing News Writer
On Monday, April 9, geosciences professor Gabriel Vecchi gave a talk concerning the potential future trends of hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean. Vecchi began with an overview of hurricane dynamics, discussing notable historical storms and the extreme f lood-related events that caused them to be particularly
damaging. According to Vecchi, “A lot of the real damage is caused by water.” He classified hurricanes as tropical cyclones, which are large, symmetric, rotating storms formed over warm ocean water. They exist “as a feedback loop [of] evaporation, wind speeds, and rainfall,” with the condensation of water in the atmosphere serving as the main source of energy behind
the storm. To study hurricanes, Vecchi employs computational and mathematical models that describe hurricanes’ creation and intensity. By imagining a hurricane as a type of “heat engine,” it is possible to evaluate the hurricane in terms of its strength as a function of efficiency and power. Since researchers cannot directly induce hurSee HURRICANE page 4
Guitar-playing has been a consistent interest in Lind’s life, serving as a stress-reliever as well as a passion.
By Neha Chauhan and Katie Tam Contributing News Writers
Xiaodi Alice Tang ’18 and David Lind ’18 have been selected as this year’s recipients of the Martin A. Dale ’53 Fellowships. The fellowship provides a $35,000 grant for a year after graduation to explore a creative project of interest. Tang plans to run workshops in the U.S. and China, integrating STEM and the arts and documenting her work through photographs, writing, artwork, and more. She became interested in the intersection
In Opinion
Today on Campus
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4:30 p.m.: The Scottish Enlightenment: Hume, Burns, Scott – and Nassau Hall. A conversation with David W. R. Purdie, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburg. McCormick 101.
A Class of 2011 alumnus retells and underscores the tragic suicide of a former professor, the Alliance of Jewish Progressives comments on Eric Fingerhut’s endorsement of Kenneth Marcus, and senior columnist Jessica Nyquist points out the privilege and benefits of Princeton’s academic rigor.
between STEM and the humanities from a young age, enjoying both playing the piano and poring through science books. “A question that we see a lot in elementary school is ‘what is your favorite subject?’ and I felt that I never really had an answer to that question,” Tang said. A computer science major with a certificate in quantitative and computational biology, Tang is also a member of several performing arts groups, including the Chapel Choir, Glee Club, See DALE page 5
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U. in final round, facing seven other colleges CARDI B Continued from page 1
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USG.” “A member of Soc Comm [publicized] the contest as a student, not as a member of Soc Comm,” Glass said. Glass also pointed out that even if the University won the contest, “this would be separate from Lawnparties.” “The first issue with this campaign is that it seems very problematic to widely advocate (as USG, Social Committee, or any organization) that students swipe right on random profiles they don’t know in hopes of winning a contest,” wrote Glass. “This seems creepy and a strange show of support for a very questionable platform (which already reinforces harmful profiling and stereotyping).” After reading the terms and conditions of the contest, Glass discovered that only “hundreds” of students would be able to attend and that certain distance stipulations dictate that the concert would “most likely be closer to NYC or Philadelphia.” However, Glass’s primary concern was that “all taxes and additional costs not covered by Tinder must be covered by the winning university.” “It is unclear how much that would be on top of taxes,” wrote Glass. “Given that the concert [would] explicitly not be for the full student body even if we won, this would be a wrongful exercise of a significant amount of USG resources.” Glass concluded his statement with concerns about the contest’s implications. “Ultimately, given the many restrictions on this contest, it seems more a publicity campaign for Tinder to collect the data of as many college students
as possible than anything else,” Glass noted. Indeed, Tinder has been scrutinized in recent years for its use of data harvesting and the extensive information that it retains about each of its users. Tinder’s privacy policy even states that “you should not expect that your personal information, chats, or other communications will always remain secure.” Not everyone finds the contest problematic, however. “I mean, even if it is just a ploy to get people on Tinder, which is it probably is, if it’s going to get us a concert with someone who’s actually good, then who really cares?” said Alice Wistar ’20 in an interview with the ‘Prince’ on Tuesday. The performer herself also expresses support for the contest. “College students have been huge supporters of me and my music, so I’m super excited to show them some love by performing an exclusive concert on the winning campus thanks to Tinder,” said Cardi B in a statement quoted in numerous sources. On April 2, the University advanced into the round of 32 and made its way to the finals on April 9. Now, University students are competing against Boston University, Duke, Northeastern, UC San Diego, University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in order to make it to the championship round, which will be announced on April 13. After each round, the swipe count is set to zero. The winner is announced on April 18, and the concert will take place on April 25 “at a venue within 50 miles of the Winner’s School campus,” according to the contest guidelines.
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The Daily Princetonian
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DeLeon: Talk to your kids about drugs every week over dinner HEROIN
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COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Press release: every defendant is presumed innocent until found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
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of suspected heroin. At the residence, officers also arrested three other individuals, charged with numerous narcotic-related offenses. The press release said that the approximate street value of the seized heroin is $196,800 and the total money seized was $23,998. “Despite having been charged, every defendant is presumed innocent until found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law,” said the press release. Baylor was identified by detectives as the individual responsible for bringing large quantities of heroin to Mercer County from Philadelphia. Philadelphia itself has been struggling with a serious heroin crisis. The Economist called Philadelphia “perhaps the most cruelly affected of big cities by the opioid epidemic.” The Economist and the New York Times explained that estimated heroin overdoses in 2017 were around 1,200, almost 300 deaths more than the AIDS crisis at its worst. This is a rise from 902 deaths in 2016 and 702
deaths in 2015. Philadelphia and its people continue to fight against the epidemic. “Like most places, Philadelphia is arresting drug dealers, reducing opioid pain prescriptions, running ads about the dangers of opioid abuse and distributing naloxone,” wrote Tina Rosenberg of the New York Times. “Philadelphia has been successful. There is no waiting list for treatment.” The city of Princeton and Mercer County as a whole have felt some effects of the epidemic for the years of its duration. In 2015, Princeton police arrested five people for heroin possession and one for heroin distribution, according to Planet Princeton. In Jan. 2017, another individual was arrested by Princeton Police for possession of heroin. Organizations within Princeton have also been working diligently to combat the issue. In response to the arrests in 2015, Princeton High School held a two-hour forum sponsored by the Princeton Health Department, Corner House, the Princeton Alcohol and Drug Alliance, and the Princeton Police Department, in which the dangers of heroin
and the importance of dialogue on the subject were discussed. “We need to talk about this,” Michael DeLeon, nonprofit organizer and activist, told the forum, according to Town Topics. “Talk to your kids about drugs over dinner. It’s a conversation you have to have every week. Get informed. You need to know. The more you know, the better off you are.” According to the Office of the Mercer County Prosecutor press release, the arrests in Ewing and Philadelphia concluded what had been a six-month joint investigation into heroin distribution in Mercer County conducted by the Mercer County Narcotics Task Force, Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General, Bureau of Narcotics Investigation and Drug Control, and Drug Enforcement Administration HIDTA 4. Philadelphia Prevention Point, the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, the Mercer County Sheriff’s Office, the Bureau of Narcotics Investigation and Drug Control, and the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General were not available for comment at the time of this publication.
The Daily Princetonian
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Wednesday April 11, 2018
Vecchi: A lot of real natural disasters are caused by water
COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Vecchi cautioned that the rise in reported hurricanes in the Atlantic is most likely due to changes in reporting practices rather than a tangible rise in activity.
HURRICANE Continued from page 1
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ricanes in labs, models are the primary method by which predictions are made. But as Vecchi found out, these models frequently lead to vastly different predictions. Vecchi compared two graphs of expected hur-
ricane activity, one that used Atlantic surface temperatures as the primary metric, and another that used the relative Atlantic temperature, which calculates the difference between the temperature of the tropics and other regions. He found that while the two graphs are similar, their predictions concerning future trends
in hurricane activity differ sharply. Vecchi cautioned that the rise in reported hurricanes in the Atlantic is most likely due to changes in reporting practices rather than a tangible rise in activity. “We can’t say hurricanes have increased in the Atlantic, even though reported hurricanes most definite-
ly have,” he said. Vecchi concluded by discussing the uncertainties surrounding future hurricane predictions. According to Vecchi, environmental factors like greenhouse gas concentrations will likely not exert a tangible effect on hurricane frequencies “until the end of the century,” but innate chaotic
variations in climate will always be present and make it difficult to predict hurricane patterns. The talk, “Past and Future Hurricane Activity,” which was sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School’s Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy, took place in Wallace Hall at 12 p.m. on Monday, April 9.
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Wednesday April 11, 2018
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Tang wants to bring together writing, artwork, photography DALE
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Princeton Pianists Ensemble, and the Edwards Collective, a select group of humanities students in Mathey College. “Through being a member of the Edwards Collective, I’ve experienced first-hand how some of the most exciting conversations and creative projects occur when we erase the boundaries,” Tang wrote in a statement. “Through Princeton’s QCB certificate program, I’ve seen the boundaries of science blur while the value of interdisciplinary thought and application in scientific inquiry becomes ever more in focus.” Tang was inspired to apply for the fellowship because of her work with the Council on Science and Technology. “I wanted to continue that work, and I thought it was a good way to explore how the integration of STEM and the arts can manifest in pedagogy,” Tang said. The STEM and arts lessons will be brought to regions across the U.S. and China, with activities such as paper pianos, DIY touchpads, and pinhole cameras. Tang emphasized that the lessons should not only be educational, but also culturally relevant. Some regions she plans to visit are rural and may have little to no exposure to STEM. “In what ways can I design something that connects to their daily lived experience as well?” Tang asked. After she leaves each site, she hopes to leave kits and materials
behind for students to continue exploring. “By including everyday, culture-specific phenomena and materials in these modules, I aim to reduce barriers to continued exploration after the workshops end,” Tang wrote in a statement. After the fellowship, Tang wants to bring together the writing, artwork, and photographs from her experience in an interactive book. In addition, she wants to make her lesson plans opensource for any students or educators who may be interested. Further in the future, she plans to attend graduate school and go into the field of education. “This fellowship will allow me to explore how to best serve those I will be teaching,” Tang said. She is especially curious about the way content is taught in classrooms today and wants to investigate ways in which lessons can be better integrated. “Education can be more efficient, learning these different topics at the same time in a way that they make sense in relation to each other,” Tang said. “It helps you remember and appreciate how things work as a whole.” In the end, Tang hopes that her workshops will enable students to explore new fields and venture into areas they never considered. She also hopes to learn how science and the arts can complement one another as individual entities, rather than one acting in the service of the other. “You could create a program to write music in
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the style of a composer. But at the same time, what music could be generated from a computer that sounds different, that is a novel sound? Computation can be used less as a tool, and more as an artwork,” she said. Lind, a member of Wilson College, plans to spend his fellowship year in Nashville writing and recording a folk music album titled “Surviving Death: Songs from Hospice,” inspired by his volunteer experiences at hospices. “I saw the Dale as an amazing opportunity to get funding for a year to do something that’s really at the intersection of these two interests I had for a long time,” said Lind, referring to palliative (end-of-life) care and music. “In high school, I had a few family members and friends who had hospice care when they were dying, and it was pretty influential in their lives,” said Lind. In his sophomore year at the University, Lind started volunteering at Ascend Hospice through the Pace Center for Civic Engagement’s Student Volunteers Council, where he was a project leader for over a year. The summer after his sophomore year, Lind worked in Nashville with the Siloam Family Health Center through Princeton Internships in Civic Service. This previous summer, he held an internship at CanSupport, a nonprofit hospice in New Delhi through the International Internship Program. “Thinking about our decisions in terms of that end-of-life perspective,
it’s been very helpful,” said Lind. His approach to palliative care was also affected by some ideas he came across while studying abroad at Oxford for his junior semester. “If someone’s experiencing delusions, there’s one hypothesis that they’re actually trying to make sense of their world in a very almost rational way, there’s an internal logic to it,” said Lind. He said that it changed his approach to think of people as having different perspectives, more than simply being ill. The perspectives he has gained directly from volunteering at hospices are also incredibly motivating for Lind. He found that his experiences matched a takeaway he found in Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal,” that “as people age, their perspective gets much more ‘in the now,’ and the people around them become much more important,” said Lind. Lind’s musical motivations also run deep. He has played the guitar since he was 13 years old. Now, through the Pace Center’s Princeton Music Outreach, Lind arranges performances at hospices by groups like Princeton Pianists Ensemble. Lind also sometimes plays the guitar in performances at Small World Cafe and other locations. Playing the guitar has been a consistent interest in Lind’s life, serving as a stress reliever as well as a passion. “It’s life-giving in some sense,” said Lind. During the past two summers, Lind has had the opportunity to record some of songs he has written in Joshua D.
Niles’s studio in Nashville. Niles “aspires to help each artist reach for their identity, while retaining a competitive edge in today’s over saturated market.” Lind’s experience with one of his songs in particular, “Garden,” inspired the project he will be completing under the Dale Fellowship. Upon receiving an email that the patient who inspired the song had died on the same day he was recording “Garden”’s vocal track, Lind decided to pursue a more long-term music project centering around his hospice volunteer experiences. In his songwriting, Lind draws inspiration about his musical style and story-telling process inspiration from Passenger, Americana, Jason Isbell, and Kendrick Lamar. Lind is a senior majoring in philosophy, with a certificate in cognitive science. He plans to begin the process of applying to graduate school or medical school after completing his year-long Dale Fellowship project. The Martin A. Dale ‘53 Summer Awards grant a $5,000 stipend to a small number of sophomores. They support pursuit of creative special interest projects that provide opportunities for personal growth and independence. The twelve sophomores granted the award this year are Seb Benzecry, Veronica Carrasco, Douglas Corzine, Jonathan Haynes, Ozichi Okorom, Benjamin Rosenblatt, Eleanora Schaer, Michael Smilek, Bennett Weissenbach, Owen Wheeler, Charity Young, and Kevin Hou.
Opinion
Wednesday April 11, 2018
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Never too late Uri Bram
Guest Contributor
O
n April 12, 2011 — seven years ago today — a much-loved senior Spanish lecturer at the University killed himself. The University had suspended him without due process, and in seeming violation of its own procedures. In the time since, there has never been an independent investigation of what the University did. Whenever I think of my Princeton experience, the University’s actions around the death of a beloved community member is what I remember most of all. Have you heard of Antonio Calvo? Or has his name been erased on campus? In my first year at the University, I went on a summer language program that Calvo organized in Toledo, Spain. We visited museums, drank one-euro wine, and occasionally learned Spanish. In the middle of the month, Calvo noticed I looked disheartened, and sat me down to check if I was okay. He told me it was normal to have ups and downs in a program like this, that the middle is always the tiring bit. I think he drew a graph in the air of fun-ness over time, with a craterous dip in the middle. Antonio had a way of smiling that made you feel that the world was a joke, but that you were in on it together. In that moment, he made me feel that my well-being mattered to someone.
That’s the whole of my personal Calvo story. It isn’t much, but it meant a lot to me. My friends who knew him better remember him just as fondly and with even deeper gratitude. Then, in my senior year, Antonio killed himself. The University had suspended him a few days earlier and abruptly evicted him from campus. As a non-U.S. citizen, without his University contract, he would face the prospect of having 30 days to pack up his life and leave the country (in honesty, when the new federal government came to power and the University made statements about the importance of rights and due process for immigrants, I couldn’t help but be sick at the hypocrisy). I wish I could tell you exactly what Antonio was accused of, but the University stonewalled all questions about why they had suspended him. The Daily Princetonian did an excellent job of covering the story at the time, and again in a detailed investigation on the one-year anniversary; there was even extensive coverage in the New York Times. But nobody could ever identify what had actually happened, because the University diligently refused to talk. The administration claimed that it was protecting “the privacy of his family,” but it was certainly insinuated in private that Antonio had done something horrific. I don’t want to assert any-
thing here that I couldn’t possibly know for certain — anyone who watches the news these days knows that sometimes your heroes devastate you — but I cannot believe that Antonio did what the University tried to imply he did. What I’d really like to highlight, however, is how completely unsatisfactory the University’s response is regardless of what actually happened. Either the University is covering up something terrible Antonio did, or they’re covering up an abuse of their own procedures by pretending that they’re covering up something terrible Antonio did. I know which one I think it is, but either one is unacceptable. In neither case does the University’s silence serve the community’s interests. I don’t think the University can be held directly responsible for Antonio’s suicide; I’m not saying they could have known he would kill himself in response to their actions. But they are to blame for suspending him without due process, and they’re responsible for their reaction after his death: sweeping everything under the rug, as powerful institutions have done since time immemorial, instead of facing the difficult truth that mistakes were made and need to be reckoned with. At the time of Antonio’s death, a local attorney wrote a measured column in the Prince suggesting a “special reviewer” from outside
vol. cxlii
the University should look through the University’s files to see if University policies were followed correctly, and to suggest any necessary changes to policy or implementation or both. The University didn’t respond and didn’t investigate. But it still can. And it still should. The other day I looked at my online calendar, with its annual reminder for Antonio’s anniversary. It stretches out indefinitely: April 12, 2018, and ’19, and ’20, and then ’70, and ’71, and 2201, and 2202, and onwards into eternity. Of course, none of us will live to see those years, in any case; I will be gone soon, and so will you. But universities live for centuries, so their courage or their cowardice lives for centuries as well. There are people reading these words right now who have the power to launch a proper, independent investigation into Antonio’s death, and to finally tell the community what really happened and what went wrong. The human capacity to avoid difficult truths or difficult actions is almost infinite (I am not here to judge: it took me seven years to write this), but some of those people also know in their hearts that a terrible injustice occurred and needs to be reckoned with. What will they do? What will you do? Uri Bram is a University alumnus from the Class of 2011.
The rigor that Princeton students take for granted Jessica Nyquist
Senior Columnist
When course selection comes out right after the grind and frustration of midterms, it’s tempting to seek out the classes whose course evaluations promise an “easy A.” Another semester of all-nighters in Sherrerd Hall sounds less appealing than two hours of lecture a week, one hour of reading, and an in-class midterm plus final. But, as we plan for our limited semesters here, we should keep in mind that it is this academic rigor — the constantly challenging material and ambitious curriculum — that drove us to Princeton in the first place. We too often grow frustrated with the intense workload and find ourselves comparing our lifestyle to that of peer institutions. But before you slide into the classic “love to hate” rhetoric that permeates campus culture, consider the unique thrill and pride that accompanies the intense courses. The feeling when Professor Douglas Massey connects the race constructs rooted in the Constitution after you read about 900 pages
on the subject. The feeling of pride and accomplishment when your code runs after 10 hours in lab TAs. The feeling of satisfaction when you perform well on the orgo exam that you were nervous for and way overprepared for. This is why we take hard classes at Princeton, and this is why we get so much out of being here. When selecting courses — some of us for the last fall ever — keep yourself accountable to pursue rigorous and rewarding classes. By junior year, many of us are jaded and looking for an effortlessly fulfilled distribution. But we all remember those classes freshman fall where we not only did all the readings, but also typed up notes, a summary, questions for precept, thoughts, opinions, feelings, etc. The classes that were intimidating, but that we invested ourselves in anyway. My favorite class at Princeton remains the first one I took, Ethics and Public Policy with Professor Stephen Macedo. My first semester on campus I had no idea what was going on, but I dove into the readings. I read the additional materials. I went to office hours with my preceptor. I discussed the issues constantly outside of class. My obsession branched from a variety of factors. It was
the first time I was exposed to applied ethics, and it became my passion that I have pursued throughout my semesters since. Also, the class was well-taught and well-structured. But most inf luentially, I completely invested myself in the coursework in a way I have not since. Looking back to that course and comparing it to my “easy A” endeavors, I realize how much more you can get out of a class that you chose to get a lot out of. Many of my friends studying abroad have spoken to this feeling of “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” Outside of the Princeton bubble experiencing new curricula, students are surprised by how much they miss the rigor and intensity of Princeton courses, this same rigor that we curse aloud and roast in course evaluations after exam season. Nina Rodriguez ’19, who is spending the semester studying in Madrid, explained that her classes “don’t even come close to challenging me the way my courses at Princeton have the past two and a half years. People say that studying abroad gives you break from the rigor, but I truly miss my seminars and lectures where I was pushed to think critically about global issues surrounded
by my extremely intelligent classmates.” Graduates share a similar sentiment of missing the intellectual stimulation and excitement of coursework once they’re in a career. As a junior, I am gearing up for my last two semesters of course selection. The fewer semesters left, the more important every course seems. We all have lists of courses we want to take: specific professors or impactful classes or crucial life curricula. As time is running out, remember the excitement and motivation of taking a course you are passionate about, no matter how tough the work ends up to be. The “easy A” is a tempting cop-out, but the experience of stimulating intellectual curiosity and pushing our comfort zones is what makes Princeton special. To grow intellectually, we need something to push against, to paraphrase Newton’s third law. Despite the long hours in Firestone and late nights that come with it, we, as Princeton students, must take advantage of rigorous courses rather than take the stimulation for granted. Jessica Nyquist is a junior in computer science from Houston, Texas. She can be reached at jnyquist@princeton.edu.
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BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88 secretary Betsy L. Minkin ’77 treasurer Douglas J. Widmann ’90 Kathleen Crown William R. Elfers ’71 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 John Horan ’74 Joshua Katz Kathleen Kiely ’77 Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 Lisa Belkin ‘82 Francesca Barber trustees emeriti Gregory L. Diskant ’70 Jerry Raymond ’73 Michael E. Seger ’71 Annalyn Swan ’73
142ND MANAGING BOARD managing editors Isabel Hsu ’19 Claire Lee ’19 head news editors Claire Thornton ’19 Jeff Zymeri ’20 associate news editors Allie Spensley ’20 Audrey Spensley ’20 Ariel Chen ’20 associate news and film editor Sarah Warman Hirschfield ’20 head opinion editor Emily Erdos ’19 associate opinion editors Samuel Parsons ’19 Jon Ort ’21 head sports editors David Xin ’19 Chris Murphy ’20 associate sports editors Miranda Hasty ’19 Jack Graham ’20 head street editor Jianing Zhao ’20 associate street editors Danielle Hoffman ’20 Lyric Perot ’20 digital operations manager Sarah Bowen ’20 associate chief copy editors Marina Latif ’19 Arthur Mateos ’19 head design editor Rachel Brill ’19 cartoons editor Tashi Treadway ’19 head photo editor Risa Gelles-Watnick ’21
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Opinion
Wednesday April 11, 2018
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Finding flowers in a snowstorm Leora Eisenberg
Senior columnist
I
t only took one lessthan-ideal grade to find myself jumping from one fatalistic thought to the next. Within mere moments, I went from seeing a grade on a paper to convincing myself I would never get into grad school. The weather was gray and cloudy. I had a massive headache. Nothing was going right — and it didn’t seem like it was going much better for many of my peers, either. It’s not like everyone around me was getting A’s and enjoying the weather.
I couldn’t wait to burrow under my sheets and hide from the world. But when I got to my room and set down my backpack, I noticed the pot of daffodils blooming on my desk. The buds were just opening up and that corner of my room was covered in a yellow kind of joy that I hadn’t been able to find throughout the rest of the day. Last month, on a separate occasion, my Persian professor and I were walking back from Persian language table during a snowstorm. It was windy and cold; it was the kind of day when the chill gets into your bones. I was ready to start complaining about how awful everything felt when she stopped me in my tracks. “Look,” she said, pointing. “That tree!
It’s pink!” The only color I could see for miles in any direction was f luorescent, snowinduced white. But sure enough, as we walked up the hill, I began to see that there were tiny pink buds on the tree. She bent down to pick up one of the fallen ones. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she whispered, her breath making barely perceptible coils in the cold, blustery air. I had to admit that the image of a bud on the snow was enough to take my breath away, particularly on a day when I hadn’t expected to see anything blooming. But more than anything, my professor’s ability to find beauty on that seemingly forsaken day left me speechless. I was prepared to let the afternoon go to waste,
just as I was ready to declare my day earlier this week a total failure. But my beloved professor wasn’t. Instead of seeing the obvious ugliness that sometimes surrounds us, she chose, instead, to see something beautiful. She saw blossoms in the midst of a snowstorm. When I found myself staring at the daffodils in the corner of my desk, I had found my own f lowers buds in my psychological blizzard. The f lowers I had on my desk — just like the buds that my professor saw — were an opportunity for me to find something beautiful on a day that wasn’t. Let’s face it: we have plenty of days like that at Princeton. Classes are hard. Relationships are difficult. Friendships have drama. We
have good days and bad days alike. But if you let yourself get caught in the spiral of social media and negative thoughts, maybe it’s worth trying to find some f lowers. I acknowledge that finding light in a dark tunnel is challenging. And I’ll admit that I’m not the best at it, either. But maybe it’s worth putting a plant on your desk, or, more importantly, spending time with people who, like my professor, have a natural gift for finding beauty. And, the next time you have a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day, you’ll be prepared and find blossoms in a snowstorm. Leora Eisenberg is a sophomore from Eagan, Minn. She can be reached at leorae@ princeton.edu.
Alliance of Jewish Progressives: Open letter to Eric Fingerhut Alliance of Jewish Progressives Guest Contributor
D
ear Mr. Fingerhut, We are a group of Jewish Princeton students committed to a vision of social justice and inclusivity in our American and Jewish communities. In November of this year, you used your platform as the CEO of Hillel International to endorse Kenneth Marcus for the position
of Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights. This endorsement does not represent us or our Jewish values. A subsidiary of the Department of Education, the Office of Civil Rights is supposed to protect students from discrimination based on race, sex, abilities, age, and national origin. However, Mr. Marcus has a long history of anti-civil rights decisions. He has argued against disparate impact
claims, affirmative action, and equal opportunity initiatives. Additionally, during his confirmation hearing, he refused to commit to protecting the rights of immigrant students, LGBTQ students, or students with disabilities, and expressed support for Betsy DeVos’s rescission of Title IX guidelines for schools’ responses to sexual assault. Since his nomination, over 200 civil rights groups
— including the NAACP, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Council of Jewish Women — have formally opposed his confirmation. In February, you issued an apology for the implications of this endorsement, reaffirming Hillel International’s commitment to “have campuses be a safe place for all.” We appreciate this apology, but words are not enough. Without revoking
Mixed Bearies annie zou ’20
..................................................
Pset Paradox Sophia Gavrilenko ’20 ..................................................
your endorsement, you continue to support Marcus’s dangerous policies in the name of our Jewish community. We join our peers on campuses across the country in imploring you to revoke your endorsement of Kenneth Marcus and ensure our safety and the safety of all students. Sincerely, The Alliance of Jewish Progressives
Sports
Wednesday April 11, 2018
page 8
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } IVY LEAGUE
ESPN partners with Ivy League to cover 1,100 events annually across 30 sports
COURTESY OF THE IVY LEAGUE
1100 Ivy League events will be broadcast over ESPN annually.
By Samantha Shapiro Staff Writer
Princeton fans will have a new and improved way to watch Ivy League sporting events next year: ESPN+. Last week, ESPN and the Ivy League announced a ten-year deal in which ESPN agreed to cover over 1,100 events annually across 30 sports. Most of these events will be available
through ESPN+, a new “upcoming direct-to-consumer subscription streaming service,” with a cost of $4.99 per month. Launching on April 12, ESPN+ is part of a redesigned ESPN app and will also be accessible through ESPN.com. “We are significantly enhancing our existing relationship with the Ivy League,
providing the conference, its institutions, and fans the most comprehensive coverage of the league to date across ESPN’s networks and platforms, while also adding specific benefits that are made possible with the launch of ESPN+,” said Burke Magnus, ESPN’s executive vice president of programming and scheduling, in an
interview with ESPN.com. A deal between the Ivy League and ESPN is only a small portion of increased access to thousands of events through ESPN+, including games from the MLB, NHL, MLS and various other sports. Nonetheless, ESPN+ represents a victory for Ivy League fans. The streaming service will provide access to every Ivy League conferencecontrolled game in football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s ice hockey, and men’s and women’s lacrosse, as well as at least eight postseason events and various events across other sports. For Ivy League fans, this announcement is particularly promising, given that a “League Annual Pass,” which is available for purchase on the Ivy League Network, the current prime airer of Ivy League events, costs $119.95 per year. “It has been such a rewarding experience to watch and be part of the growth of the Ivy League Network as we have progressed over the last 5 years with all of the 8 schools working together … producing more than 1,100 events, and the quality continues to continually improve,” said Robin Harris,
Ivy League Executive Director. “This takes us to the next level in providing an opportunity for all of our sports.” On ESPN+, fans will be able to cater their sports experience and personalize their content. Harris assures future buyers that it will be “so easy for our fans to find our content” with the new service. The emergence of ESPN+ offers Princeton fans a new opportunity to watch Princeton teams compete across a variety of sports and solidifies the Ivy League’s reputation as a conference. Craig A. Sachson, Assistant Director of Athletics, said on behalf of Mollie Marcoux Samaan ’91, the Ford Family Director of Athletics at Princeton: “This comprehensive partnership with ESPN is a game changer for Ivy League athletics. It will provide our current fans with a highly cost-effective way to view all of our competitions, and it will expose a large new audience to the remarkable and unique talents of our student athletes. Our goal is to continue to display these talents and the Ivy League model on the national stage, and what better way to do that than to partner with the world’s leader in sports content?”
MEN’S AND WOMEN’S ROWING
Tiger crews dominate on Lake Carnegie, prepare for mid-season showdowns By Molly Milligan Staff Writer
In one of the busiest days in its history, 31 rowing races came down the Lake Carnegie course last Saturday as all four Princeton rowing squads — the Heavyweight Men, Lightweight Men, Openweight Women, and Lightweight Women — hosted Ivy League competitors. The No. 5-ranked Heavyweight Men kicked things off at 8 a.m. with a sweep of No. 15 Columbia and No. 14 Penn to retain the Childs Cup, the oldest contested cup in collegiate rowing, dating back to 1879. The entire heavyweight squad made it through its fourth weekend of racing while maintaining an undefeated record, setting the team up for a showdown with fourth-ranked Harvard on the Charles River next weekend. Senior Will Chance said the Tigers will stick to their strategy of “setting up a great piece in the first 500 and then pushing the pace with [their] relentless base speed,” working from there to separate from challenging crews. The No. 2-ranked Lightweight Men followed, claiming a fourteen-second win over the University of Delaware, Dartmouth, and Temple, bouncing back from last weekend’s narrow loss to No. 3-ranked Co-
lumbia. Each Princeton boat won its race by at least five seconds. The Lightweights’ strong start to a three-week home stand will be followed this coming Saturday in a head-tohead match-up with No.1 Cornell for the Platt Cup. Last year, the Tigers fell to Big Red — the eventual National Champions — by just 1.9 seconds, a narrow margin that has become typical in top-tier lightweight racing. The No. 4-ranked Openweight Women put on an impressive showing as they hosted the first-ever Ivy League Invitational. In the morning session, the squad earned wins over No. 13 Harvard-Radcliffe and Cornell in each boat, with the First Varsity Eight retaining the Class of 1975 Cup by 10.4 seconds. The Openweight Women also swept their afternoon session against Dartmouth and Pennsylvania, with the team retaining the Class of 1984 Plaque. The Tigers always expect their Ivy League competition to be strong, but the First and Second Varsity Eights did not predict challenges by No. 19 Dartmouth, a team that has added significant speed since last spring. All weekend, Princeton kept a close eye on its No. 7 rival, Yale, who they will face next weekend alongside No.
Tweet of the Day Kiwi hammer thrower Julia Ratcliffe (‘17) powers through rain for Commonwealth Games gold. Princeton Track\XC (@PrincetonTrack)
COURTESY OF PRINCETON ATHLETICS
Women’s open rowing had a successful weekend, along with Princeton’s other crew teams.
11 Iowa. It will be an excellent mid-season test for the Tigers, who plan to “go out there and race like [there are] no expectations,” said junior Claire Collins. It was the No. 2-ranked Lightweight Women, however, who may have had the most exciting day on Lake Carnegie. Following last weekend’s season-opener, a loss to No. 1 Stanford, the Lightweight Women
dominated No. 6 Harvard-Radcliffe and won the Class of 1999 Cup at home for the first time since 2010. Senior coxswain Megan Mirabella was especially impressed by her crew’s 12.4 second victory; they will need to be “achieving margins like that whenever possible” in order to have to have their “most ambitious season yet.” Princeton’s lightweight four and dou-
Stat of the Day
2 Number of former Princeton Baseball players (Matt Bowman and Danny Barnes) currently playing in the MLB.
ble also posted large margins over their competitors from Harvard, with head coach Paul Rassam noting that the win “felt especially good because the whole team raced so well.” Until the championship regattas roll around in late May and early June, the Princeton crews will continue challenging each other during the week, and challenging their competition come the weekend.
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