February 21, 2018

Founded 1876 daily since 1892 online since 1998

Wednesday February 21, 2018 vol. CXLII no. 13

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } STUDENT LIFE

BEYOND THE BUBBLE

Rosen’s class Powell ’17 to appear on ABC’s Shark Tank reflects on cancellation

By Sarah Warman Hirschfield and Ivy Truong associate news editor and assistant news editor

After anthropology professor Lawrence Rosen cancelled ANT 212: Cultural Freedoms: Hate Speech, Blasphemy, and Pornography following a controversy over his use of the word n****r, some students were left in need of a new class only days before the add/ drop deadline.

Rosen drew media attention after saying the n-word in his class. He emailed his students on Feb. 12 about the cancellation a day before the scheduled second lecture. The class was supposed to meet once a week on Tuesdays.

“I have reluctantly decided to cancel this year’s offering of Anthropology 212, Cultural Freedoms,” wrote Rosen in an email obtained by the ‘Prince.’

“I think it [sic] only fair that you be free, before too much of the semester has passed, to move ahead in another course of your choosing.”

According to acting University spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss, Rosen chose to cancel the class without pressure from the University.

Some students have found the cancellation to cause “a bit of a hassle,” according to Destiny Salter ’20, who added that she is glad the class was canceled.

Salter told the ‘Prince’ she had a hard time finding another class, eventually choosing to take ENG 374: Fighting Words, or Cultures of Protest. Associate professor of English Zahid R. Chaudhary teaches the course.

“A lot of people have had the same experience,” she said, adding that a significant portion of students had dropped Rosen’s class before he cancelled it.

Emily Kunkel ’19 similarly had a hard time finding another course. As an anthropology major, she was taking the course to fulfill the 200-level departmental requirement and no other 200-level class fit her schedule. Now, she has to fulfill this requirement during her senior year.

“I’m taking a class for my certificate instead,” explained Kunkel, “but that just means I have to take four anthro classes as a senior, which is a lot.”

Anthropology concentrator Anna Pearson ’18 was also taking Cultural Freedoms to fulfill her last reSee ROSEN page 2

COURTESY OF BROOKS POWELL

Powell had the idea for Thrive+ during his sophomore year at the University while in a neuroscience class.

By Hunter Campbell senior news writer

Brooks Powell ’17 will appear on ABC’s “Shark Tank” on Sunday, pitching several products by his company Thrive+.

The main product of Thrive+, “After-Alcohol Aid,” which Powell developed as an undergraduate at the University, has two key benefits: it reduces short-term alcohol withdrawal and assists the liver in processing alcohol. Ultimately, it reduces alcohol’s negative next-day side effects.

STUDENT LIFE

“Thrive+ makes alcohol a healthier and happier experience,” Powell told the ‘Prince’ in an interview on Tuesday, Feb. 20.

At the University, Powell participated in the Men’s Swimming and Diving Team and was a member of Cloister Inn and Princeton Faith and Action. He was also a recipient of the Tiger Entrepreneur Award and participated in the Keller Center’s eLab Summer Accelerator Program.

Powell had the idea for Thrive+ during his sophomore year at the University while in a neuroscience

class. By February 2017, Powell and his co-founders decided to try to get onto the show “Shark Tank.”

Powell was unable to comment on the audition process.

While 40,000 companies applied to be on Shark Tank’s ninth season, only 92 made it.

Thrive+ currently produces two products, one being the After-Alcohol Aid, and the other being the “ORS” (Oral Rehydration Solution). ORS assists the body in rehydration, and is based off of See SHARK TANK page 2

U . A F FA I R S

Parton, Pecsok ’18 2020 app awarded Pyne prize pool jumps 14 percent assistant news editor

COURTESY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

John “Newby” Parton and Maggie Pecsok ’18 were awarded highest undergraduate honor.

By Benjamin Ball contributor

John “Newby” Parton ’18 and Maggie Pecsok ’18 have been named the recipients of the University’s 2018 Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize.

Parton is a former head opinion editor for The Daily Princetonian.

The Pyne Honor Prize

In Opinion

is the highest general distinction that can be conferred to an undergraduate. The award was established in 1921 and is given for exemplary character, scholarship, and leadership.

Parton is a Wilson School concentrator with certificates in values and public life and urban studies. He is from

Ryan Born takes on gun regulation, senior columnist Liam O’Connor gives practical suggestions for the Bicker process and guest contributor Caleb South urges students in computer science classes not to copy code.

PAGE 4

McMinnville, Tenn., and previously received the 2016 Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence. He was one of four graduating students selected for the 2018 Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative, which is designed to support and prepare students for future careers in the U.S. federal See PYNE PRIZE page 3

The University received a record number of total applications for the first-year class with 35,386 applicants competing for a spot in the Class of 2022.

This number overshadows the amount of last year’s applications — 31,056 applications — by 14 percent and includes the 5,402 applicants who applied for early admission. For reference, the figure also exceeds the amount of applications to the Class of 2008 (which had only 13,695 applications) by 158 percent.

Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye attributed this increase to the University’s expanded outreach.

“We have certainly done more outreach to students in this country and traveled widely throughout the world to make sure that we are reaching qualified students,” Rapelye said.

She specifically pointed to an increased awareness of the University’s generous financial aid policy, which she said draws more appli-

Today on Campus 4:30 p.m.: Chief Ayanda Clarke leads a lecture/workshop as part of Dyane Harvey-Salaam’s dance course, “The American Dance Experience and Africanist Dance Practices.” Murphy Dance Studio, 122 Alexander Street

cants.

“We are working more closely with communitybased organizations in cities and national organizations that are working with lowincome students,” Rapelye explained.

According to Rapelye, every demographic group has seen an increase in applications. First-generation applications in particular increased by 16 percent from the previous year.

With the University resuming transfer admissions this year, Rapelye noted that the target freshman class will be smaller than those in previous years to accommodate transfer students. The Class of 2021 had entered with a class of 1,306 students. The University hopes to enroll roughly 1,295 students in the Class of 2022.

“Our challenge is that we only have a certain number of beds on campus,” Rapelye said.

This will be the first year that the University accepts transfer students since 1990.

According to Rapeyle, the See APPLICATIONS page 2

WEATHER

By Ivy Truong

HIGH

73˚

LOW

42˚

Sunny chance of rain:

20 percent

The Daily Princetonian

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Wednesday February 21, 2018

Students struggle to find Thrive+’s “After-Alcohol Aid” promises to lessen effects of hangover ANT 212 replacement class SHARK TANK Continued from page 1

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clinical research done by the World Health Organization. After-Alcohol Aid is gluten free, and ORS is vegan. Both products are meant to be taken before going to bed after having consumed alcohol, but After-Alcohol Aid is most effective if taken closer to the time of one’s last drink. The company recommends taking the products regardless of the amount one drinks.

An investor, whose identity Powell did not disclose, played an important role in the building of Thrive+.

“We raised 200,000 dollars from a private investor

who specializes in pharmaceuticals,” Powell said. “We went from 50,000 dollars a year, 1,000 dollars a week to a little north of 10,000 dollars a day, and 4 million dollars a year.”

Powell also had advice for students looking to pursue their own startup.

“The best time to build a business is while in college because there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that comes with starting a business you don’t really see,” Powell said.

Filing limited liability company paperwork, filing patents, trying to find mentors and advisers, building a network, and figuring out a supply chain are just a handful of the elements Powell had to

consider while working to build Thrive+ with his cofounders.

Mentors were a large part of Powell’s success. One of the company’s advisers is Stanton Peele, an awardwinning psychologist with a specialization in alcohol addiction.

Currently, there are two equity-holding University biotechnology professors sitting on the advisory board of Thrive+. Using Sponsored Research Agreements, Thrive+ conducts all of its research and development on the University’s campus.

Brooks Powell and Thrive+ will be on “Shark Tank” this Sunday, Feb. 25 at 10 p.m. Eastern Time on ABC.

Work for the most respected news source on campus.

E-mail join@dailyprincetonian.com

ROSEN

Continued from page 1

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quirement. She was able to switch into another class, but noted that, in her opinion, the cancellation was hardest on seniors in the anthropology department.

“ANT 212 was cancelled well before the end of the add/drop period,” said Polly W. Griffin, University registrar. “The students in the class had access to their advisers to help, as needed, with the selection of another course.”

Georgia Hellard Timm ’20, however, enrolled in the class after the controversy. She heard about the class from a friend and chose to enroll, explaining that she wanted to enroll in a class that “deconstructed the meaning of hate speech.” She said she was disappointed when the course was cancelled.

“I saw it as a failure to engage with and logically retaliate against words that are so offensive,” Timm said.

Kunkel was also the student to whom Rosen had directed his question which used the n-word.

“To me the answer is so obvious, it’s the latter.

I think it was obvious for everyone in the class,” explained Kunkel. “Even so, I had to pause before answering because I was so taken aback that Rosen even used the word.”

Pearson also spoke on her reaction to the controversy.

“I wish he wouldn’t have said the word to begin with. I didn’t think it was appropriate or necessary,” said Pearson, reflecting on the class. “At an institution such as Princeton, with such a problematic history, there is no space for that.”

Salter echoed Pearson’s remarks, stressing that she hopes this situation won’t be treated as an isolated incident.

“It’s an example of a larger institutional issue where

a lot of times students don’t feel comfortable recording their professors or even talking to them when they do something that really crosses a line,” Salter said.

Salter expressed dismay that there are no wellknown protocols for students to report these incidents. After the lecture, she immediately called the Rockefeller College office and met with administrators.

Rosen has not responded to requests for comment.

The controversy has incited debate from both sides of the issue. Though many students felt that Rosen’s usage of the word was wrong, Department of Anthropology Chair Carolyn Rouse wrote a Letter to the Editor defending Rosen, stating that Rosen’s intentions in breaking taboos was to “get the students to recognize their emotional response to cultural symbols.”

At a meeting for the Council of the Princeton University Community, President Eisgruber expressed respect for Rosen’s “decision about how to teach the subject in the way that he did by being explicit and using very difficult words.”

In his email to the class, Rosen encouraged students to keep the dialogue going.

“This is a time to reach out to all those who came into the course, and beyond – to do what we do: to listen, to converse, to grapple with the categories by which we create our own experience,” he wrote.

According to the anthropology department website, Rosen’s main interests are in culture theory, anthropology of law, ethnic relations, law and the American family, and American Indian legal problems. His main fieldwork has been in North Africa. Rosen has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship as well as Guggenheim Fellowship for Social Sciences.

U. sets record with 35,386 applications for the great class of 2020 APPLICATIONS Continued from page 1

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University aims to enroll 10 to 12 transfer students. The transfer application date is March 1.

In reinstating transfer admissions, the University hopes to encourage “applications from students from low-income backgrounds, community college students, and U.S. military veterans,” according to the admissions website.

Although there are plans to increase undergraduate enrollment with the addi-

tion of new residential colleges, Rapeyle explained that, at the moment, the University cannot plan to enroll as many students as previous years in order to accomodate transfer students.

Last year, the University accepted 1,890 students out of 31,056 applicants in its most selective year yet with only a 6.1 percent acceptance rate.

In December, the University admitted 799 students to the Class of 2022 with a 14.7 percent acceptance rate.

Regular decision applicants will be notified of their decision on March 28.

T HE DA ILY

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Prize is most prestigious award conferred to undergraduate students PYNE PRIZE Continued from page 1

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government. Parton intends to pursue a joint MPA/J.D. and a career as a civil rights attorney, and he eventually wishes to become a judge.

Pecsok is concentrating in psychology with a certificate in cognitive science. She is originally from Virginia Beach, Va., and received last year’s Howard Crosby Warren Junior Prize in Psychology. She is a member of the Behrman Undergraduate Society of Fel-

lows, a group of juniors and seniors dedicated to humanistic inquiry who meet monthly with distinguished faculty and guests. Pecsok plans to research multiple sclerosis for two years with Yale University’s neuroimmunology department and then to pursue a career as a physicianscientist.

Famous alumni recipients of the award include University President Emeritus Robert F. Goheen ’4 0 GS ’4 8, former U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes ’54, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor ’76.

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Wednesday February 21, 2018

Opinion

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Don’t copy code

Caleb South

Guest Contributor

L

ast December, campus was buzzing with talk about the Honor Committee, as four referenda generated vigorous debate and large voter turnout. The level of energy and engagement in the process showed how much students care about having an effective and fair system to ensure academic integrity.

However, some students may not realize that when it comes to academic integrity, the Honor Committee is only half the picture. Under the Honor Code, students are responsible for overseeing academic integrity during in-class examinations, such as midterms and finals.

For everything else, including papers, problem sets, and independent work, the responsibility for reporting violations belongs not to the students but to the faculty.

Such cases are heard not by the Honor Committee, but by the Faculty-Student Committee on Discipline (CoD).

As the name suggests, the committee is composed of students as well as faculty, and is chaired by the Dean of Undergraduate Students.

The CoD is completely separate from the Honor Committee, and the four recent referenda don’t apply to it. This means, in particular, that the standard penalty for a student found responsible for plagiarism remains a one-year suspension.

I’ve been a member of the CoD since the fall of my sophomore year. As a student member of a facultystudent committee, I see it as my responsibility to represent my fellow students while doing my best to enforce disciplinary standards in a reasonable and fair way.

None of the members

of the CoD like punishing people, but the University’s policies on academic integrity are very clear. When the committee finds that a student has blatantly and knowingly taken credit for another person’s work, the only correct decision is to suspend them. Such a policy may seem harsh, but it is aimed to uphold Princeton’s standards of academic excellence. If students are unhappy with the current policy, they should urge the administration to change it.

But in the meantime, as long as students keep plagiarizing, the CoD must keep suspending them.

Plagiarism may occur on papers, problem sets, even junior papers and senior theses, but by far the most common case, in my experience, has been computer code. A few particular COS classes account for a huge fraction of the academic cases I have heard in the past two years. I’ve gotten to know some COS assignments better from seeing them over and over again in plagiarism cases than I did from taking the class two years ago.

I don’t know why the same few classes lead to so many cases of plagiarism, but it is an alarming situation that needs to be addressed. COS instructors in each class are already very clear about permissible and impermissible sources of help. Still, I wonder if the department could do more to stem the tide of academic integrity cases. Meanwhile, there is a very simple solution from the students’ point of view: don’t plagiarize code. Don’t look at another person’s assignment, don’t get impermissible outside help, and for goodness’ sake, don’t copy and paste a solution that you found on GitHub. And if you do get imper-

missible help, accidentally or not, you should cite it in your readme. You might get a bad grade for it, but you won’t get suspended for plagiarism.

I know that most students don’t plagiarize, and that many COS students are worried instead about being wrongfully accused or suspended for reasons they don’t understand. It would truly be awful for the CoD to punish a student because their code turned out the same as someone else’s due to coincidence and bad luck. However, given my experience on the committee, I believe that most COS students have nothing to worry about. Inexperienced coders sometimes suppose that there is only one correct way to write a piece of computer code, and so their code might turn out identical to someone else who’s trying to achieve the same thing. In reality, even a basic assignment requires the programmer to make hundreds of different decisions — from low-level syntax and spacing to the high-level structure of the program, the use of private methods, and even the way code is split between different files. It’s not impossible for two different students to write the same block of code independently, just as it’s not impossible for two people to come up with exactly the same paragraph in an essay by chance. However, it is so improbable that the CoD can say with confidence, in many cases, that copying is the only explanation for extreme similarity between two pieces of code.

When we cannot say so with confidence, we do not find the student responsible.

Students in COS and in any other department should always take care to follow course policies and to cite all of their sources.

Practical Bicker

Liam O’Connor

Senior Columnist

A

mob of students spilled out of Frist Campus Center and walked down Prospect Avenue. A few peeled off of the main group one by one as they passed by the succession of elegant mansions. Sharp wind gusts blew snow flurries from the rolling gray storm clouds above. Despite the dismal weather, students chatted cheerfully while lining up in front of the eating clubs.

They were waiting for “Bicker” to begin, the annual Princeton tradition where sophomores undergo games and interviews to gain admittance to the six selective eating clubs: Ivy Club, Tiger Inn, University Cottage Club, Princeton Tower Club, Cannon Dial Elm Club, and the Cap and Gown Club.

I joined these students to assess the system’s integrity from the inside by bickering Ivy and Tower. When Bicker ended, I compared my observations with fellow sophomores who bickered the other clubs and reached some conclusions.

In an ideal world, Bicker wouldn’t exist because students shouldn’t judge their peers in such a manner. But if it’s here to stay in the short-term — due to its status as an unalterable Princeton tradition — then all of the eating clubs could

generally improve Bicker so that it places less pressure on students and is more welcoming to those with minimal prior experience on the Street.

First, Bicker needs to be open to everyone — from veteran Street-goers to those who haven’t stepped foot in these mansions. This doesn’t just mean that anyone can sign up to Bicker. It means that anyone can answer the interview questions, even if he or she has never been to that eating club before.

There’s no universal reason why students join any particular eating club. Some do it to eat with their friends or because they like the club’s parties. Others want a different environment and to make new friends. Eating clubs should be cognizant of all bickerees’ motivations when designing Bicker.

Cap and Gown’s Interclub Council page says, “Bicker at Cap is a fun-loving, welcoming process,” and Ivy’s Bicker website says, “Ivy bicker is designed so that anyone who wants to bicker ivy [sic] may do so, regardless of previous affiliation with the club.”

But this isn’t the case once the interview-style conversations begin. When students with no prior club experiences are asked, “Who do you know in Ivy?” or, “What’s your favorite Cap memory?” it sends the message that they’re not welcome unless they already know everything about, and everyone in, the club, especially when these are the first questions in an in-

terview.

Questions like these defy Bicker’s purpose. Bicker, as plainly stated by Ivy, is supposed to be “a good and fun way for ivy [sic] members to get to know you.” If Bicker is supposed to assess students’ personalities; it shouldn’t matter who they know in Ivy, what their favorite Tower party is, or whether they have a Cottage “crush. “ Prior experience at a club has no bearing whatsoever on one’s personality — which is what the clubs claim to be valuing. If those are the claims about the process, then these types of questions shouldn’t be asked during Bicker.

Second, eating clubs should assess students more fairly by requiring that each bickeree have an equal number of interviews with different club members. TI, Cannon, and Cottage have systems without a set number of interviews, and they vary erratically in length.

While Tower mandates that students attend at least three Bicker sessions, students can meet more members by going to additional sessions.

These systems give students an unequal number of members who can vouch for or against them. Should someone get stuck with a member who likes to talk a lot, it puts him at a disadvantage in comparison to other bickerees who have more interviews.

By contrast, Ivy’s standard ten interview system is egalitarian. It ensures that all bickerees meet the same

vol. cxlii

But beyond this, academic integrity should not be something that keeps innocent students up at night.

Unfortunately, because the CoD deals with sensitive and confidential situations, it cannot be as open and transparent as one might like. But as someone who’s seen the Committee in action, I can at least say I believe that we do a good job. The CoD has enough work to do as is, and we’re not interested in punishing students who’ve done nothing wrong.

On a committee like the CoD, our ultimate fantasy is to be irrelevant. I wish that students never plagiarized, and I wish we never had to suspend students for any reason. I don’t know why students copy code and think they can get away with it. Your COS professors are very good at what they do, and chances are you can’t get away with it.

There are many permissible sources of help available for students taking COS, including lab teaching assistants, office hours, Piazza, and properly acknowledged friends and tutors. If these aren’t enough, submitting an unfinished assignment isn’t the end of the world.

You can get a passable grade even with code that fails most of the tests. And so I’d like to make a special plea as we begin a new semester. If you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed, your code just won’t compile, and you’re all out of late days, I feel your pain, and I wish you the best of luck. But it’s just not worth it to jeopardize your future by shortcutting the rules. Don’t copy code.

Caleb South is a junior concentrator in Mathematics from South Jordan, Utah. He can be reached at csouth@princeton. edu.

editor-in-chief

Marcia Brown ’19 business manager

Ryan Gizzie ’19

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

number of members. Their system also prolongs interviews so that they move beyond superficial impressions and into genuine conversations. Cap has a more open alternative to Ivy. A member told me that it employs a numerical queue for the bickerees to meet members equitably. As the other eating clubs reassess their Bicker processes, they ought to consider standardizing the number of interviews.

Officers from TI, Cap, Cottage, and Cannon had not responded to requests for verification or comment at the time of publishing.

Third, the practice of double bicker — when two club members interview two bickerees simultaneously (not to be confused with Double Bicker where a sophomore bickers two eating clubs) — should end.

Invariably, the double bickers that other sophomore sources and I experienced all devolved into one of two outcomes. Either the bickerees competed to see who could be the “coolest,” or the members talked to each other the entire time and heard little from the bickerees.

Double bicker doesn’t help anyone. For the bickerees, it puts them in a highpressure socially awkward situation where they’re being directly compared to a classmate. Conversely, club members can’t accurately assess the bickerees’ personalities because they are hindered by either the other bickeree or themselves. While it’s true that group discussions are im-

head street editor Jianing Zhao ’20 associate street editors Danielle Hoffman ’20 Lyric Perot ’20 digital operations managerSarah 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

NIGHT STAFF copy Caroline Lippman ’19 Lydia Choi ’21 Elizabeth Parker ’21 Rachel Hazan ’21 Ally Dalman ‘20 Christian Flores ‘21 Elizabeth Bailey ’21

portant when eating meals together, it’s impossible to fairly assess how bickerees converse in such a setting because of the unique social pressures under which they are acting in Bicker.

Bicker is — and always will be — an imperfect system. It can, however, be improved so that students can compete on a level playing field. When Bicker returns again this fall, hopefully the eating clubs will make it fairer and more open for all students.

This is the first in a series of articles about improving Princeton’s eating clubs.

Liam O’Connor is a sophomore from Wyoming, Del. He can be reached at lpo@princeton.edu.

Wednesday February 21, 2018

Opinion

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Born, again Stop shootings: repeal the second ammendment This article is part of a reoccuring column on politics and pedagogy at Princeton.

For hyperlinks, please see the online article.

Feb. 14, 2018: the United States of America experienced its latest school shooting. 17 dead, 14 injured.

Dec. 14, 2012: Sandy Hook Elementary School suffered 26 dead, 20 children and six educators.

April 20, 1999: the Columbine High School Massacre, with 15 dead. Columbine was nearly 20 years ago. Sandy Hook was six years ago, and since Sandy Hook, over 400 have died in school shootings. What has been done?

Nothing.

I am confident that there is no gun control proposal that will pass through a Republican Congress or through Republican state capitals. For years, we have seen incredibly modest attempts at gun control legislation foiled, even gun control legislation that seems like common sense to almost anyone. Take, for example, a proposal following the Orlando Florida Pulse nightclub shooting to keep people on terrorist watch lists from buying guns. It failed. Or an Obama-era proposal (rejected by the Republican Congress and President Trump) to prevent the mentally ill who are on Social Security support to buy weapons. How about a measure to keep people with previous convictions on the national background check system in order to prevent them from purchasing guns? Failed.

Not even the idea of selfpreservation is enough for Congress — in the past decade, there have been two shootings of congressmen and women: Gabrielle Giffords in 2011 and Republican congressman Steve Scalise in 2017. Nothing happened. I bring up these failures because I want to make a point clear: there is no such thing as the possibility of “modest” gun control.

So, I won’t waste your time or mine trying to come up with some subtle way to regulate guns that might slip by Republicans and the National Rifle Association (NRA). There is no modest middle ground to occupy. There is no centrist approach, no practical compromise. In fact, even now, Republicans and the NRA are working to expand access to guns in anyway possible. Since automatic weapons bans are totally off the table, why bother with the small fish? There’s no point in going for anything less than the absolute best outcome. Here’s my “modest” proposal: repeal the Second Amendment and ban firearms.

Let me flesh out the proposal a little bit. When I say “ban firearms,” I mean that firearms should be heavily, but reasonably, restricted, to the point where private individual ownership of firearms should be impossible. I am not unreasonable; I see that there are needs for firearms for armed forces and for environmental control (culling deer for sport and perhaps even recreation). None of these needs, however, is

inconsistent with severe restrictions and controls.

Shooting ranges, for example, might be required to keep all owners’ guns on premises at all times, with paper trails, inspections, and lists ensuring that they stay there. After intense background checks, professionals may be allowed to have access to firearms to deal with agricultural problems; these weapons would also be highly monitored. But in essence, no individual would just own a gun. And this is why we need to repeal the Second Amendment for this to happen: if the Second Amendment

distinction between automatic and semi-automatic weapons. An automatic weapon means you just hold down the trigger, a semi-automatic requires you to pull the trigger each time. Thus, automatic weapons have a greater rate of fire since the weapon can physically fire itself much faster than you can pull the trigger.

But consider that a mere automatic weapons ban, as a prominent Republican donor has argued, would be insufficient. Semi-automatic weapons are still very dangerous, even with a lower rate of fire. Consider that you can pull

problem and the paucity of response is part of the reason why I and others consider the NRA to be the most successful civil rights organization of all time. Some may be confused by my description of the NRA as a civil rights organization, but after all, that’s what it is. Civil rights are rights given to us by the government. We often think of civil rights as things such as voting, but we have other civil rights as well. Our most famous enumeration of civil rights comes from our Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment is inter-

DORA ZHAO’ 19

protects individual rights to firearms, it would prevent such restrictions from taking place, and such restrictions are crucial to prevent firearm-related deaths.

The rationale behind banning firearms is simple: guns are designed to kill people. The first guns were hand cannons used in warfare. We then refined them into the arquebus and eventually the musket. After that, we had rifles and then the machine gun. Someone made the machine gun smaller and handheld, resulting in the submachine gun. Combining the submachine gun and the rifle got us to the assault rifle.

The assault rifle is a source of particular controversy. Our armed forces use assault rifles. The M16 was and now the M4 Carbine is the weapon of choice of the Army and the Marines. M16 is the military designation for the AR-15. The AR-15 is a favorite of Americans and a favorite of mass-shooters.

The AR-15 has an effective range of 550 meters, and a maximum range six times that. It has a muzzle velocity of 960 meters per second.

To put that into perspective, one could theoretically stand on the northern shore of Lake Carnegie, and a shooter could hit you from the southern shore less than five seconds after pulling the trigger. Once the bullet has entered your body, it would be designed to impart as much kinetic energy as possible, shredding your internal organs and killing you. The AR15 is both readily available (people have bought them in about five minutes) and the weapon of choice in mass shootings. So certainly, we ought not to let people have these assault rifle-type weapons.

A lot of people then argue that a good way to limit gun deaths would be by banning automatic weapons. There is often a

triggers very fast, and automatic fire isn’t as effective as semi-automatic fire anyway; hence, restricting automatic weapons in favor of semi-automatics would not necessarily accomplish much more than doing nothing. Moreover, I assure you, a semi-automatic AR-15 will kill you just as easily as an automatic AR-15 will. In other words, what a civilian can own and what the military uses are equally as dangerous.

Okay, then maybe we can just ban semi-automatic weapons as well. But even this wouldn’t be enough.

Even restricting access to pump-action shotguns, handguns, or bolt-action rifles would provide plenty of opportunities to use guns to kill: even boltaction rifles can still fire surprisingly fast in skilled hands.

Semi-automatic pistols are also very common in mass shootings, as well as more “mundane” shootings seen in homicides. When you put all this together, you see that yes, some types of guns are obviously more dangerous than others, but all types of guns are still incredibly dangerous, and hence, a partial ban on some types of firearms while ignoring others would not achieve satisfactory public benefit.

All told, between 1968 and 2011, more people died domestically from firearms than in every war fought by the United States: 1.4 million firearm deaths to 1.2 million war deaths. Imagine I told you that a disease endemic to the United States had killed 1.4 million people in less than 50 years, and moreover, nothing had been done to combat the disease. In most circumstances, it is almost impossible to imagine any other public health or national security threat of this magnitude that would go without substantial reform.

The magnitude of the

preted currently (though it was not always interpreted this way) to provide individuals with the civil right to bear arms. In essence, gun ownership is protected by the Constitution, and the NRA protects that interpretation of the constitution.

The Second Amendment was designed for a time when the country was won by patriots using the guns in their closets for hunting. I’ll grant that there was a time when having firearms was a useful tool to prevent tyranny from the government, or that the nation’s defense did rely on well-regulated militia. But those days are long gone. Our military is designed to fight against other great powers: an armed citizenry would lose against a tyrannical government with the full might of our armed forces behind it.

There is no other possible rationale for gun ownership that would legitimize the Second Amendment other than a civic necessity to prevent tyranny. Things like hunting, sport, or hobby are insufficient to ground a civic right in the Constitution, despite any pleasure someone would derive from them. Also, my proposal, as elaborated above, is not totally inconsistent with hunting, sport, or hobby that is properly regulated.

The point is, these are totally insufficient reasons to ground a civic right for firearms. Gun ownership is not as important as the right to a jury, nor the right to freedom of religion, nor the right to vote.

Arguments using gunownership as a means for self-defense are self-defeating. If everyone disarms, what would you use a gun to protect yourself from?

Thieves? I don’t think someone who steals your TV deserves to be shot. A TV is not worth a life. What about a criminal who threatens your life with

a weapon, perhaps even a contraband gun? First, consider that most people are woefully untrained, and will do poorly in a high stress situation like an active shooter situation or in a condition of self-defense.

Second, consider the psychological and moral implications of taking someone else’s life, even if in self-defense. What if you make a mistake? What if you hit someone who isn’t the assailant? Finally, note the implausibility of the “more guns makes people more safe approach,” which is often advocated to keep schools safer. Yes, if you arm a school’s teachers, it won’t be as much of a soft target. But how do you protect students when they are entering/exiting the buses? How do you protect students when they are at home? Do you keep guns at church? How many other soft targets are there, targets that aren’t armed and vulnerable to armed shooters. Must we give everyone a gun? And if everyone has a gun, how can we possibly trust that no one will make a mistake, or that no one will snap (imagine an armed teacher losing it), or that anyone else won’t use their gun on me? Much safer, and better, to just remove guns entirely. Eventually, if the police and other authorities did their job right, even criminals would have fewer guns.

My proposal doesn’t suggest that I don’t support gun control that comes short of repealing the Second Amendment and banning the individual use of firearms. I naturally think that any gun control we could manage would be better than what we have now. I’m all for a ban on bump stocks, automatic weapons, better criminal background checks. And if those things in combination managed to stop shootings and reduce gun deaths to something close to zero, I’d be happy. But I don’t think we’ll ever stop gun violence without getting rid of guns.

There should not be any civic right to bear arms.

We ought to remove that notion from the Constitution. Guns kill. Can we reconcile this civic right to firearms with the human right to life? Consider how the Founders who wrote the Second Amendment also wrote the following: that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

But in the end, these are contradictory notions: they cannot both exist at the same time. There cannot be a right to guns and a right to life. Gun rights are rights against life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Guns kill, maim, destroy. Gun rights alienate rights that cannot be alienated. In this light, guns may be the least American thing of all. Stop shootings; revoke the Second Amendment.

Ryan Born is a junior in the philosophy department.

He can be reached at rcborn@ princeton.edu.

Sports

Wednesday February 21, 2018

page 6

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } MEN’S LACROSSE

Men’s Lacrosse opens season with dramatic win against Monmouth

By Owen Tedford Staff Writer

Last Saturday, the men’s lacrosse team played its first game of the season, and it was a very exciting start. No. 18 Princeton came out on top 9–8 in a double overtime win against Monmouth. This was the first time that these two teams have ever played, mainly because the Hawks’ men’s lacrosse program is only five years old. Despite its short history, Monmouth has had tremendous success, including a MAAC championship and NCAA tournament appearance last year.

The Tigers started the game strong, going into halftime with a 5–1 lead.

Princeton’s goals were scored by junior attack Dawson McKenzie, sophomore attack Phillip Robertson (who scored two), freshman midfield Chris Brown, and senior midfield Austin Sims. McKenzie and Robertson’s first goals were both assisted by sophomore attack Michael Sowers. Brown assisted on Robertson’s goal and Sims’s goals.

The second half was a different story, with Monmouth rallying back to tie the score at 8–8 at the end of regulation. The Hawks scored four goals in the third period and three goals in the fourth peri-

od. A key play that sent the game to overtime was senior goalie Tyler Blaisdell’s save on Bryce Wasserman, Monmouth’s all-time leading scorer, in the last ten seconds of regulation.

Blaisdell had 17 saves on the day, a performance that earned him the first Ivy League Player of the Week award in 2018. Princeton’s second-half goals came from Sowers, Robertson, and Brown; Robertson’s goal was assisted by Brown.

In the first overtime, both goalies made a series of clutch saves to keep the game tied at 8–8. The second overtime saw Sowers get behind the net and set up senior midfield Riley Thompson on the backside.

Thompson, a three-year starter, had not attempted a shot all day up to that point, but that didn’t stop him from knowing what to do with the ball when he buried it in the back of the net.

Beyond Blaisdell’s performance, two important things to note for the Tigers were Brown’s collegiate debut with two goals and three assists and Robertson’s three goals in his first collegiate start. Sowers, despite only having one goal, remained active with three assists, extending his streak of putting up at least two points in every game of his career.

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Princeton Goalie Tyler Blaisdell was stellar in the team’s Saturday victory over Monmouth .

Up next, Princeton has two important and tough road tests as the Tigers try to move up from No. 18 in the NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Rankings. First, this Saturday, Princeton will head

down to Charlottesville to take on No. 6 Virginia.

Next, the Tigers will again travel south, this time to Baltimore, to take on No. 14 Johns Hopkins on March 3. Finally, Princeton will

have just two more nonconference games, against NJIT on March 6 and Rutgers on March 10, before beginning its Ivy League schedule at home against Penn on March 17.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

THE

AROUND I V I E S

By Chris Murphy

Head Sports Editor

Princeton đ&#x;“ˇ (19–4 overall, 9–1 Ivy): Winning 3 straight Ivy games this past week, the Tigers maintain their one-game lead for the top spot in the conference. After sweeping the season series against the Quakers, however, that lead is essentially a two games. The Tigers will be heading to their second straight appearance in the Ivy League Tournament if they win one of their games this weekend.

1.

2.

Penn đ&#x;“ˇ (17–6 overall, 8–2 Ivy): The Quakers — the preseason favorite to win the conference according to the Ivy League Digital Network — have impressed this season and dominated every team in the conference except the Tigers. With two huge games coming up this weekend against Dartmouth and Harvard, the Quakers clinch a spot in the tournament with either two wins or one win and a Harvard/Dartmouth/Yale loss.

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Dartmouth đ&#x;“ˇ (14–9 overall, 6–4 Ivy): After sweeping the season series with Yale, the Big Green is locked in a footrace with the other two to see who can finish the season with a better conference record. The season for them has become condensed to four games; win three or four of them and they are likely in the tournament. But they have their work cut out for them this weekend as they take on the top 2 teams in the league.

Harvard đ&#x;“ˇ (14–9 overall, 6–4 Ivy): Just like the Big Green, the Crimson finds itself deadlocked in a three-way tie for third, having split the season series with the other two teams. They are in the exact same position as Dartmouth and also face both Princeton and Penn this weekend. For these final two home games, Harvard is going to need to give everything it’s got.

Yale đ&#x;“ˇ (13–10 overall, 6–4 Ivy): Yale also split the season series with Harvard and Dartmouth and currently has an identical conference record. Yet now it stands on the outside looking in due to that extra non-conference loss. As a result, they may need to win one more than the other teams over this four-game stretch if they are to make the top four. Fortunately for them, they close out their home schedule this week with winnable games against Cornell and Columbia.

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Brown đ&#x;“ˇ (14–9 overall, 2–8 Ivy): What started out as a season full of promise has turned into a massive dumpster fire for the Bears. They have only two conference wins this season despite being 12–1 heading into league play. With plenty of talent on the offensive side of the ball, the Bears have been victimized by inconsistent play of the league’s worst defense. They’ll look to beat up on Cornell and Columbia this weekend at home before closing at Princeton & Penn.

7.

Cornell đ&#x;“ˇ (6–17 overall, 2–8 Ivy): The Big Red has had the Ivy League’s worst offense this season, which has been the biggest reason for its current seventh place spot. A game against Brown this weekend gives it its final opportunity to win head-to-head against the bottom Ivy teams. Cornell still has a chance to finish sixth in the league, but it could also drop into last place.

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Tweet of the Day “It’s official! PWT is ranked #25 in the ITA National Team Rankings!!�

Princeton Tennis (@PrincetonTennis)

Stat of the Day

13 Number of Tigers who have won Ivy League Rookie of the Year Honors in Men’s Squash, after Youssef Ibrahim was awarded the honor Tuesday.

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