The Daily Princetonian: Class of 2025 First-year Issue

Founded 1876 daily since 1892 online since 1998

Tuesday July 20, 2021 vol. CXLV no. 47

Twitter: @princetonian Facebook: The Daily Princetonian YouTube: The Daily Princetonian Instagram: @dailyprincetonian

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

DESIGN: ASHLEY CHUNG / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN COURTESY OF THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN STAFF AND @PRINCETON INSTAGRAM

W E L C O M E T O

P R I N C E T O N

page 2

The Daily Princetonian

Tuesday July 20, 2021

Tuesday July 20, 2021 vol. CXLV no. 47

Founded 1876 daily since 1892 online since 1998

Twitter: @princetonian Facebook: The Daily Princetonian YouTube: The Daily Princetonian Instagram: @dailyprincetonian

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

Letter from the

EDITOR

DESIGN: MARK DODICI / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Emma Treadway, Editor-in-Chief

Letter from the Editor: The People behind the ‘Prince’ The summer before my first year, I was full of questions about the people I was about to meet.

Princeton students and professors felt superhuman, and the world they inhabited out of reach; I didn’t know what business I had entering it. I kept asking myself, “who are all these people?”

But that’s just it — they’re just people. They’re extraordinary, but in many ways, they are overwhelmingly ordinary. My professors, though brilliant, went home every day to kids and a dog. My classmates, though ambitious, were secretly asking all the same questions about who these people were, and how they could ever fit in.

And so, I’d come to the not-so-outlandish fact of the matter — we’re all just people, with similar wants and passions and fears. And that’s how I came to journalism. With journalism, you’re telling the story of people; you’re stripping back the stereotypes and misconceptions to reveal the very real person beneath. No matter the identity or background, we are all people, and we are further united by our capacity to empathize.

This is the kind of work we care about at the ‘Prince.’ Whether we are interviewing transgender alumni on their Princeton experience or investigating misconduct on campus, we deal in stories — and we are uniquely positioned and deeply responsible for those narratives we choose to raise. We seek to foster that empathy and elevate stories from all corners of our campus and community, especially those which have been historically undercovered. We hold institutions of power accountable, while also working to humanize those in power — because behind every policy, there is a person, and it is our job to seek that person out and understand them.

This sort of work — this storytelling — impacts how we carry ourselves as students on campus and as leaders in the world. Yet we cannot humanize those we cover unless we have first humanized ourselves and those around us.

So, at the ‘Prince,’ we commit to being “people first, journalists and creators second.” We cannot, in good faith, cover our campus with respect

and compassion if we do not first prioritize that respect and compassion in our newsroom. At the ‘Prince,’ you can tell your story through podcasting, photography, reporting, or opining, and you can tell it in a space that values you and your work. You need no experience to join the ‘Prince,’ and we welcome your talents regardless of background.

On a personal note, the ‘Prince’ is truly the best part of my Princeton experience. It has molded me into a better writer and a stronger leader. It has emboldened me to tell my story — to be vulnerable and to be human — and it has tested me endlessly. As you join the Princeton community this year, I urge you: come tell your story, and help others tell theirs.

See you soon, Emma Emma Treadway is editor-in-chief of The Daily Princetonian. She can be reached at eic@dailyprincetonian.com. Please reach out with any and all questions.

APRIL 2021

U. admits record-low 3.98% of applicants in historic admissions cycle

JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

By Albert Jiang

News Editor Emeritus

On Tuesday, April 6 at 7 p.m.

EDT, the University formally extended offers of admission to 1,498 students for the class of 2025 amid a historic application cycle upended by the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented disruptions to high school coursework.

The decisions represent a recordlow acceptance rate of 3.98 percent and the sharpest year-to-year drop in over a decade. Due to over 200 students formerly in the class of 2024 requesting to defer their enrollment by one year over the summer, the total number of admits is around 20 percent lower than it would otherwise be in an ordinary year.

With the temporary suspension of standardized test score requirements and elimination of the Early Action application option this cycle, all 37,601 applications received were submitted through the Regular Decision process. This record-breaking pool represents an increase of 4,765 over the previous year — or 14.5 percent — and a 6.5 percent increase over the previous record set in 2018 by the class of 2022. The increase also surpasses the 11 percent spike in applications across the board reported by the Common App this year.

Dean of Admission Karen Richardson ’93 attributed the increase in applications partially to greater outreach through virtual visits despite the interruption in Universitysponsored travel.

“We were able to reach more high schools — and probably more and different students that we might have had we been physically on the road,” she told The Daily Princetonian in an interview.

The Admission Office reported 574 virtual visits in the past year, including to 387 schools that were not visited in the previous year.

Though the early action admission program will be reinstated for next year’s cycle, the suspension of the standardized testing requirement will be maintained for applicants seeking admission to the class of 2026. However, Richardson says there is no intention to make this change permanent.

“We still see standardized testing as one important piece of a holistic process,” Richardson explained.

“It’s not the only piece, but it can be very helpful to us to help predict how students will thrive here academically.”

She continued, saying that the holistic process employed by the admission team — which places each student in their “individual context” — is more important than ever given the variable academic and extracurricular disruptions experienced by students.

“There was an opportunity for students to talk about the disruption that COVID-19 had on their academics or their extracurricular or on family,” Richardson said. “And so we definitely made sure to read those pieces of an application before we even go into everything else.”

The Office of Admission also considered the context of the high school students attended more broadly according to Richardson, looking at average scores at specific schools and whether students had access to standardized test preparation services, among other factors.

“We also, as we do every year, paid special attention to teacher recommendations, where schools were given the opportunity to tell us how things within the school have changed,” Richardson said.

The pandemic also impacted how the admissions team considered extracurricular activities.

“A lot of what students might have been doing in their first year, in their second year, and even in their third year in high school, they just weren't able to do this year,” Richardson said. “And again, that was okay.”

In light of the challenges resulting from the pandemic, Richardson said she believes it has only “reinforced the importance of holistic admission” and the importance of “taking the full student and everything that is presented to us … into consideration.”

Though peer institutions like Harvard and Yale continued to offer an early admission cycle — and saw even larger jumps in applicant numbers — Richardson stood by Princeton’s decision to suspend its process as the “right thing for us to do.”

“We realized that going into the fall, it was going to be difficult for seniors and their teachers and their counselors to be able to put together their best applications by November 1st,” she said, adding that it would be difficult for students to have access to their teachers and for counselors to write letters of recommendation and prepare transcripts.

“A number of high school counselors actually thanked us for deciding not to have our Early Action round this year because they didn't have access to their students,” Richardson added.

She also pushed back against the widespread perception that schools are trying to maximize application numbers and minimize acceptance rate.

“Our goal is never to just drive up the number of applications in order to say no to more people and drive

down the admission rate,” Richardson said. “If anything, we are trying to get the word out to students who might not think about Princeton as being an opportunity for them.”

She added that virtual recruitment this year allowed for the admission team to access more rural areas — and to areas with students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

“When we're thinking about recruitment, we’re thinking about how we can get the word out to people who might not know about Princeton, and the generous financial aid and the support that we give to students in order to ensure they can be successful here,” Richardson said.

Applicants this year come from 12,298 high schools across 164 countries, while the admits hail from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as 73 other countries.

International students comprise 14 percent of the total admitted population and 64 percent of students come from public schools.

Nearly 100 students were admitted in December of last year through the QuestBridge National College Match program, which the University recently transitioned to a binding process.

Of the admitted students, 52 percent are women and 48 percent are men. Twenty-four percent of admitted students indicated they want to study engineering, 15 percent expressed interest in the humanities, and seven percent are undecided. Ten percent of the admitted students are children of Princeton alumni. Sixty-eight percent of U.S. citizens and permanent residents admitted self-identified as people of color, including biracial and multiracial students.

Richardson acknowledged that the large overlap in applicants with Ivy League peer institutions — many of which have seen even larger increases due to their Early Action rounds — will make it even more difficult than ever to predict the yield as well as the size of their waitlist.

Throughout the month of April, admitted students will be invited to join a private admitted student community and engage with future classmates, current students, faculty, and staff in discussion groups.

Students and their families will also be invited to attend virtual events such as panels, an activities fair, and walking tours hosted by Orange Key. “We’re giving our current students the microphone to talk about why they chose Princeton,” said Mary Alexander, program coordinator of First-Year Orientation and First-Year Families Weekend. “Different groups on campus will have the opportunity to really showcase the activities that they do, and the talents that they have on campus.”

Alexander added that there are also opportunities for admits to have one-on-one conversations with current students, and special programming for families where parents and guardians can “ask the questions that they wouldn't necessarily want to ask in front of their student.”

“We’re doing our best to really give students the opportunity to learn as much about our campus as they can,” she added. “And we’re excited about it.”

Admitted students will have until May 3 to make a decision. Students offered a place on the waitlist will have until the same date to accept their spot on the list.

page 4

The Daily Princetonian

Tuesday July 20, 2021

The Daily Princetonian

Tuesday July 20, 2021 M AY 2 0 2 1

JUNE 2020

U. to divest from certain sectors of fossil fuel industry

U. renames Woodrow Wilson School, Wilson College

By Zachary Shevin, Evelyn Doskoch, and Sam Kagan

Managing Editor, Head News Editor, and Assistant News Editor

JUSTIN CAI / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Students at a Divest Princeton rally in April 2021.

By Anika Buch

Assistant News Editor

Following over a year of deliberation, the University will conditionally divest from certain elements of the fossil fuel industry.

On May 27, the University Board of Trustees announced that Princeton will divest and disassociate from the thermal coal and tar sands segments of the fossil fuel industry, as well as companies currently involved in climate disinformation. The University will also work towards making its $26.6 billion endowment carbon neutral.

The combustion of thermal coal produces significantly more carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels. Likewise, the extraction and production process of tar sands oil produces significantly higher emissions than crude oil. Businesses involved in the thermal coal and tar sands sectors will be exempt from dissociation only provided that they are compliant with a soon-to-be-established University standard for greenhouse gas emissions.

Dissociation from certain companies based on the set criteria would also apply to research partnerships, though the University announcement indicates that dissociation would still permit partnerships “aimed at improving a company’s conduct or standards so that dissociation is no longer necessary.”

“These steps, taken by the University’s Board of Trustees, are the result of a thoughtful process around the question of fossil fuel dissociation that included input from stakeholders across the campus community,” the Office of Communications wrote in the announcement.

The University at large aims to attain net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2046, as laid out in its preexisting Sustainability Action Plan.

However, a target date for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions within the endowment has yet to be determined. Likewise, interim check-in points have yet to be set.

In order to take administrative actions towards the new strategy, the Board of Trustees will determine “what expert input is needed to establish, implement and sustain actionable criteria” for dissociation from oil and gas assets and companies involved in climate disinformation.

Additionally, the University intends to examine its endowment to determine its holistic carbon footprint. The committee will then advise the University on how to “reduce the aggregate harmful climate impact of Princeton’s direct and indirect holdings.”

With this announcement, the

University becomes the one of the last Ivy League institutions to announce steps to decarbonize its endowment.

Over 60 educational institutions in the United States have at least partially divested from the fossil fuel industry, according to Fossil Free.

Rutgers was the first New Jersey university to completely divest from fossil fuels in early March.

Within the Ivy League, Cornell University announced a moratorium on new investments in fossil fuels in May 2020, Brown University is selling its direct investments and managed funds focused on fossil fuels as of March 2020, and Columbia University announced it would not directly invest in publicly-traded oil and gas companies this past January — though the institution may make exceptions for companies with credible net-zero plans.

Yale also set standards for a partial divestment in April in a similar manner to the University’s plans — with guidelines that prohibit investment in companies that produce fossil fuels with high levels of emissions relative to the energy supplied like tar sands or thermal coal, undermine government policies on climate change, or provide inaccurate information about climate science.

The University of Pennsylvania announced over a year ago that it would no longer have direct investments in thermal coal or tar sands, the same high-carbon sectors the University will dissociate from, and recently announced a goal of having a net-zero endowment by 2050.

Harvard has also committed to making its endowment carbon neutral by 2050, a timeline some critics have deemed “insufficient,” while Dartmouth has not made any direct divestment commitment — though a spokesperson recently told The Dartmouth that the institution’s endowment has no direct holdings in any fossil fuel companies.

The Board of Trustees’ decision was reached after the CPUC Resources Committee, a body of faculty, undergraduate students, graduate students, and staff members created to “consider questions of general policy concerning the procurement and management of the University’s financial resources,” found evidence for all three criteria used to evaluate dissociation — sustained campus interest, investments in direct contradiction with a central University value, and consensus on how to respond within the University community. The Committee published its findings and recommendations in an early May report.

The announcement also came afSee DIVEST page 6

page 5 DESIGN: MARK DODICI / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Wilson College will both be renamed to omit reference to Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879, according to a University announcement on Saturday afternoon.

The Woodrow Wilson School will now be known as the “The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.” Wilson College, which had already been scheduled for retirement after the completion of two new residential colleges, will be known as “First College” for the remaining duration of its time as a residential facility.

Organizers for “Change WWS” — which called for the policy school’s renaming earlier this week — told The Daily Princetonian they “appreciate the University’s swift response” but demand more substantive action.

According to President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83, the decision took place at a June 26 “special meeting” attended by the Princeton University Board of Trustees on possible actions the University could take to “oppose racism.”

“The trustees concluded that Woodrow Wilson’s racist thinking and policies make him an inappropriate namesake for a school or college whose scholars, students, and alumni must stand firmly against racism in all its forms,” Eisgruber wrote.

In a statement to the policy school’s community, Dean Cecilia Rouse wrote that she “unequivocally” supports the decision.

“I have often been asked if not Wilson, then who should the School be named for?” she wrote. “I am glad we are not going down that path. Connecting the School to a certain person signals that the School stands for much of what the honoree believes. I feel that for a policy school to be the best, it has to be a place where a true diversity of backgrounds and beliefs exist.”

Eisgruber also penned an opinion piece in The Washington Post published Saturday evening, titled “I opposed taking Woodrow Wilson’s name off our school. Here’s why I changed my mind.”

“For me, the decision was wrenching but right,” he wrote. “Wilson helped to create the university that I love. I do not pretend to know how to evaluate his life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure. I do know, however, that we cannot disregard or ignore racism when deciding whom we hold up to our students as heroes or role models.”

The University’s Twitter account added soon after the announcement that “more information about how to request a revised diploma will be available soon.”

In April 2016, the University announced that both the residential college and policy school would continue to bear the Wilson name — rejecting a central demand that the Black Justice League (BJL) had raised the previous November. The Trustee Committee on Woodrow Wilson’s Legacy at Princeton made this recommendation, writing that “the University needs to be honest and forthcoming about its history.”

Following the committee’s recommendation, the University erected an installation, entitled “Double Sights,” to explore the former University president’s “complex legacy.” Over 200 students, alumni, and faculty members protested at the dedication in October — with speakers reiterating the BJL’s call to remove Wilson’s name from campus buildings.

In a statement to the ‘Prince’ on Thursday, University Spokesperson Ben Chang wrote that the Board of Trustees was discussing anti-racism initiatives, which would “provide the Board with an opportunity to consider the recommendations in the 2016 report on Woodrow Wilson’s legacy in light of current circumstances.” In his message to the campus community, Eisgruber stated that “the tragic killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Rayshard Brooks” played a role in renewed considerations of the University Trustees.

Eisgruber’s letter acknowledged the “complexity” of Wilson’s record, noting that “[p]eople will differ about how to weigh Wilson’s achievements and failures.” He noted that Wil-

son “remade Princeton, converting it from a sleepy college into a great research university,” and cited that many of the University’s distinguishing features, including its “research excellence” and the “preceptorial system” had their beginnings under Wilson’s leadership — a leadership which eventually lead him to the White House.

Yet Eisgruber made it clear that such achievements do not overshadow Wilson’s history of blatantly racist and segregationist policies.

During his time as University President, Wilson actively prevented Black applicants from matriculating, writing, “It is altogether inadvisable for a colored man to enter Princeton.”

He also infamously screened “The Birth of a Nation,” a racist film that the Ku Klux Klan used as a recruiting tool, in the White House. During his time in the Oval Office, Wilson also dismissed 15 of 17 previously appointed Black supervisors.

“Wilson is a different figure from, say, John C. Calhoun or Robert E. Lee, whose fame derives from their defenses of the Confederacy and slavery,” Eisgruber wrote. “Lee was often honored for the very purpose of expressing sympathy for segregation and opposition to racial equality. Princeton honored Wilson not because of, but without regard to or perhaps even in ignorance of, his racism.”

In their own collective statement, the Board of Trustees clarified, however, that Wilson’s name will not be removed from the Woodrow Wilson Award — the highest honor for an undergraduate alumnus or alumni conferred annually on Alumni Day. “The Woodrow Wilson Award, unlike either the College or the School, is the result of a gift. When the University accepted the gift, it took on a legal obligation to name the prize for Wilson and honor his “conviction that education is for ‘use’ and … the high aims expressed in his memorable phrase, ‘Princeton in the Nation’s Service,’“ they wrote. “The University will continue to recognize extraordinary public service by conferring the award as currently named.”

This past year’s recipient of the Wilson Award — American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Executive Director Anthony Romero ’87 — said at Alumni Day that the former President would be “spinning in his grave like an Olympic figure skater as an award in his name is bestowed on the executive director of an organization literally established to oppose a xenophobic, anti-immigrant, flagrantly unconstitutional Palmer Raids that he oversaw and engineered.”

The Trustees added that the Wilson Award “explicitly honors specific and positive aspects of Wilson’s career” and “unlike the School or the College, does not require students to identify with the Wilson name in connection with their academic or residential programs.”

In an email to students of the newly-named residential college, “Head of First College” AnneMarie Luijendijk wrote that for many community members “the association with Wilson’s name has been a constant minder of exclusionary practices.”

“This renaming has been a long time coming and would not have happened without our students,” Luijendijk noted, citing the Black Justice League’s 2015 protests and other recent displays of student activism against the Wilson name.

Luijendijk emphasized the democratic nature of the college’s founding — founded by a members of the Class of 1959 to provide a place “where individuals … could be accepted.”

“Our college was indeed the first of the residential colleges at Princeton, founded by a group of students expressly to be an inclusive community.

I encourage you to take a look again at the history of the college: students established our community, and drew the template for the Princeton residential college system,” she wrote. “I have always found that part of our history very inspiring. Those values of inclusion and social justice still continue, and will continue to inform our community ideals and practices.”

Earlier this week, two groups of public policy students — comprising over three quarters of graduating undergraduate concentrators, over 60 percent of current concentrators, and more than 450 students and alumni of the master’s and Ph.D programs — sent two letters to University and

then-Wilson School administrators. While the first letter, drafted by Class of 2020 graduates, demanded the removal of Wilson’s name from the policy school, both letters emphasized substantive transformation over symbolic gesture.

“Even if you remove the name, that doesn’t mean anti-Black racism is going to go away on campus,” explained Harshita Rallabhandi GS in an interview earlier this week. “There are institutions out there without the names of white supremacists and who continue to be racist, you know?”

These letters also contain calls for the University to formally divest from private prison affiliates and pay reparations for its ties to slavery. The graduate-student-specific letter also called for the University to cut ties with the Princeton Police Department.

They also called for the hiring of more Black faculty, the addition of new courses focused on race and identity, the promotion of anti-racist research on campus, and both a graduate and undergraduate policy school curriculum that teaches about race more effectively.

“Our administration and our faculty are responsible for bringing that into the classroom — being humble and doing the urgent learning they need to do to more urgently teach us what we need to learn,” noted domestic policy student Clarke Wheeler GS. “At the end of the day, in 2020, not including the phrases like ‘institutionalized racism’ — or ‘racism’ in general — in the coursework no matter what the course is — seems inexcusable.”

In a statement to the ‘Prince’ this morning, the authors of the undergraduate petition wrote on behalf of the “Change WWS” organization that “while we appreciate the University’s swift response, changing the name of the School was one small part of our list of demands, which emphasizes the need for transformative change in the School — to pedagogy, faculty, programming, scholarly recognition, and anti-discrimination procedures.”

“We demand that the School live up to the task of its mission as a school of policy ‘in the service of humanity,’” they continued, “and contribute its resources and research to the work of redressing and repairing Princeton’s history in slavery, the prison-industrial complex, segregation, and displacement. Moreover, these demands are only the first step in cultivating truly anti-racist futures in scholarship, research, and students’ experiences at Princeton.”

Eisgruber’s letter emphasized that while the “steps taken yesterday by the Board of Trustees are extraordinary measures,“ they are not the only steps “our University is taking to combat the realities and legacy of racism.”

“I join the trustees in hoping that they will provide the University, the School of Public and International Affairs, and our entire community with a firm foundation to pursue the mission of teaching, research, and service that has defined our highest aspirations and generated our greatest achievements throughout our history and today.”

On Monday, Eisgruber formally charged every member of the University’s Cabinet — the institution’s senior-most academic and administrative leaders, including School of Public and International Affairs Dean Cecilia Rouse — “to identify specific actions that can be taken in their areas of responsibility.” Cabinet members have until Aug. 21 to prepare reports on how the University can fight racism within their spheres of campus operations.

“As President Eisgruber told the Cabinet, Princeton has a responsibility to stand up against racism and to bring its scholarly and teaching resources to bear to create a more just and equal society,” Chang noted. “The President has signaled that every aspect of the University’s life – from teaching to research to operations to partnerships – can and must address these issues.”

A number of individuals affiliated with the University and the former Wilson School, including professors and prominent alumni, were quick to announce their excitement online, taking to Twitter just moments after the change was announced, while others — like Senator Ted Cruz ’92 — seemed to express their discontent.

To see how members of the First College community reacted to the name change, find the Rapid Reactions video at frosh.dailyprincetonian.com.

The Daily Princetonian

page 6

MARCH 2021

Tuesday July 20, 2021

DESIGN: MARK DODICI / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

‘We are not your model minority’

Hundreds protest Asian hate, remember victims at local rally

JUSTIN CAI / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

By Anika Buch and Isabella Shutt Assistant News Editor and Staff Writer

“Our existence is resistance,” said Sadaf Jaffer, former mayor, current Chair of the Inclusion & Equity Committee in Montgomery Township, and Postdoctoral Researcher in the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), at a Stop Asian Hate rally and vigil in Princeton this weekend. It was held to condemn the recent acts of violence against members of the Asian and Asian American community as well as to emphasize America’s long history of anti-Asian sentiment.

On March 27 at 1 p.m., hundreds of people gathered at Hinds Plaza for the rally. Protesters, who were instructed to be socially distant by organizers, appeared spread out and masked. Along with stickers

and incense sticks, the organizers distributed extra masks, while emphasizing a social distancing protocol.

The event began with a speech from Reverend Robert Moore from the Coalition for Peace Action, who concluded, “We’re here to say no to that hate, no to that violence, and yes to peace.”

After a prayer led by Pastor Mia Chang of NextGen Church, the director of the Asian American Program at Princeton Theological Seminary, David Chao listed the names of the eight victims killed by a gunman during the March 16 attacks on spas in Atlanta, Georgia: Daoyou Feng, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Paul Andre Michels, Soon Chung Park, Xiaojie Tan, Delaina Ashley Yaun, and Yong Ae Yue. He spoke briefly of each of the victims, including the family members they left behind, before asking the crowd to observe one minute of silence in remembrance of the lives lost.

As outdoor diners nearby slowly quieted their conversations and birds chirped overhead, the crowd became collectively silent.

Jasmine UengMcHale, a local clinical psychologist, was tasked with moving the group forward. She led a meditation, which she hoped would “ground us, free our energy, and rally our resources.”

Ueng-McHale asked attendees to look inward and give space to their emotions before looking outward to those around them as “one community, resolved and ready for the work ahead.”

Following the meditation, Ueng-McHale led the crowd in a chant: “We feel our worth. We feel our power. We are enough. Love will prevail.”

Speaking to the worth and power of the Asian and Asian American community,

Jennifer Lee ’23 and Kesavan Srivilliputhur ’23, co-presidents of the Asian American Students Association (AASA), emphasized the role of education in upholding and dismantling systems of oppression.

“For decades upon decades Asian Americans have been silenced — no, erased — from the textbooks of American history.

Forgotten. Cast aside. Invisible. To my fellow Asian Americans, now is the time to seek visibility,” Lee declared.

Lee and Srivilliputhur argued that visibility in history education and places of power are necessary steps toward ensuring that future students no longer experience such anguish.

Lee spoke directly to the University community, urging them to take a stand and to take up space.

“We must stand united, and we must be seen,” she said.

She went on to describe the hurt perpetuated by continued silence.

“To be quite frank with you, it is terrifying to just be an Asian American woman right now,” said Lee. “To those that uphold this system of oppression, may we remind you your silence is deafening.”

Srivilliputhur emphasized the importance of standing in solidarity with the Asian and Asian American community during this time and detailed his own experiences with racism as a Desi American.

“Despite well over a century of history within the U.S., we are still often treated as perpetual foreigners. Growing up in a primarily white suburb in Texas, I often faced this as my classmates told me that my lunch smelled weird or as their parents asked me where I was really from.”

Jaffer, who teaches in the University’s South Asian Studies program, shared her own experiences with exclusion and hatred.

After being elected to public office, Jaffer said her opponent posted on social media, “I was born in this country and some Indian’s gonna tell me what to do?”

Zoey Nuland, a Chinese American eighth grader at Princeton Unified Middle School, shared a poem expressing her own sentiments of anger toward the recent

acts of violence.

“It’s funny that you feel a need to speak and breathe about how disgraceful a culture and group of people are when the truth is you are just unhappy about how far our normal is from yours,” said Nuland in her poem.

Sam Wang, a University professor in the neuroscience department, called for New Jersey’s diverse community of Asian Americans to unite with similar groups who are also interested in yielding increasing political power for the increasing Asian American population.

Vice President for Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun, who attended the protest, echoed this emphasis on unity.

“I believe hate and violence in any community can only be fought through solidarity for all of our community,” she said. “And while this is very specifically about Asian hate, I want to stand in solidarity with my Asian brothers and sisters as an African American woman.”

Throughout the protest, speakers combatted the myth of the “model minority,“ which members of the Asian and Asian American community have grappled with throughout their history.

“We are not your model minority. We never have been and we never will be. By no means are Asians a monolith — far from it,” said Lee. Many, including Jaffer, called for increased education in schools pertaining to cultural competency and racial literacy to combat racism. Professor Beth Lew-Williams, who was praised by Lee and Srivilliputhur for her work at the University, outlined major moments of oppression and triumph in Asian American history, urging other educators to make visible the community’s contributions over time.

“To be racially literate is educational excellence,” continued Princeton High School Assistant Principal Cecilia Birge. “It is important that we disrupt this hate.

And it starts with clearly creating environments where education matters more than anything we do on any given day.”

Diego Solorio ’24 described the protest as “very empowering.”

“I hope that after this movement, Asian Americans group

together with people of color to rise above racism in general,” said Solorio.

Several speakers emphasized that their work will not end with a single protest. They argued that, on the road to equality, this was simply a crossroad.

Kirsten Pardo ’24, who attended the event with a classmate, said she hopes it starts conversations and begins the process of finding solutions.

“You have to acknowledge a problem first before you can actually fix it,” she explained, before sharing the importance of the event in demonstrating to Asian American students the power of the community that surrounds them.

Yingying Zhao, another event speaker, delivered a moving address to the crowd which was centered around the symbolism of her name.

“In America, this March, I texted my friend ‘What will kill me first: being a woman in America or being Asian?’ All he responded with was ‘I’m sorry,’ because we both knew the answer,” she said.

“Therefore, I say Yingying means ‘Listen to me America, this is your reckoning.’”

The protest was organized by several local organizations, including: the Princeton Chinese Community, Witherspoon-Jackson Neighborhood Association, Not in Our Town Princeton, Central Jersey Chinese American Association, New Jersey Vietnamese American Community Association, La Convivencia New Jersey, Latin American Legal Defense Fund, Unidad Latina en Acción New Jersey, United Chinese Americans New Jersey, The Coalition for Peace Action, The Racial Justice Taskforce of the Utilitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton, Rotary Club of Princeton, Princeton Human Services Commission, Princeton Progressive Chinese Association, Princeton Theological Seminary’s Asian American Program, Princeton University Chinese American Parents Association, Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Princeton University, The Montgomery Township Equity and Inclusion Committee, and String of Pearls Reconstructionist Synagogue.

Divesting from thermal coal and tar sands DIVEST

Continued from page 5

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

petition by Princeton Sustainable Investment Initiative encouraged the University to divest from direct and indirect holdings of fossil fuel companies and prohibit new financial relationships with fossil fuel companies. In 2019, the activist coalition Divest Princeton emerged and began pushing alumni to cease donations to the University until it divested from the industry. The group then delivered a formal petition calling for divestment to the steps of Nassau Hall in February 2020. They spearheaded

a related Undergraduate Student Government (USG) referendum in November 2020, in addition to continued organizing on campus.

While the University announcement does not represent the complete divestment from the industry that Divest Princeton had called for, the group’s leadership still considers the conditional dissociation to be beneficial.

“To the more than 2250 who signed No Donations Until Divestment, to former student organizers for divestment at Princeton, to the broader movement for climate justice around the world, together we have moved Princeton in the right direction,” representatives of Divest Princeton wrote in an email following the University

decision.

Divest Princeton leadership plans to continue its advocacy efforts and to push the University to set a definitive timeline for rendering the endowment carbon neutral. According to the email, the group will push for its members and climate experts to “have a seat at the table,” as well as calling for “deadlines” and “a meaningful definition of ‘net-zero.’”

“We will need to make sure that timeframes are ambitious and that the committee members are committed to climate action,” the group wrote.

Additionally, the group’s leaders have promised to push for rigorous screening of fossil-fuel companies for evidence of cli-

mate disinformation and an end to what the group described as Princeton’s “greenwashing” of companies — referring to the idea that the University’s collaboration with certain fossil fuel companies may give companies false credibility in the realm of sustainability.

“As well as being critical of the announcement, it is important to take a moment to recognize that this is a significant moment in Princeton’s history,” the Divest Princeton organizers added.

“We have all worked so hard on this, building on the organizing from activists from Princeton and around the world,” the organizers wrote. “Now, we must push Princeton to go the distance.”

Tuesday July 20, 2021

The Daily Princetonian

page 7

The Daily Princetonian

page 8

Tuesday July 20, 2021

Howdy, Tigers!

By: The Puzzles Section Across

1 Like some music at the Princeton Record Exchange 5 Force-ful knight, in a film series?

9 Taste that has some bite 13 Targets for a Bioré nose strip 15 Big Apple product 16 Really screw up 17 The incoming Class of ___ (to which this puzzle is dedicated) 19 ___ Mode, suit designer in "The Incredibles" 20 "Same here" 21 Type of car mirror that might have fuzzy dice hanging from it 23 Popular party night in Dec.: Abbr.

24 "The Fault in ___ Stars" 26 Department with a so-called "Rocks for Jocks" class, in brief 27 First-year Princeton support structure whose first word is often shortened to its last syllable 33 Astonish 36 Fencing sword 37 Comedian Eric 38 Roles in a play 40 Be nosy 41 "Hang ___" (surfer's saying) 42 Medium for the Princeton listservs 43 King of the jungle 45 Asia's ___ Sea

46 This puzzle's message to the incoming class 49 Words before "little teapot," in song 50 GPS info 51 "No more seats" sign 54 Place to buy a burrito or a bowl 59 Serena, to Venus 61 Surrounding glow 62 Mathey or Rocky, e.g., for short 64 Double-___ experiment, in physics 65 More than suspicious of 66 Justice Sotomayor (who graduated Princeton in 1976) 67 Simplicity 68 "The First ___" (holiday song) 69 Possible affliction for a vet, for short 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 Car make with four 47 Title for a chief nursing rings in its logo officer, maybe 11 3^2 48 Travels by sea, in a way 12 Nibble (on) 51 Tube used in heart surgery 14 Got up 52 Game show host Philbin 18 "___ Got a Friend in Me" 53 Mountain nymph of Greek ("Toy Story" song) myth Down Choose to join 22 Queenly 54 It can be cold or closed "Inconceivable!"

25 Disturbance on the 55 ___ hoop surface of a pond Oreo layer 56 Part of the eye 27 Foresee Bit of car bumper 57 Former late-night host Jay damage 28 Sans ___ (font type) 58 East, in Madrid Rival of Skippy 29 Famously glum donkey 60 Swine's supper Qatari leader 30 Fragrance (or stench) 63 The Rockies, on Buster's business 31 Bear up there? scoreboards partner in restaurant 32 Outermost part of a fruit arcades 33 Eject Animated film series with Scan to 34 Formerly wild Sid the sloth check 35 Eurasia's __ Mountains Host of "The Daily Show" your 39 Speed for sports (and honorary member answers! highlights, in brief of Princeton's Class of 44 "That's false!"

2021)

Tuesday July 20, 2021

Opinion

page 9

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

DESIGN: GIAO VU DINH / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

More than just a time difference: Reflections of an international student Won-Jae Chang

Associate Opinion Editor

A

14-hour time difference from Korea to Princeton is difficult, as anyone I’ve complained to about my sleep schedule can attest.

Yet being an international student in the age of COVID-19 means much more than a time difference.

Rather, what’s most frustrating is feeling different and oftentimes less important than our United States-based peers. The University must ensure better, equitable treatment of our international student body.

Perhaps what is most difficult about being an international student at this time is the feeling of being overlooked. Whenever I have a class past midnight or an event that is held at 4 a.m. local time, it is not just the time zone that presents an issue. It is also the mentality

that comes with feeling that you and your fellow international students have once again been overlooked in a decision that could well have been avoided by a simple adjustment.

Just because international students make up a minority of the student body does not mean that we should have to sacrifice sleep and life to avoid feeling excluded.

In his column about international students and club meeting times, Rohit Narayanan ’24 excellently points out that “real leadership doesn’t turn a blind eye to inequities for the sake of simplicity.” This statement especially holds true as we transition into a second semester. As we anticipate the different circumstances that will be brought to the table in the months to come, the University community has an opportunity and responsibility to address the shortcomings of a first semester online.

The inherent flaw with the cur-

rent approach is the importance that we place on the label “international student.” Rather than a classification based on citizenship, this label paints students living outside the United States with a broad stroke, and what feels like a new and separate identity. This is due in large part to the current hostility towards international students in the United States that has begun to take shape through increased xenophobia and resentment.

But it’s not just that which contributes to a feeling of otherness.

It’s the small, seemingly trivial things that have the largest impact. Between not having received the welcome packages that our American resident peers received months ago, to being unable to visit campus during fall break, these small differences accumulate to what ends up being a large impact.

Yes, we are international: that’s the label we are given for coming

ILLUSTRATION BY YEWON CHANG

from opposite ends of the world.

But before that, we’re simply students. Our passports might say South Korea, Brazil, or Kenya, but like all students, we applied to Princeton and rejoiced when we got in. We went through the same standardized exams and teenage melodrama, and still struggle through the same problem sets and cry through our papers. We are no different, and we deserve to be prioritized in the same way that students are.

There are many individuals in Princeton’s community who display this much-needed kindness and consideration. In my experience, many upperclassmen and student leaders have been generous and thoughtful when planning events or meetings; for instance, one of my club presidents messaged the international students in our group to ask us about meeting times she should avoid.

Many of my professors and preceptors have also been mindful about providing class times and office hours that are convenient for different time zones. These small acts of consideration go a long way: not only do they let us sleep at reasonable hours, they also demonstrate support for our student body.

Yet Princeton, as an institution, can still improve its treatment of the international student body.

While I recognize that it is impossible and unrealistic to push for changes in all class times, small changes such as keeping convenient precept times open for international students, or providing some priority in choosing precept times, would be a phenomenal way of showing support. For first-year students, it would be beneficial to provide more variety in class times for freshman seminars, instead of holding most classes between 1:30 p.m. and 4:20 p.m. eastern time, which is highly inconvenient for most East Asian time zones — where a large number of our inter-

national student body comes from, according to The Daily Princetonian’s freshman survey.

But more importantly, including the voice of international students when making decisions will be the most effective method in assisting us. Even if we cannot sway decisions or change policies as the relatively smaller group we are, our voices deserve to be better heard.

Perhaps international upperclassmen have more of a say in these matters than I myself experience, but the University must recognize that international first-years are undergoing many situations that are unique to our class. For example, many of us are unable to reside in the United States due to immigration policies, whereas upperclassmen are allowed to live inside the country and can thus minimize time zone differences.

Keep us in mind, and show that you value our voice: ask for our feedback, but not just once a semester; keep an open channel of communication. One way to do this is to create a committee of international students from different areas of the world that would report specific problems we face both specifically, and collectively.

I cannot speak on behalf of every international student, or even every international first-year. We are all in different situations. In addition, there are definitely students within the United States who undergo similar or even more difficult problems; this is not to undermine any of their struggles.

Still, this remains true: our international students deserve better treatment and more representation in decisions. I write not in criticism, but in a mere request for support during these difficult times.

Won-Jae Chang is a sophomore from New York and Seoul, South Korea. He can be found at wonjaec@princeton. edu.

‘A keener sense of sympathy’: The 2021 valedictory speech Taishi Nakase

Guest Contributor

A

It is one of the greatest honors of my life to be standing before you today. I want to start with some words of gratitude. To all the faculty who challenged us and encouraged us to pursue our studies, to the dining and facilities staff who fed us and kept us safe and to our families and friends who provided us with love in our moments of sorrow and joy, thank you. Our growth throughout our time at Princeton and this very Commencement Ceremony today could not have been possible without your support.

As a student of infectious disease, I have defined for myself a goal that I regard as worthy of all of my energies. I hope to join the community of men and women who devote their lives to studying and eliminating the biological scourges that continue to threaten human life. Before March 11th, 2020, my study had been mostly academic. But then the pandemic hit, Princeton closed its doors and the course of our young lives changed. Infectious disease came home, and I was forced to return to my own.

I hadn’t spent a great deal of time in Melbourne since leaving for college three years before. When I left my father at the airport for the 20-hour flight to Princeton as a first year, I didn’t know when I would come back. I was determined to carve out my own path and build the life that my father was denied but had always wished for me. A life not constricted by financial struggle or the limitations of an unfinished education: the freedom he himself didn’t have.

In the middle of my efforts to secure this new life, I was thrown back into the childhood bedroom

where I thought I’d never sleep in again. All of a sudden, I was alone and like all of you I suppose, staring at screens and seeing the fracturing of the life that we had been working so hard to build. Yet, in the midst of this grief, I had moments of unexpected happiness.

I got to sit down and have dinner with my father once again. It may not seem like much, but it was a joy to be with him. It was just me and him as it had been for many years. We talked about his work, my studies and the latest Netflix release. Growing up, our shared meals were always a way for us connect across the divide that his long work hours and my ambition created. And now, I had returned home, and I was my father’s son again. I never expected to have these moments with him. I don’t know when I will have them with him next.

For a brief moment though, in this remarkably ordinary act of sharing a daily meal, my father and I bridged the gap that my years abroad had created.

This global pandemic has affected us all in different ways. We have felt alone. We have felt uncertain. We have felt loss and at a loss. Our moments of loneliness, grief and even private joys ought to be recognized, for they can and should move us. Whether we know it or not, we have shared this aloneness together. I don’t want to dwell on the past, but I do want to honor this profound time in our lives when our naïve youth was abruptly replaced with a coarse reality filled with both extraordinary loss and ordinary disappointment. In reflecting on our shared moment, I am reminded of George Eliot’s words about a young woman’s disappointment at the prospect of her new life: Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very exceptional; many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among in-

congruities and left to "find their feet" among them, while their elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs. Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding, the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it.

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

- George Eliot Dorothea’s feeling of disappointment is by no means extraordinary. But that is Eliot’s point. We have all surely felt some faintness of heart and some true loss within this new reality that the pandemic has thrust upon us. Yet, the ordinariness and frequency of our feelings does not

diminish their significance. Our disappointment at the loss of all those things that we had come to think of as our due, the annoyances of Zoom classes, the uncertainty of our futures and even my unexpected time with my father constitute an epic as good as any.

My wish for all of us as we move forward with our lives past FitzRandolph Gate and past this terrible pandemic is to find within us a keener sense of sympathy.

A sympathy that not only turns us towards grand historical feats and game-changing research but stretches forth to the ordinary acts and feelings of individuals that are too often left unremembered and unnoticed. A sympathy of feeling for ordinary human life as George Eliot sought to capture in her words. I know we are all capable of this sympathy. I know it. I felt it in the food my father cooked for me as I was struggling with feelings of having lost a portion of my youth. I have seen it in the efforts of so many of you as you care for the health of your family, your friends and people who you may never see again. I have seen it in my professors who

acknowledge our challenges and attempt to recreate the intellectual community we had lost.

I know there is pressure for us to do grand things. I feel it too; I don’t think I would be here otherwise. Sometimes what is required of us, however, is not to change the world but rather to recognize what is extraordinary in the ordinary tragedies of our own lives and those of others and try to honor those small, simple acts of kindness that can have so great an effect on those around us. As we find our feet in this new chapter in our lives, I hope that we can develop the courage to hear the roar that lies on the other side of silence and to live our lives faithfully with sympathy in our hearts. And so, with wandering steps and slow, we embark on our lives beyond Princeton at once alone and together in the common joy, loss and triumph we shared here.

Thank you and congratulations to the great Class of 2021.

This speech was delivered during the commencement ceremony on May 16.

CHARLES SYKES / ASSOCIATED PRESS IMAGES FOR PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Taishi Nakase '21 at Princeton University 2021 Commencement.

Tuesday July 20, 2021

Opinion { www.dailyprincetonian.com }

page 10

DESIGN: GIAO VU DINH / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

To learn from Black voices and teach comprehensively, the Western HUM Sequence needs to radically change Mollika Jai Singh

Associate Opinion Editor

I

n my experience of the Western Humanities Sequence (WHUM) so far, I have been thrilled by ancient Greek plays and poetry, begun to explore deeply my relatively new interest in philosophy, and analyzed closely how the politics of ancient Rome and medieval Italy reflect great truths about human nature. Expressions of this type of intellectual growth are what one typically hears from a WHUM student and are a main goal of the sequence, a team-taught set of double-credit courses that spans two semesters, 2500 years of the Western world, and at least five disciplines: history, religion, philosophy, literature, and the arts.

What you don’t typically hear from students, however, are the moments of discomfort. But this has also been a part of my experience in WHUM. I felt unimportant when Sappho’s sexuality was not discussed in our lecture or my precept. I felt disappointed when Mahatma Gandhi was not on the spring syllabus this year, as he

was last year (it’s one of the reasons I signed up for the course.) I also felt targeted when a student asked me personally about how Gandhi might fit into the Western canon. I was deeply disturbed when the Decameron detailed sexual violence against women, and it almost wasn’t discussed.

I know I am not alone. When three of the four Black students in this year’s class dropped the sequence before the spring semester, and I increasingly felt the tokenization of the three Black writers we are reading in the spring, I decided someone needed to investigate the experiences of marginalized students in this class, beginning with Black voices. In order to understand the situation better, I talked to current and former WHUM students and faculty as well as facilitators from a fall 2020 optional discussion series.

These conversations reveal that while WHUM has evolved to reflect the times it inhabits, there is much more left to do. Students of color often dropping the course after fall semester, lack of diversity in faculty, and anecdotal mishaps all point to this reality. In order to serve all students with a compre-

ELIZABETH MEDINA / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

hensive education of Western culture, especially in a way that makes Black students feel welcome, WHUM needs to radically improve.

At first glance, the problem with WHUM appeared to me to be its syllabus, a monster of dozens of writers and texts, with just a handful of women writers and writers of color. But the culture

and pedagogy of the course have much to do with the student experience as well, beginning with the concept of the course itself.

The official title of the sequence is “Interdisciplinary Approaches to Western Culture.” But students find that that may be a bit of a misnomer, given the particular focus on European writers with a hand-

ful of Americans sprinkled in.

“I think that's because the invisible word that's in front of ‘the Western sequence’ is ‘the White Western HUM sequence,’” KiKi Gilbert ’21, a former WHUM student, said.

Read the full article at linktr.ee/princetonian.

We should expect, not glorify, Princeton’s financial aid Andi Grene Columnist

The reality of imposter syndrome in the COVID-19 era Maisie McPherson Columnist

I

remember the first time I heard the phrase “imposter syndrome.” It was at one of the orientation events at the beginning of my freshman year, but as a newcomer to Princeton, everything else around me was so exciting that that new term flew over my head.

I remember the first time I felt like an imposter. It was in MAT 100, and I had just failed the first quiz. Everyone told me to take this class because it was “Foundations of Calculus,” but I still struggled with it. McGraw did not even offer tutors specific to MAT 100 because it’s assumed that the material is digestible. I walked to my dorm from Fine Hall with tears streaming down my face, believing that this singular math quiz would determine the rest of my academic journey.

This was the first time I truly felt like I had no reason to be at a school like Princeton — if everyone said this was supposed to be the “basic” and “easiest” math class at the University, then why did I have any business studying here?

At a school like Princeton, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the accomplishments of our peers. It’s such a privilege to be surrounded by some of the smartest, most hardworking people in the country, but that privilege comes with a price.

Imposter syndrome, defined as a “psychological pattern that causes people to doubt their successes, perceive themselves as terrible at things they’re great at, and experience unsettling fears of being exposed as an impostor,” is a little voice that nags each and every one of us. It’s not necessarily about performance in classes; it can also pertain to how productive you are in a day, how much work you can finish in a short amount of time, or even how little you sleep a night.

I had not felt like an imposter at Princeton since that moment, until the COVID-19 pandemic came.

After three semesters of online learning, I feel more burnt out than I ever have before, like I do not belong at Princeton. Burnout among college students has been extremely prevalent during the pandemic, as some of the most important parts of college have been absent from collegiate life. Feeling like every day is the same, with only a two day “spring recess,” has taken a toll on every student and has made more of them doubt if they’re meant to be Princeton students. Even though I’m living in the same zip code as the University, I feel more disconnected from it than ever.

I hope that, moving forward, the University realizes the toll the pandemic has taken on students and offers more mental health resources. I hope that imposter syndrome is recognized as one of the biggest problems students are currently facing and that a greater effort is made to combat it. The recent suicide of first-year Yale student Rachael Shaw-Rosenbaum is a tragedy; the University should realize that putting students’ mental health first is not something they can just “check off the box” for — it is a necessity.

At a time when students, including myself, find themselves questioning their validity, highachieving universities should emphasize the importance of rest instead of adding to students’ stress.

To the great Class of 2025, the class with the lowest acceptance rate in history, know that you are here because you belong here. You made it here during times when everyone has been questioning themselves. I’m sure at some point you’ll feel how I did in my MAT 100 class or how I’ve felt at times during the COVID-19 pandemic, but remember that you were accepted during the most selective year for a reason. We cannot wait to have you here.

Maisie McPherson is a junior in the History department from Dana Point, Calif. She can be reached at maisiem@ princeton.edu.

W

hen my parents came to visit me over spring break, my father told me just how lucky I am to be attending Princeton. Not only am I lucky to call myself a student at an Ivy League, he said, but I am lucky to be going here for a price more manageable than almost any other university would have offered me nationally.

There is an implicit sense of indebtedness that is associated with a generous financial aid package.

Right before I saw my parents, I had a conversation with a friend who is also on financial aid, and who felt particularly beholden to the University for its generosity.

However, the reality is that Princeton is not particularly generous for allowing its students to graduate without inevitable mounds of student loans; rather, our school has met the expectations naturally assigned to an institution of its financial power and capability.

When gearing up to receive decisions in the winter of my senior year, I was under the impression that I should be endlessly appreciative of an aid package that did not send my parents and me into colossal debt. The average student debt accumulated after college is over $28,000, which neglects to take into account the interest that will inevitably accrue. When a middleclass American student accepts admission to a private university, they are essentially bound to that institution not only for the four years they will attend but for the years — sometimes even decades — that it will take for them to pay off their debt.

There were few things that impressed me about Princeton as much as the fact that so much of the student body graduates debt-

free — 83 percent, to be exact. As long as my financial aid remains consistent, I will graduate without leaving my parents or myself any debt at all. My family often uses the word “incredible” to describe the money I am receiving. At an institution with an endowment of over $26 billion, it should not be a surprising act of flattery to receive a sufficient financial aid package.

My father would identify this attitude as one of ingratitude. He juxtaposes my financial aid package at Princeton to what I would have received from Brown, which I spent significant time fawning over when initially solidifying my college list. To prove Princeton’s extraordinary charity, my father reminds me that Brown’s package would be at most half, if not less, than what I receive from Princeton.

I argue that it is not benevolence that drives Princeton’s suitable aid, but rather a recognition of the obvious. In a world where most universities choose to look away from the clear financial need of their applicants, Princeton chooses to keep its eyes open.

Financial aid is not about luck, as both my friend and my father claim — it is about necessity.

Princeton has deemed my family, as well as many others (61 percent), in need of the aid it granted us. I am grateful that I have received the aid I have, but I refuse to remain as shocked by it as I was when I opened my acceptance letter. We operate within standards that have been exponentially lowered to meet the penny-pinching of most American colleges, but when one has chosen to attend a university with an endowment larger than the GDP of 48 percent of countries in the world, it is essential that we hold our school accountable to its resources and recognize that they have met, rather than surpassed, our standard for generosity.

I am incredibly thankful for the opportunities that Princeton

offers its student body. Princeton opens doors for students that are constantly surprising and amazing. As I enter my third month on campus, these doors seem to grow wider and more numerous, complete with summer stipends worth thousands of dollars and countless compensated employment opportunities. The indefinite capabilities of Princeton to serve its student body only reaffirm that while we should be celebrating its commitments to making a superb higher education possible for so many, we must recognize that this is a commitment that Princeton is obligated to fulfill.

I can say without a doubt that luck played a tremendous role in my admission to Princeton — there are thousands of qualified candidates who did not receive a spot at our University, but for some serendipitous reason, I was awarded a seat. I am, and will always be, hugely grateful to Princeton for letting me attend, and I believe that every Princetonian should feel equally so for the curious alignment of stars that landed us a spot at the nation’s top institution.

Our admission to Princeton and our financial aid packages are two completely separate entities.

Although we can, and should, feel honored to have been deemed deserving of a Princeton acceptance, only a gentle satisfaction is warranted in regards to aid. Princeton has the power to pave the path for a new metric of financial aid; we must normalize the notion that it is possible to end one’s obligation to higher education after the four years one has formally agreed upon. No one should be bound to mounds of debt for decades. Princeton’s recognition of that fact is not exceptional; it is expected.

Andi Grene is a sophomore from Manhattan. She can be reached at agrene@princeton.edu.

COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS

Morrison Hall, where The Office of Admission is located.

Tuesday July 20, 2021

Features { www.dailyprincetonian.com }

MARCH 2020

page 11

DESIGN: THANYA BEGUM / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

‘Everything I have is here’:

International students and the COVID-19 crisis

EDWARD TIAN / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Ashira Shirali ’22, Ananya Vinayak ’22, Bharat Govil ’22, and Manya Kapoor ’22 (from left to right) packing.

By Edward Tian

Staff News Writer

Hours before President Donald Trump announced a travel ban affecting 26 European countries on Wednesday, the Indian Group of Ministers announced their own travel ban, extending to overseas citizens of the country — individuals who are ethnically Indian but citizens of foreign countries.

Manya Kapoor ’22 and Ananya Vinayak ’22 were plunged into a state of panic. They needed to find a way to return to their home country, and fast.

Kapoor didn’t sleep. She didn’t study for her chemistry exams.

She scrambled instead to find a flight to India — any flight to India — before the travel ban’s enactment at 12:00 p.m. GMT on March 13.

On Wednesday night, Nassau Hall made an announcement of its own: “All students who are able to must return home and stay home for the rest of the semester.”

For most domestic students, the University’s directive meant navigating the pain of a semester cut short. For many international students, the pain was different.

Forced to monitor the evolving crises both in the United States and abroad, they continue to grapple with unanswered questions, most pressingly whether they can and should stay on campus.

“In some ways, they heard our voices,” Bharat Govil ’22 said of the directive. “They didn’t kick everybody out.”

Following a petition against forced departure from campus that garnered over 3,500 signatories, the University granted leniency to students from countries with CDC level 2 or 3 warnings, allowing them to petition to stay on campus for the remainder of the term. A major rise in CDC levels on Thursday morning greatly increased the number of affected students; as of March 12, every European country had been elevated to CDC level 3, the highest warning level for the coronavirus infection.

Ben Clarke ’20 is one student affected by the University’s warning level policy. Clarke is from Northern Ireland — where 20 cases of coronavirus have given the country a CDC level 3 warning — and thus eligible to remain on campus.

Clarke characterizes the effect of the University’s announcement as “more permanent” for international students than it is for domestic ones.

Domestic students may be leaving campus, he said, “but after graduation, they’ll work and live in the same cities. I’ll be in the U.K. I haven’t cried yet. Many of my American friends have already cried.”

He spent Thursday afternoon with his club soccer team, Wawa United, a group that he’d spent the last two years building “from the ground up.” In an emotionally charged moment, Clarke huddled around his American teammates and shared parting words to his team members.

A concern even more pressing for some international students than the travel logistics of returning home is whether they feasibly can. A variety of regional concerns, like local internet connection and health care infrastructure, on top of the financial burden of international flights, complicate their decisions.

“There’s no way I’m returning back to Brazil,” said Elie Svoll ’22, who lacks health insurance in his home country. “All of my friends — and everything I have — is here.”

Simeel Angdembe ’23 decided not to return home to Nepal because of the economic burden. “I cannot afford to fly back,” says Angdembe. At the moment, the University is offering sponsorships of $150 for travel costs. Put simply by Angdembe: “That is not enough.”

Brian Gitahi ’23, from Kenya, also pointed out the disruptions to academic work for many international students.

“Returning home costs money, then there are internet problems,

and we have to take classes at 3 a.m.,” he said.

Direct flights to many international countries are also becoming harder to find, particularly in Asia, the epicenter of the coronavirus.

Eager to return home to Singapore, Rachel Qing ’23 found that all direct flights to the country before next Friday were fully booked. “I finally booked a flight to Singapore for a week from today,” she said.

Despite 12 new cases of coronavirus announced by Singapore on Wednesday, Qing is insistent on returning home. “Singapore is like China,” Qing said, “where we think the crisis has already peaked out and things are getting better.”

This differs from the U.S. federal government’s reaction to managing this pandemic, which has been characterized as slow and unprepared. In New York state, cases have quadrupled last week, causing officials to plead for more test kits from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I [would] definitely feel safer if I caught this in Korea,” Jean Cho ’20 said, noting that health care is more accessible in her home country of South Korea with diagnostic tools and coronavirus testing available at local clinics.

Despite this, Cho plans to remain on campus because of visa

concerns and her senior thesis on the effects of social isolation on bumblebees, which requires lab work on campus.

Applications in particular for Optional Practical Training (OPT) visas, necessary for working in the United States, have been a major concern for seniors, as approval requires remaining in the country.

Cho, who is applying for a work visa for prospective employment in New York, said “We don’t know if we’ll be able to enter the country again. It’s difficult for us to just leave.”

“As international students, we will need to support each other and work to lift each other’s spirits,” said Sultan Al Habsi ’22, an international orientation leader from Oman. Al Habsi, who is remaining on campus, acknowledged ongoing uncertainties regarding food availability and isolation on campus.

Cho is also a former international orientation leader. On the verge of tears, she shared that many of her “frosh,” struggling with the logistics and burdens of returning home and hoping to remain on campus, have reached out to her over the past week.

“It’ll be our chance to help the freshmen one last time,” she said.

DECEMBER 2020

Princeton says it avoided COVID-19 furloughs and layoffs. For some contract workers, that isn’t the case.

By Ellen Li and Miguel GraciaZhang Associate Features Editor and Staff News Writer

Editor’s Note: Princeton Mutual Aid helped to arrange interviews for this piece, some of which were conducted in Spanish, and provided volunteer translators.

The Daily Princetonian granted interviewed workers anonymity for fear of retaliation. The piece refers to those interviewees with capital letters.

This article has been updated to clarify that DACA recipients are eligible for unemployment and to remove mention of DAPA. This piece has also been modified to more thoroughly protect sources’ anonymity and security.

On March 12, 2020, A., a parttime Campus Dining employee, learned they could not come into work.

“I remember getting a call

from my supervisor saying that they closed down due to the pandemic,” A. said, “and that they couldn’t do anything to help us.”

Unlike other Campus Dining workers, A. was not directly employed by the University. Their paychecks came from Restaurant Associates, the contracted catering company that runs services in Prospect House, Palmer House, EQuad Café, Genomics Café, and Café 701.

Restaurant Associates has worked with the University for over 20 years. In 1998, the company was acquired by Compass Group P.L.C., the largest contract food service company in the world.

Desperate to know their work status, A. repeatedly called and emailed their supervisors. After learning they were on furlough, they still did not know when or if they would be called back.

B., another Restaurant Associ-

ates employee who worked at the University, said that several coworkers attempted to follow up with supervisors to learn when they might be able to return to work. Their co-worker, C., tried calling, texting, and emailing managers. No one replied. In the end, C. went to their workplace in person to ask around. “[C.] had to find out if they had to look for another job,” B. said.

“We have bills to pay in this country, and no one wants a boss who only lets them know important changes when he feels like it.”

According to another furloughed worker, D., after an initial email informing them of the furlough, “the manager there never called us or sent an email.

We spent a long time without hearing from them: about 5–6 months.”

At first, workers were told that they would return to work in two weeks, then a month, then in the

fall.

On Aug. 7, around one month before contract workers expected to resume work on campus, the University announced that most undergraduates would remain remote for the fall. As a result, A., B., C., and D. have now spent nine months on indefinite furlough.

“I was hoping that we could get supported by Princeton, since we had worked there for years,” A. said. “But we didn’t.”

Interviewed contract workers told The Daily Princetonian they are among at least 50 Restaurant Associates employees working for the University who were placed on indefinite furlough during the week of March 12. They said they know of at least five who were laid off. Several of those furloughed or laid off had been working at the University for many years — and in some cases, decades.

When asked about the March furloughs, Restaurant Associates

Senior Vice President of Creative Services Sam Souccar deferred comment to the University, citing contractual obligations.

“Due to the nature of our contract with the University, we are not able to discuss any details relating to our associates or operations,” he wrote.

According to University Spokesperson Ben Chang, “Restaurant Associates has informed us that it is complying with all employment laws and internal policies relating to its dealings with its personnel, and that it has not received any requests for assistance from its staff during the furlough.”

Chang declined to disclose the number of contract workers furloughed or laid off since March.

Since the spring, administrators have repeatedly assured the Princeton community that all staff remain employed.

See LAYOFFS page 12

Tuesday July 20, 2021

Features { www.dailyprincetonian.com }

LAYOFFS

Continued from page 11

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

“All our staff remain on full salary,” Provost Deborah Prentice said during a March Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meeting. “We are committed to our human capital and we want to keep everyone on full salary as long as we can.”

Several months later, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 expressed the same commitment. “We have thus far avoided the kinds of furloughs and layoffs that have taken place at other universities,” he wrote in a May 4 email to the Princeton community.

He repeated the claim at an Aug. 20 University Town Hall for staff.

While the University has kept its 7,300 directly employed workers on payroll, contract workers have not experienced the same level of protection — a fact that Executive Vice President Treby Williams ’84 confirmed at a Sept.

21 CPUC meeting.

At the meeting, Williams reported that in addition to workers from Restaurant Associates, the University employs contract workers from First Transit for bus and shuttle services and American Campus Communities to staff Lakeside Graduate Housing. According to Chang, “fewer than 100 employees of Restaurant Associates and First Transit are normally assigned to work at the University.”

Chang added that the University uses contract workers for jobs that “require an expertise that the University does not have.” In the case of operations run by Restaurant Associates, such expertise includes professional hospitality and fine dining catering services.

Princeton is not alone in its use of contract labor for catering operations, nor is it the only university that does not offer contract workers the same protections afforded to directly-employed staff.

Among others, contract workers at Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford University have experienced mass furloughs and layoffs.

Harvard University will also stop compensating many contract workers next month, in addition to recently announcing layoffs of some directly-hired dining services employees.

At the Sept. 21 CPUC meeting, several graduate students submitted a question that claimed, “many contract workers at the University have been laid off and not given any benefits since March.”

In response, Williams stated that contract workers had been furloughed, not laid off — a claim which several contract workers dispute. Additionally, she said that “they could use up personal days,” and that “they continue to receive benefits and are eligible for unemployment.”

Contract workers who spoke with the ‘Prince’ contested Williams’s characterization. Some former full-time employees have kept their health insurance, but others reported lacking coverage.

Some furloughed workers have reported delays or difficulty accessing unemployment benefits or CARES Act funding. These difficulties are particularly prevalent for those who are recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which defers the deportation of undocumented people who arrived in the United States as children.

Though Williams said furloughed workers could use their “personal days,” many have not been able to use their paid time off — which, for several, had accrued to dozens of hours worth of wages.

According to B., many workers “don’t want to fight for the money, because they are scared.”

They added that undocumented workers have been particularly afraid of retaliation from their employers.

“That’s why the company keeps doing these things to the employees,” they continued. “Because nobody wants to do anything.”

D. highlighted fairly treating contract workers as a matter of racial equity, given that many of

page 12

DESIGN: THANYA BEGUM / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

the affected workers, including those interviewed for this piece, are Latinos or people of color.

“We know that the University has lots of funds,” they said. “But for our community of Latinos, there is always some discrimination. This is what it feels like: that there is discrimination against us. They are not treating us as though we are important.”

Furloughed workers share stories of unemployment during COVID-19 While waiting for the University to reopen, A. recalled applying for unemployment benefits.

They said they did not receive any.

They also applied for jobs, but the pandemic made opportunities scarce. Employer after employer, they said, told them, “we don’t have a lot of hours right now.”

A. cares for their parents, with whom they live. Because their father also lost his job and their mother has been out of work due to health issues, their household lost all sources of income after March. Unable to pay rent, A. borrowed money from family members.

In late May, their entire household was infected with the coronavirus. They had no health insurance.

“And that was in the midst of seeking another job and helping the community out,” A. said. “It was very tough because we had to definitely stay home. I didn’t have Wi-Fi connection, and the library closed.”

Although A. and their father have recovered from COVID-19, their mother has not yet made a full recovery.

“So it was terrible,” they said.

“Very terrible situation.”

C. has not been able to find a stable job, and they have been “worried, and upset that Compass hasn’t been a help.”

B., too, has not been able to recover their source of income.

At first, they relied on unemployment benefits and their spouse’s income. But even then, “it wasn’t the same” — unemployment amounted to $300 a week, compared to their weekly $500 paycheck from Restaurant Associates, according to B. D., who also qualified for unemployment, said they received $200 a week in benefits, which did not cover their rent.

Then, in August, B.’s work permit expired. Since then, they have not received a cent.

Unlike A., B. and C. were fulltime Restaurant Associates employees. Although C. was not able to keep their health insurance, B. did — but “the benefits were no good.” When B. went to a doctor’s appointment, they “had to pay more out-of-pocket than what the insurance paid for.”

B., too, contracted COVID-19 over the summer, although they were the only one in their household to experience symptoms.

After a month of attempted quarantine at home, they said, “thank god, it passed.”

Although A. found part-time employment in September — an accomplishment which “took a lot of effort and time” — the new source of income is not enough to support their family of three.

One organization which helped their family make it through the past seven months has been Princeton Mutual Aid (PMA), an organization founded by Princeton community members in the wake of the pandemic.

“If it wasn’t for Mutual Aid, I don’t know what [I] would have done,” they said. “Because they would be the ones to provide us with food and help cover for the bills. Help for the rent. So, we are very grateful for that. But it was very tough, because we all got infected at the same time.”

B. has also received support from PMA, in the form of “food and money every week.”

They are also grateful for Corner House, a Princeton non-profit providing COVID-19 relief, which has helped their family negotiate lower rent and cover utilities.

While they have received help from local organizations, the interviewed workers felt that they had not received adequate support from the University or their employers.

JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Prospect House (pictured here), Palmer House, the EQuad Café, Genomics Café, and Café 701 all typically employ workers contracted through Restaurant Associates.

All those interviewed expressed that their former employers have been unresponsive throughout the furlough — never calling to ask how employees are doing or offering support.

“They really didn’t feel that it was important to keep us informed about our work or tell us that we would be without jobs for a while,” D. said.

“I don’t think it should be like this, because we are human,” B. said. “For them, all that matters is that I do work. And the next day, if I’m not working anymore, they won’t even look at me.”

“A lot can be done”: Conversations and advocacy surrounding University contract workers As a PMA member, Shuk Ying Chan GS had been working with community members for two months when she learned, through casual conversation, that one of her neighbors used to work at the University.

“Then they told me that they had been furloughed, and had received no support since March,” Chan said.

Infuriated, Chan and other PMA members pressed University administrators for more information at town halls and over email.

Believing that contract workers “deserve nothing less” than what the University’s 7,300 directly employed staff receive, she said, “contract workers are also the people who make this community work.”

“They’ve also devoted many, many years — in some cases, decades — of their lives to serving this community,” she continued.

“And so, in a time of unprecedented crisis, I think the University should totally support them.”

For the University to choose not to do so, said Chan, was “extremely unethical,” “abdicating their responsibility,” and “very insulting and hurtful” for contract workers, especially since it’s “something that [the University] can very easily afford to do.”

Chan questioned why the University would hire a contractor in the first place and raised concerns about what she described as a “long track record of labor violations” by Compass Group, Restaurant Associates’ parent company.

“Ultimately, you’re the one that decides whether to use a contractor, and then you’re the one that has the power to make sure that the contractor respects workers’ rights,” she said. “And you’re the ones being served by these same workers. Contracting does not get you off the moral hook.”

Chan and PMA are not alone in advocating to support contract workers. The Princeton Anti-Austerity Coalition (PAAC), which has published demands in the ‘Prince,’ has also advocated for the University to provide benefits for furloughed contract workers, as

well as to rehire them as full-time union-protected staff.

“PAAC denounces the employment practices of Compass Group and Princeton University, which strip workers of their right to legal protections and employment benefits through their reliance on non-union contract labor,” the PAAC wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’

“These practices are exploitative and weaken campus solidarity by creating unequal working conditions for contracted and full-time workers. PAAC demands the immediate reinstatement of Restaurant Associates workers as full-time, regular employees of the University and as members of Local 175 of the SEIU.” Local 175 is the Princeton branch of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents about 2 million workers. The union’s contract with the University kept all its members employed during the pandemic.

Last spring, similar student advocacy efforts at Harvard led to financial benefits and protections for Restaurant Associates contract workers there. A petition titled “Harvard, Pay All Your Workers” drafted by the Labor & Employment Action Project (LEAP), a student group at Harvard Law School, called upon Harvard to extend its 30 days of paid leave for the rest of the spring semester, as well as to cover contract workers employed through Restaurant Associates.

The petition garnered over 7,000 signatures.

On March 27, hours after LEAP organized a call-in and flooded administrative phone lines demanding equity for contract workers, Harvard agreed to provide financial support for all its workers throughout the spring, contractors and direct employees alike. According to a report from the Boston Eater, Harvard “[directed] cash assistance” to Restaurant Associates, which in turn compensated furloughed workers directly. Georgetown created a similar arrangement with its dining vendor Aramark, which compensated furloughed contract workers until the end of the spring semester.

Given this work in the spring, Harvard’s impending layoffs of at least 17 dining services workers and decision to stop compensating many contracted workers effective next month came as a surprise.

“Throughout the pandemic, Harvard has been a good actor as an institution in protecting jobs and making sure that people didn’t lose their income during a global pandemic,” Michael Kramer, executive vice president of a union representing many Harvard dining employees told The Crimson. “This is a really shocking and unfortunate change of course that is going to destroy

jobs and is unnecessary and cruel in this moment “Harvard was able to [pay its contract workers in the spring,] and Princeton also has a several billion dollar endowment,” added LEAP member and Harvard Law student Mackenzie Bouverat.

“There’s no reason that either university should shirk its responsibilities to the community members who make it possible for them to run.”

Advocates have also pointed out that, even in the era of COVID-19, the University’s endowment earned a return of around $500 million last fiscal year.

Chang noted that University priorities include “continued employment and benefits for our staff — even if conditions do not allow them to fulfill their normal duties — and providing additional paid time for people who become ill or have care-taking responsibilities.”

“These commitments are above and beyond what many institutions and organizations have been able to do during this challenging time, and we are grateful to be able to take these steps,” he said.

When asked whether the University would consider rehiring or providing financial benefits to furloughed or laid off contract workers, University spokespeople said that such support fell beyond the University’s jurisdiction.

“External service providers are independent organizations,” Chang said, “and they are making challenging decisions regarding their businesses and personnel in the midst of a pandemic that has affected every portion of our economy. The University cannot dictate to them how to run their business.”

Nonetheless, contract workers and advocates continue to call upon the University for support.

“Both [Harvard and Princeton] act like they’ve painted themselves into a corner,” Bouverat said, “that somehow their contracts with contractors prevent them satisfying their obligations to community members. They pretend that nothing can be done.

But a lot can be done.”

When asked what they would say if they could speak directly to their former employers at the University, D. said, “I would tell them to consider the work that we’ve done for the University, which has been good work, and that we’ve been working many years, and working well.”

D. and others remarked that since they have provided years of service to the University’s students, faculty, staff and administrators — including President Eisgruber — they had hoped that at a time of need, the University would not leave them behind.

“Take that into account,” D. emphasized, “and don’t just abandon us.”

Tuesday July 20, 2021

The Daily Princetonian

page 13

The Daily Princetonian

page 14

the first-year dictionary

Tuesday July 20, 2021

/dІkə.∫ǝnə.ǝr.i/ DEFINITIONS

A

A.B., abbrev. Artium Baccalaureus, or Bachelor of Arts. Though called B.A. at most other schools, it’s still your typical liberal arts degree. For the same strange reason we have “certificates” instead of “minors,” you’re receiving an “A.B.” instead of a “B.A.” Unless you’re an engineer, of course. See “B.S.E.” Adviser, n. 1. Faculty member assigned to freshmen to assist in course selection. Usually a specialist in a field totally unrelated to yours. 2. Faculty member assigned to sophomores with an unclear role. 3. Faculty member assigned to juniors and seniors to provide guidance in writing junior papers and theses. All vary widely in quality of advising and level of engagement.

Alcohol Initiative, n. A trusteesponsored attempt to reduce alcohol consumption by throwing huge sums of money at undergraduates for alternative activities.

All-nighter, n. Grim, dusk-todawn studying or writing marathon in which sleep is postponed indefinitely. Often procrastination-induced and caffeinefueled. Usually followed by prolonged periods of hibernation.

Your freshman 15 will probably be 60 percent the food you eat during these. Welcome to college.

Alumni, n. pl. Those who came before. Gosh, do they love the place.

Prone to wearing abominable combinations of orange and black. See “Reunions.”

Arch sing, n. Event where a cappella singing groups perform a few of their favorite tunes in campus archways. Good singing and great acoustics, but the novelty can wear off quickly. A large percentage of the audience is made up of group members’ significant others (or wannabe significant others) and roommates.

See “jam,” “Blair Arch.”

B

Band, n. The University scramble band. Football halftime shows are occasionally funny and always tasteless. Often uses unconventional instruments, such as plastic pumpkins and stop signs. Hard to miss in their extremely plaid orange blazers as they parade through libraries on Dean’s Date or serenade the hapless on Valentine’s Day. Beer, n. Beverage of choice on Prospect Avenue. Some clubs try to impress potential members by serving such brew-house delicacies as Killian’s or Yuengling, but eight times out of 10 it’s just watered-down Natty Light.

Bicker, n. Princeton’s multi-day equivalent of fraternity or sorority rush for the seven selective eating clubs. During Bicker, club members meet sophomores and other upperclass students to determine whether they are worthy of membership. “Worthiness” is determined in a variety of ways. As divisive as it sounds.

See “sign-in club,” “multi-club Bicker.”

Blackboard, n. Website used to download course assignments, syllabi and readings. Not to be confused with “blackboards,” teaching instruments found in a variety of classrooms and lecture halls around campus on which professors use an archaic white substance known as “chalk.”

Slowly being phased out. See “Canvas.”

Blair Arch, n. That large, pretty arch across from Richardson Auditorium. Campus landmark and frequent site of a cappella jams. Saving grace of Matheyites. See “Mathey College.”

Bonfire, n. Tradition of lighting an enormous bonfire on Cannon Green to celebrate the foot-

ball team’s victories over both Harvard and Yale in a season.

Involves singing praises to Old Nassau as effigies of John Harvard and the Yale bulldog are burned in a fiery inferno. Pretty much as cultish as it sounds.

Keep your fingers crossed for the next one.

Consulting, n. What many of your classmates will go on to do. No one actually knows what consulting means, but they do know it brings in the bucks. See “SPIA.”

Boot, v. To toss one’s cookies, worship the porcelain god, barf, puke, vomit, ralph, regurgitate, spew chunks, whistle carrots, etc. Usually engaged in as part of a “boot and rally,” with hopes of rejoining the party.

Co-op, n. Upperclass dining alternative in which members share cooking responsibilities.

Vegetarians, try 2 Dickinson St.; omnivores, stick to Brown, Real Food, or the International Food Co-ops.

Bridges, nickname, CEE 102: Engineering in the Modern World.

Counts as an HA for science kids and an SEL for humanities kids.

In past years, the final has involved literally memorizing pictures of bridges. See “P/D/F.”

Cottage Club, n. Officially called “University Cottage Club.” Bicker club populated by athletes, Southerners and the wealthy.

Known for its spring Sunday Fundays, darties with various themes that can always be counted on to feature beer and American flags.

B.S.E., abbrev. Bachelor of Science in Engineering. Though called “B.S.” at some other schools, there’s no b.s. in Princeton’s engineering degree.

Bubble, the, n. The metaphorical orange bubble that surrounds campus, keeping us in and the real world out. Also called “The Orange Bubble.” Usage: “Back in the bubble!”, “Welcome to the bubble.” To be used sparingly.

Butler College, n. Residential college with air conditioning.

Located far down-campus; contains Studio 34.

C

Campus Club, n. Defunct eating club purchased by the University to hold events. See “Alcohol Initiative.”

Campus fox, n. The fox that resides on campus, most often spotted up campus. Although multiple foxes have been spotted at once, campus legend says there is only one campus fox.

Cannon Club, n. Bicker club known for its three taprooms.

The club plays host to a large proportion of athletes, especially field sports.

Canvas, n. New software to check your coursework. Princeton’s very late step into the modern world of college education.

Cap & Gown Club, n. Consistently the most bickered club, Cap has a reputation for inclusivity and hosts many athletes from track and field. Some of its classic night out themes include Capmandu and Boxers and Blazers.

CD, abbrev. Culture and Difference. New distribution requirement beginning with the Class of 2024, and the only requirement that can be satisfied concurrently with another. Interdisciplinary requirement whose applicable courses are in many fields.

Certificate, n. What we call minors. Options include finance, theatre studies, environmental studies, political economy, etc.

Your certificate area of study must be addressed in some capacity in your thesis. Start planning for these now. See “thesis.”

Charter Club, n. Club located extremely far down Prospect Avenue, near the E-Quad. Planned a complete overhaul before COVID-19 closed eating clubs. Now remains a mysterious force on the Street.

Cloister Inn, n. Sign-in club known for hosting a high percentage of water-based athletes.

Popular street destination for first-years since it’s PUID. Coffee Club, n. Student-run coffee shop in the taproom of Campus Club. Cheaper alternative to coffee shops on Nassau Street.

Colonial Club, n. Sign-in club that recently claimed Friday nights from Charter. Often serves hard cider on tap.

CA, abbrev. Community Action.

Week-long pre-orientation activity built around service trips

in the Princeton, Trenton and Philadelphia areas. Like Outdoor Action, but with showers.

CPS, abbrev. Counseling and Psychological Services. Office of therapists located on the third floor of McCosh, available to you free of charge. Use with caution.

See “McCosh.”

D

Daily Princetonian, the, n. What you’re reading now. Your one true source of information on life, the universe, and everything, as well as the only daily newspaper on campus and one of the oldest college dailies in the country. Available for free everywhere. An absolute good. A force for justice in an unjust and cruel world. Administrators cringe before its unquestioned power.

Completely independent from the University. Just watch out for the online commenters. Also known as the ‘Prince.’

Dean’s Date, n. The last day of reading period, when course papers are due. Stress reaches all-time high as students realize the number of pages they have left to write exceeds the number of hours before the deadline. To combat this stress, students over time have created many traditions, including the Band playing around campus and in Firestone and a midnight meal in the res colleges. See “all-nighter.”

Dillon Gymnasium, n. Recreational center in the middle of campus open to non-athletes.

Contains a pool, squash courts, multipurpose rooms, a large gym, and a fitness center. Site of loud Zumba classes and dance company rehearsals.

Dinky, n. Our version of the Hogwarts Express. Mini-train that takes you to Princeton Junction for connections to the real world.

Flashpoint of battle between town and University.

Distribution requirements, n.

Princeton’s plan for a true liberal arts education. Ensures STEM students take copious humanities classes, and humanities students take a few STEM classes.

See “P/D/F.” Down-campus, adj., n. Located on the part of campus closer to the lake, down the hill. Begins roughly at Dillon, ends at the lake. Synonyms: “South.” Usage: “It’s a little further down-campus than Edwards."

E

E-Quad, abbrev. Engineering Quadrangle. A collection of academic buildings where engineers spend all their time. Very, very far east from central campus.

Eating clubs, n. Eleven large mansions on Prospect Avenue that serve as the hub of upperclass student life. What you would get if a fancy dining hall had a baby with a sorority/fraternity house.

You probably weren’t allowed to ask questions about them on your tour. Biggest reason that Princeton is still considered elit-

ist by the outside world.

EC, abbrev. Epistemology and Cognition. Distribution requirement with no discernible meaning. Filled most frequently by philosophy and psychology classes. See “P/D/F.” Eisgruber, Christopher, n. Your fearless leader. Eisgruber ’83 ascended to the University presidency from the position of provost in 2013. Seems to have forgotten that this isn’t high school and assigned you summer reading. Well-respected in academic circles.

EM, abbrev. Ethical Thought and Moral Values. Distribution requirement commonly filled with Peter Singer’s “Practical Ethics,” in which one of the most prominent philosophers of our time convinces you to stop eating meat.

F

Fall break, n. Week-long vacation immediately following fall midterms. Implemented in the 1970s when campus activists demanded time off before Election Day to campaign for their favorite bleeding-heart liberal congressional candidates. A prime roadtrip week. See “Breakout Trips.”

Fire inspection, n. Twice-a-semester unannounced visit to your dorm room, before which you should frantically hide illegal appliances under your blankets and un-tape your door to avoid fines.

Firestone Library, n. The mothership. Books on books on books (on shelves.) Large behemoth of a library containing books on every subject imaginable, as well as asbestos. Popular study spot.

Deathly quiet. See “carrel.”

First College, n. Centrally located residential college. An incoherent assortment of buildings that are ugly both inside and out, but boast large suites of up to 11 people that are unavailable elsewhere on campus. Contains a volleyball court and a ceramics studio.

FitzRandolph Gate, n. Gate in front of Nassau Hall. If you walk out the center gate while an undergraduate, you will not graduate. Of course, that’s just a legend. Try it and let us know.

Forbes brunch, n. The concession Princeton had to make to Forbesians to ensure they wouldn’t drop out. In exchange for living in metaphorical Timbuktu, Forbesians get a chocolate fountain on Sundays. Is it a fair trade?

That’s for you to decide.

Forbes College, n. The res college rumored to exist just west of the Lewis Center for the Arts and Wawa. Only visited by nonForbesians on weekends due to its fancy brunch spreads. See “Forbes brunch.”

Frist, n. The campus center. Home of the student government, mailboxes, and yummy quesadillas. A fun and relaxing place to socialize and study as long as you don’t take introductory Chinese. Not to be confused with First. See “Late meal.”

Fraternities, n. pl. First-years, avert your eyes. Groups of males that gather to drink and make lots of grunting noises. Firstyears are not allowed to rush Greek organizations. Those who do face suspension. Not a big presence on campus, but they may be your ticket into a bicker club.

Frosh Week, n. The week before classes, when sophomores and upperclass students reacquaint themselves with campus life and “meet” the first-years, who are kept busy by an array of University-sponsored activities. Prime time to drink copious amounts of alcohol amid nighttime mosh pits in the eating clubs’ backyards. See “McCosh.”

FYRE, abbrev. First-Year Resi-

dential Experience. A group of “required” assemblies and zee group meetings that begin during orientation, and end sometime during first semester. Cover important topics such as diversity and socioeconomic status.

G

Grade deflation, n. Former university policy to limit A’s in courses to 35 percent of grades per department. Although the official policy ended, its residual effects still exist on campus. Extremely controversial and a source of many a dining hall debate and Princeton’s unofficial motto, “It would’ve been an A at Harvard.”

Graduate student, n. An individual smart enough to translate Kierkegaard into 14 languages but mostly isolated from campus life. Many are forced to live roughly one mile from central campus. Often characterized as “sketchy.”

H

HA, abbrev. Historical Analysis.

Distribution requirement that can be fulfilled by, you guessed it, a history class.

Hoagie Haven, n. A Princeton institution. A small hoagie shop on Nassau Street that serves sandwiches filled with things like french fries, chicken tenders, multiple burger patties, and buffalo sauce, often in combination.

The most dangerous of drunkfood destinations.

Holder Howl, n. A moment of collective campus catharsis at midnight each Dean’s Date when students gather in Holder Courtyard in Rocky to release a primal scream of fear and frustration.

See “Dean’s Date.”

Honor Code, n. Institution through which University exams are policed. Students sign pledges agreeing not to cheat on exams and to turn in those who do. Taken very seriously. See “Committee on Discipline.”

Hookup culture, n. A semi-significant feature of the social scene which is the topic of significant online debate.

Hose, v. To render helpless. Most often done to rejected Bicker prospects, who are hosed at their doorstep. Fraternities, sororities, and a cappella groups hose, but don’t worry — a literal hose is typically not involved. See “Bicker.”

Houseparties, n. Pseudo-bacchanal scheduled for the weekend after the end of spring semester classes. With theses complete and exams two weeks distant, eating clubs host wine-filled formal and semiformal dinners.

The only ones who have it bad are juniors finishing (starting) their JPs and first-year males, who aren’t invited.

I

I-banking, nickname, investment banking. What many of your classmates will go on to do.

ICC, abbrev. Interclub Council.

Group made up of the 11 eating club presidents. Coordinates relations between Prospect Avenue, the municipality, and the University.

Independent, adj. n. Upperclass student who joins neither an eating club nor a University dining facility. By graduation, they’re either a great connoisseur of Princeton’s restaurants, a great cook, or a great mooch. Many live in Spelman Hall.

Interactor, n. Upperclass B.S.E. student who helps advise B.S.E. first-years, especially at the be-

The Daily Princetonian

Tuesday July 20, 2021 ginning of the year. Periodically checks in and hosts study breaks.

Ivy Club, n. Bicker club with a reputation for elitism, mahogany, and international students.

Its women’s bathroom may be the most photographed part of Princeton, after Blair Arch.

J Jam, n. An event at which one or more a cappella groups sing, commonly under an arch.

JP, abbrev. junior paper. Lengthy independent work for juniors meant to prepare them for the senior thesis. Some departments require one; most require two.

Tragic reminder of impending mortality.

Junior slums, n. Upperclass dorms located up-campus; Princeton’s version of slums, nicknamed, “slums.” Don’t be fooled by the Gothic stone.

K

Kiddie lit, nickname, ENG 385: Children’s Literature. Perennially over-enrolled course that people think will be an easy LA. Beware — it’s quite large and grades are heavily deflated.

L

LA, abbrev. Literature and Arts, a category of your distribution requirements. See “kiddie lit.”

Late meal, n. Late meal, n. The only thing that makes upperclass students jealous of first-years.

In theory, an option for students who miss dining hall meal times. In practice, free noms and mixers. See “Frist.”

Lawnparties, n. Afternoon drinka-thon and dance-a-thon on the lawn of each eating club, held in early fall and at the end of spring Houseparties. Known for importing great bands and creating a massive influx of sundresses on Prospect Avenue. Time of year to wear your preppiest clothing — pastels encouraged.

LCA, abbrev. Lewis Center for the Arts. Beautiful, modern building complex that serves as Princeton’s home for the arts. Safe haven for theater kids.

Lectures, n. pl. Oft-missed speeches by professors that constitute the foundation of the Princeton education. Try to attend a couple so you can tell your parents that you are making the most of their tuition dollars.

List, n. Method that bicker clubs use to determine who can enter for a night out. What first-years and sophomores agonize about getting onto. Why juniors and seniors in these clubs get texts from younger students they barely know.

Listserv, n. The reason your Gmail app continuously gives you notifications. A main line of communication between campus groups and their members. Most common iterations include your res college listserv, filled with messages ranging from dance group ticket sales to political manifestos, and the free food listserv, which is exactly what it sounds like.

M

Mathey College, n. Residential college located just south of Rocky.

A collection of loosely associated buildings with no central quad.

Shares a large, picturesque dining hall with Rocky.

McCosh, abbrev. McCosh Health Center. 1. n. Located just south of Frist. You go here when you’re too drunk to go to your room but not drunk enough for the hospital. Areas of expertise: mono and asking women if they’re pregnant. 2. v. Sending your toodrunk friend to the infirmary, or getting sent yourself. Usage: “We had no choice but to McCosh him,” or “Frosh week was so messy, I got McCoshed.”

McGraw, abbrev. McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning.

Study service that offers one-onone and group tutoring for many introductory courses. Located in Frist. Also a good study spot.

Multi-club Bicker, n. Initiative begun recently in which some of the bicker clubs allowed sophomores to bicker two clubs at once. See “Bicker.”

N

NARP, n. Non-athletic regular person. We are here and we are proud. netID, n. The part of your email address preceding “@princeton.edu” and your username for most campus websites.

New York City, n. Just an hourand-a-half train ride away. Sometimes certain classes take you there for free.

O

OA, abbrev. Outdoor Action. Weeklong pre-orientation program that sends half of the incoming class into the woods to get dirty and make friends. There’s no action on Outdoor Action, but there’s always frosh week to get to know a new friend even better.

ODUS, abbrev. Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students.

Oversees campus organizations, undergraduate student government, and various student centers. A source of funding for your student group.

Orange Key, n. Campus tour-guiding group. Don’t believe everything they told you on your tour.

Orgo, abbrev. CHM 301/302: Organic Chemistry. Soul-killer. Separates the kids from the doctors.

P

PAA, abbrev. Peer Academic Adviser. Student available to give first-years academic advice.

Shows up sparingly at zee group study breaks.

P/D/F, abbrev. pass/D/fail. Grading option developed to facilitate a true liberal arts education. Designed to allow students to take a class that expands their horizons with the guarantee that their GPA won’t tank. Unless you get a D. Or fail. See “distribution requirements.”

Pequod, n. 1. Fictional ship in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” 2.

Outrageously expensive photocopied packets of required reading that often resemble the whale. Promised to become free during every USG election. Don’t hold your breath. Found in the U-Store.

Physics for Future Leaders, actual name of PHY 115A. A physics course explicitly designed to introduce non-scientists to just enough science to ostensibly be able to make decisions. Future leaders who are also scientists should seek an actual education elsewhere. See “P/D/F.” PMC, abbrev. Princeton Medical Center. The destination you absolutely don’t want to end up after a night out. Getting PMCed is a much more expensive alternative to getting McCoshed. See “McCosh,” “boot.” 2. Princeton Model Congress. Event for high schoolers, staffed by students who get to stay in D.C. for free.

Not to be confused with the former.

P-Rade, n. Annual procession of ridiculously spirited, multi-generational alumni sporting blackand-orange costumes. Takes place at the end of Reunions. See “alumni,” “Reunions.”

Pre-med, n. A student hoping to go to medical school. Generalized anxiety and cutthroat behavior varies per person.

Precept, n. Discussion between a small group of students and a preceptor (a grad student or faculty member) to supplement lectures. A unique feature of Princeton’s education system inaugurated by Woodrow Wilson.

Vary widely in quality. Never truly mandatory.

Pregame, 1. n. Name for any gathering held prior to a night out on the Street. Usually a source of hard liquor. Usage: “birthday pregame,” “frat pregame.” 2. v. To consume drinks at a party held on campus prior to a night out on the Street. Usage: “Let’s pregame at John’s birthday party before heading to T.I.” Princeton, n. 1. The University to which you have committed the rest of your life (including your future earnings). 2. The affluent suburban town in which your blissful Orange Bubble is located.

Princetoween, n. The night on which all of campus collectively celebrates Halloween, irrespective of the actual date. Typically the Thursday before Fall Break.

Prospect, abbrev. 1. Prospect House. Formerly the University president’s home in the middle of campus. Now a faculty dining hall and the site of end-of-semester fancy dinners for various organizations. 2. Prospect Garden.

The gardens surrounding Prospect House; popular venue for Houseparties photos. 3. Prospect Avenue, a.k.a the Street. 4. The Prospect, the ‘Prince’ section for arts, culture, and student life.

Prospect 12, n. The ultimate drinking challenge: one beer at every eating club in one night. A favored item on senior bucket lists.

Most commonly conquered on Princetoween or Dranksgiving.

Although only 11 clubs are operational, the 12th is Campus Club.

Prox, 1. n. Common name for PUID, or the Princeton University TigerCard. 2. v. To unlock a door by holding your PUID close to an electronic sensor. Usage: “Could you prox me in?” See “PUID.” P-Safe, abbrev. Public Safety.

University cops responsible for regulating parking, ignoring room parties, and opening doors for locked-out students. Despite years of effort by the police union, the officers don’t carry guns.

PTL, abbrev. Post-Thesis Life. The time of year after seniors have turned in their thesis, but before graduation, where they have no responsibilities in life. A time well spent but poorly remembered.

PUID, n. 1. Your University ID. Your key to admission at the library, sporting events, and eating clubs. Can be used to charge food purchases to your student account. Eating club members sport special stickers on theirs.

2. Method sign-in clubs use to determine who can enter during nights out. In this case, if you’re a student and have a PUID, you’re good. See “prox.”

Q

QCR, abbrev. Quantitative and Computational Reasoning, a distribution requirement Quadrangle Club, n. Sign-in club commonly known as “Quad.” The only eating club with a liquor license, meaning it’s the club with the best drinks. The eating club Jeff Bezos ’86 belonged to.

R

RCA, abbrev. Residential college adviser. An upperclass student who lives in your hall and provides free food (see “study break”), condoms, and answers to questions like what to do when your roommate hasn’t showered in five weeks. See “Zee group.”

Reading period, n. Week and a half to catch up on work at the end of each semester. Originally intended as time to do independent research, it is now a time to sleep in until 2 p.m. and to read and write everything you haven’t in the past semester. Dean’s Date happens at the end.

Recal.io, n. Website students use to plan their courses for each semester. Has all possible courses and precepts so students can optimize their classes.

Real talk princeton, n. Tumblr page run by anonymous students who answer basically any question about Princeton. When you have a question nobody knows the answer to, or you don’t feel comfortable asking your friends, this is the place to go.

Residential college, n. Your home at Princeton for at least your first two years of college. There are six residential colleges on campus: Rocky, Mathey, Butler, First, Whitman, and Forbes. Each college varies greatly in amenities, types of rooms, and location, but they all provide a sense of community, and more importantly, a source of free gear.

Residential College Facebook, n.

Great Value-brand Tigerbook. It does the job in the meantime, but doesn’t hold up to Tigerbook.

Residential college staff, n. Wellmeaning faculty members who work for your residential college and have varying degrees of helpfulness. Skilled at clogging your email inbox. Includes the Head of College, Dean of College, Director of Studies, and Director of Student Life.

Reunions, n. Beer-saturated gathering of alumni during the weekend before Commencement for drinking, fellowship, and the P-Rade. Good excuse for students to delay returning home for a week at the end of the year.

Reportedly the event with the second-highest level of alcohol consumption, after only the Indy 500. See “P-Rade.”

Rival, n. What Princeton lacks as the third wheel in HYP. What Penn thinks we are.

page 15 ry Potter; both were modeled after Oxford.

Room draw, n. Computerized process by which students select rooms for the upcoming year.

Conspiracy theories abound about the supposed randomness of the process: People with high social security numbers, third letters of their last names near the end of the alphabet, and Minnesota addresses may receive better times.

Room improvement, n. Purgatory into which students with tragically late draw times are cast.

Over the summer, those who are eligible for room improvement will theoretically be placed into better rooms. See “room draw.”

Rush, v. To move very quickly toward something. n. 1. An aquatic plant. 2. A process you are forbidden to know anything about.

Shhh.

S SA, abbrev. Social Analysis. Distribution requirement that can be fulfilled by a large variety of courses in the realm of humanities and social science.

Safety school, 1. n. Yale, Harvard, Penn, etc. 2. phrase. Popular chant at basketball games regardless of opponent.

SEL, abbrev. Science and Engineering with Lab, a self-explanatory distributional requirement. See “Bridges.”

SEN, abbrev. Science and Engineering, Nonlaboratory, a self-explanatory distribution requirement. See “Physics for Future Leaders.”

Sexile, v. To render your roommate homeless after a successful date or night out. Etiquette in case of sexile should be discussed with your roommate ASAP. Shared meal plan, n. A system by which one can be a member of both an eating club and a residential college, with meals split between the two. Also known as the dream. The number of slots available vary widely by club.

Sign-in club, n. Eating club that takes members through a lottery system rather than Bicker.

Squirrel, n. A furry friend and foe.

Cute when scurrying around campus. Pesky when scavenging in your dorm room. Scary when rabid. Not scared of people.

Comes in brown, gray, and black varieties.

Sororities, n. pl. Groups of women who gather together to take pictures in dresses and “network.”

There are only three at this school: Kappa Kappa Gamma (“Kappa”), Pi Beta Phi (“Pi Phi”), and Kappa Alpha Theta (“Theta”). First-years are not allowed to rush Greek organizations. It may be your ticket into a bicker club, or a way for people to instantly stereotype you.

SPIA, abbrev. School of Public and International Affairs. Formerly selective concentration for students interested in becoming bankers or consultants and learning the language of bureaucracy, as well as those rare folk who actually do want to save the world through government (but will probably end up in banking or consulting).

SPIA fountain, n. Idyllic fountain and pool located in Scudder Plaza, north of Robertson Hall. The entire student body can be found taking photos here pre-Lawnparties. Popular wading spot in the spring, especially after SPIA theses are submitted.

Stars for Stoners, nickname. AST 203: The Universe. Purported to actually be a somewhat difficult class involving actual equations.

See “P/D/F.” Study break, n. Code for free food.

At any given time, there is a high chance some study break is happening around campus. Most common benefactors of study breaks include res colleges, RCAs, and clubs.

T

Terrace Club, n. Sign-in club known for artsy types, vegans and hipsters. Popular end-ofnight stop for all of campus. The only eating club not on Prospect Avenue.

Rocky College, abbrev. Rockefeller College. Northernmost residential college known for gorgeous Gothic architecture.

T.I., abbrev. Tiger Inn. Bicker club known for raucous, beer-soaked parties and heavy preponderance of bros.

Rocks for Jocks, nickname.

GEO 103: Natural Disasters. See “P/D/F.”

Tiger Confessions, n. Facebook page run by an anonymous student where students can submit any thoughts, questions, ideas, etc. they have. Keeps getting shut down, but keeps returning in slightly different iterations. Like

RoMa, nickname. Rockefeller/ Mathey College dining hall.

Looks like the Great Hall in Har-

a cat, it seems to have nine lives.

Tower Club, n. Bicker club known for first-year-friendly dance floor and taproom, as well as heavy preponderance of theater types, a cappella groups, and SPIA majors.

Thesis, n. The T word. Major senior pastime, required of every A.B. student and some B.S.E. students. Most are close to 100 pages. Often replaces socialization, exercise, happiness, etc. in the spring.

Tiger, n. 1. Princeton student or athlete. 2. Mascot dressed in tiger-skin suit who capers and cavorts at football games while trying to avoid attacks by the opponent’s band. 3. Campus humor magazine of erratic quality and publication schedule. 4. Striped predatory jungle cat.

Tigerbook, n. Database containing every Princeton student and information such as their class year, major, and most importantly, a photo. The single-most useful tool you will encounter in your time at Princeton. Not always operational. For an alternative, see “Residential College Facebook.”

TigerHub, n. Poorly named and poorly designed software to fulfill administrative duties such as enrolling in courses and checking grades. Have to reload the page three times before it works.

U

Up-campus, adj., n. Located on the part of campus closer to Nassau Street, up the hill. Begins around Dillon Gym and extends through Rocky. Synonym: “north.” Usage: “From here, go up-campus to find Brown.”

U-Store, n. Officially, the Princeton University Store. Located at 36 University Place, across from Blair Arch. Sells food, dorm items, and school supplies. Overpriced, but great location.

USG, abbrev. Undergraduate Student Government. Resumebuilders who like to hear themselves talk. Plans Lawnparties.

Otherwise, of questionable impact.

W

Wa, The, n. Campus colloquialism for the Wawa convenience store.

Located between the Dinky and Forbes.

Whitman College, n. Residential college that bears a striking resemblance to the castle in Shrek.

As the newest college, built in 2007, it has air conditioning and very nice rooms.

Writing Center, n. Singlehandedly responsible for helping firstyears survive writing sem. Offers individual appointments to help at any point in the writing process.

Wucox, n. Portmanteau for “Wu/ Wilcox dining hall.” Large dining hall that serves Butler and First Colleges. Frequented by athletes and gym rats post-workout.

Z

Zee group, abbrev. Group of advisees. The 20 or so first-years frequently found under the wing of a residential college adviser. May or may not become close friends over the course of the year. Statistically, at least one permutation within the group will hook up.

Zoom, n. The death of your eyeballs, your computer battery, and your traditional college education. Begone, classrooms. We’ll see what happens this year.

Tuesday July 20, 2021

Features { www.dailyprincetonian.com }

APRIL 2021

page 16

DESIGN: THANYA BEGUM / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Despite a pandemic, Princeton Birding Society spreads its wings

By Rachel Sturley

Head Features Editor

It’s 6:54 a.m. on a Friday. The wind blows southward, the birds are chirping, and 1.4 miles from campus, three figures stand on a wooded path, eyes trained on a small brown creature skulking along the edges of a marsh.

They are virtually unidentifiable as a junior and two first-years from Princeton University, donning masks, big black binoculars, and hiking attire. The identity of the heron they carefully observe might elude less trained eyes, but to these three students, it is clearly — and surprisingly — an American bittern. Rare for these parts of the Charles Rogers Wildlife Refuge, this sight makes the early wake-up well worth it.

After the well-camouflaged bittern leaves their field of vision, the birders confer excitedly before falling silent again and turning back to the wooded path. Every once in a while, the natural ambience is broken by “pishing,” where one birder alternates “p” and “sh” sounds to imitate an alarm call and coax birds out into the open; other times a member of the group calls out a species name, and the rest of the group stands on high alert, scanning the skies.

These three friends all happen to be members of the Princeton Birding Society (PBS), a group of students dedicated to ornithological education, conservation efforts, and the practice of birding.

As spring migration picks up and the local bird population swells, they have gotten into the habit of meeting for small, informal bird walks in nearby nature reserves.

“On a bird walk, I am always focused,” said Claire Wayner ’22, co-founder of PBS. “I'm listening a little bit harder. I'm looking around for movement in the sky, and in trees and bushes.”

“It’s kind of like hide-and-seek,” she continued, “but with amazing, colorful feathered things that move.”

In the popular imagination, noted Wayner, birding evokes an image of an elderly couple in “nerdy clothing”: cargo vests, bucket hats, clown-size hiking boots. But Wayner and other young birders at Princeton are eager to revitalize the art of birding — not just as a hobby but also in the hopes of cultivating a love of

the natural world that will motivate people to save it. In the face of a rapid decline in bird populations, even something as small as a walk reminds these members of all that the world stands to lose.

“On a bird walk, all you hear are other people's footsteps and the chorus of birds singing in the trees,” said Willow Dalehite ’22, an ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB) concentrator and the current president of PBS. “And it's just a really wonderful sound. Sometimes I go outside and then I realize that, in the background, I'm hearing so many birds. And I imagine what it would be like if they weren't there, and it's just completely different.”

Birders build their niche Wayner and Joe Kawalec ’21 both came to Princeton with a longstanding interest in conservation and birds. Wayner, who started birding at age 11, was a member of a community of young birders back home in Maryland and was eager to find similar connections at Princeton. During her first semester on campus, she perceived a disappointing lack of birders on campus. However, that spring, she received an exciting email through residential college listservs from Kawalec.

“He was looking at starting a bird feeder project. And I was shocked,” Wayner recalled. “So I emailed him really frantically and was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we need to have a meal. We need to talk about birds.’ And we got lunch.”

Kawalec, an EEB concentrator, hadn’t started birding until the summer before his second year at Princeton. Eager to combine his academic interests with personal hobbies, he spent that summer exploring the natural spaces around his home in East Brunswick, N.J. The email Wayner saw was a call for volunteers for Project FeederWatch, a citizen science project run by the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology. Tracking what birds come to feeders nationwide in the winter provides ecologists with crucial data for analyzing patterns in migration and survival. In his sophomore year, Kawalec started a branch of the project housed in the Princeton Garden Project with the help of a grant from the High Meadows Environmental Institute.

Wayner’s and Kawalec’s shared

interest in birding and conservation propelled them to start PBS. Wayner described how they gathered petition signatures and “went through all the hoops” of making the group official through the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students (ODUS) that spring, before organizing their first birding outing in May 2019.

Both remember feeling anything but optimistic about that walk. It was a Saturday morning at 7 a.m. and, to top it off, fell right in the middle of finals period. But 18 students came, and the Princeton Birding Society was born. Both Wayner and Kawalec have a photo from the walk framed by their desks and describe the walk as one of their favorite PBS memories.

“It’s been so exciting to watch this very enthusiastic, dedicated group of undergraduate birders form,” said Cassie Stoddard, assistant EEB professor and faculty advisor to PBS. “I've just been in awe of what they've been able to accomplish and the kind of excitement that's bubbled up on campus.”

The group quickly expanded their nature walks beyond the local area. They petitioned ODUS to grant student groups access to Enterprise vehicles, which allowed PBS to arrange trips off campus to birding sites such as Cape May, N.J.; Hawk Mountain, Pa; and Barnegat Light, N.J.

PBS adapts to campus restrictions Like all other aspects of campus life, PBS had to make major adjustments to continue running this year. Under the Social Contract, many events sponsored by student groups are not permitted, so the usual organized birding outings are off limits; instead, small groups of friends arrange morning walks in the local nature areas.

Restrictions have surprisingly allowed the club community to flourish, according to current and past officers. The once inactive GroupMe is now filled with pictures of birds that members see around campus and at home. This semester, the club has been collectively tracking the movements of a red-tailed hawk they fondly dubbed the “campus hawk.” Less experienced birders also use the GroupMe to ask for advice from

the group on identifying songs and species.

Education has remained central to PBS’s mission since the shift to virtual learning. Dalehite instituted biweekly, club-wide meetings this spring, which are usually educational workshops led by the more experienced birders in the group.

Their educational efforts regularly translate into environmental activism. PBS advocates for bird life on campus by spreading awareness to the campus community and the University administration. Wayner runs the Bird Window Collision Monitoring Project, which she started a little over two years ago to keep track of dead or injured birds from window strikes.

“Up to a billion birds every year die from colliding with windows in the US alone; it's the second highest cause of death of migratory birds in the US,” Wayner said.

“It's really tragic, honestly, and there are a couple places on campus where we regularly witness window strikes.”

One such place, she noted, is a glass room in Prospect House that juts out into the garden. After speaking with the University architect and submitting the collected data to University Facilities, Wayner explained that a bird safe window treatment will be applied to the room this summer.

As an extension of these efforts, the group wrote a proclamation that establishes the week of April 19-25, 2021 as Bird Friendly Campus Week, in conjunction with celebrations of Earth Day. The document, according to Dalehite, “reaffirms student interest in Princeton’s existing and future commitment to creating a bird friendly environment on campus.”

KyuJung Whang, vice president for Facilities at the University, signed the document on April 20.

How a “hobby” becomes environmental activism Beyond the concrete efforts of PBS to raise awareness and promote conservation, Wayner reiterated that birding itself is a practice that benefits sustainability and environmental activism.

“We've lost 40 percent of all bird individuals, I believe, in the last couple of decades in the US. We're really in a bird conservation

crisis right now,” Wayner said.

“The more people that we can get out into nature, watching birds and appreciating them, and developing a love of them, the more likely it is that we'll be able to save them.”

Stoddard, whose research on bird sensory ecology fuels conservation efforts, agreed.

“If we go birding and we learn about these species — there's 10,000 species of birds and counting, each with its own story — the more likely it is that we will design and advocate for conservation practices,” she said.

Birding itself is far from a passive exercise. All of the birders interviewed sung the praises of eBird, a phone application that allows birders to record their data for use in ornithological research on biodiversity. Kawalec described the app as “social media for birding”: it allows birders to connect with others in their area and to track migratory patterns on a micro level.

“When you log these observations and records, it's satisfying for your own perspective, but it's also contributing something extremely valuable to science,” said Stoddard. “I’ve actually found that the advances in technology, especially these apps, are really opening up birding to broader audiences.”

Kawalec agreed — he hopes that more people take advantage of these apps and their natural surroundings to observe their feathered friends.

“Birding can be such a natural part of anybody's lifestyle, you don't have to call yourself a ‘birder.’ It's not very complex,” Kawalec said. “It sounds kind of exclusive sometimes, but it's really supposed to be a very inclusive hobby.”

Today, PBS has over 200 people on their listserv and hopes to continue growing, especially when they can start organizing trips off campus again. For these students, expanding the birding community at Princeton is a first step to a greener future.

“I truly think that the way that we are going to combat the climate crisis is first by appreciating what's around us — appreciating the natural world and learning how to live sustainably along with it,” said Wayner.

JULIAN GOTTFRIED / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

COURTESY OF KOJO BAIDOO ’24

Campus red-tailed hawk dining on a squirrel in the Whitman courtyard.

Sam Vasen ’23, treasurer of Birding Society, scans the sky for raptors along with Jimmy Waltman ’23 and Aaron Eng ’23.

JULIAN GOTTFRIED / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN JULIAN GOTTFRIED / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Kojo Baidoo ’24, social media chair.

JULIAN GOTTFRIED / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

A male eastern bluebird, seen at Charles Rogers.

Claire Wayner ’22, cofounder of Birding Society.

Tuesday July 20, 2021

Features { www.dailyprincetonian.com }

M AY 2 0 2 1

page 17

DESIGN: THANYA BEGUM / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Choosing Community: Muslim students gather to eat, worship, mourn during Ramadan

COURTESY OF FAWAZ AHMAD '22

By Liana Slomka

Features Staff Writer

The sun has set on Thursday night, and dinner is over in the campus dining halls. In the big white tent on Frist South Lawn, students sit two to a table, shouting over each other, and eating like they haven’t had food since early in the morning. Well, they haven’t.

After a semester of solitary prayers and virtual community, Muslim students on campus are enjoying the opportunity to gather in person for evening meals during the month of Ramadan.

“You can feel that people really care about the community and they really want to make it feel like home,” Saareen Junaid ’23 said.

In order to foster community among students observing Ramadan and help ease their month of fasting, the Muslim Students Association (MSA) has arranged for students to meet on Wednesday nights in the Frist Multipurpose Room and on Thursdays in the tent for Iftar, the meal eaten after sunset. The MSA also sponsors weekly Tigers In Town events so that Muslim students can break their fast together at various restaurants or dessert places around Nassau Street.

“Everyone’s just kind of excited to eat the food and just talk. That’s what I’ve enjoyed the most, being able to go get ice cream with all these people and start meeting frosh,” Emre Cakir ’21 said.

“It’s a very nice community space, and it’s a lot of fun, being able to eat together and break your fast,” Sameer Riaz ’24 added. “And then usually afterward we just

Jad Bendarkawi ’24 (l.) and Faraz Awan ’24 enjoy Iftar together in the Frist South Lawn tent. end up hanging out. Sometimes until the morning when it’s time to eat again.”

Hifsa Chaudhry ’22, co-president of MSA, explained the importance of providing shared spaces for students.

“Ramadan is notoriously a time when people will become more involved in the Muslim community just because it’s that month where you have this desire to have a communal space,” she said.

“It’s a lot more of a vibrant community than it was before,” she added. She also highlighted the additional community building that has occurred as a result of the widely attended Tigers in Town events — and the free food provided at those events.

Some students who were on campus for Ramadan in 2019 noted that it feels different this year, especially because Murray-Dodge Hall, home of the Office of Religious Life and the Muslim prayer room, is closed.

“There’s really no good way, with the restrictions, to actually be able to pray all together. That was obviously a really big element for us, especially during Ramadan,” Cakir said.

Even though Social Contract restrictions prevent them from gathering for prayers or hosting Iftars for the entire community — as the MSA did in past years in the Carl A. Fields Center — leaders of the association still feel they have successfully engaged members socially and spiritually this month.

“It’s just been amazing how much people are willing to contribute to the month,” Abdelhamid Arbab ’23, who serves as the

MSA’s community outreach chair, said. “But also, I think that’s the beauty of the month — everyone is eager, everyone’s excited to get involved, everyone wants to get together, everyone is in this process of building community.”

“I’ve always seen my desire to foster community as an extension of our religiosity … So ever since I’ve come to Princeton, my sort of religious service has been to really establish that community,” noted Shaffin Siddiqui ’22, former MSA president. “I’ve not let [COVID-19] necessarily defeat my ability to reach out to people.”

Siddiqui’s commitment to the community has not gone unnoticed. “He’s the most loving, welcoming … he’s just doing such a great job of making us not feel lonely,” Riaz noted.

Despite the efforts of friendly upperclass students, for many first-years and sophomores, this Ramadan comes with additional challenges, as it is their first time spending it away from their families.

“It definitely tastes different,” Arbab said. “When I’m at home, I’m sort of forced to have community. Here, you have to go out of your way, so that you can choose to have a community.”

“That’s something the month of Ramadan teaches us: don’t take anything for granted, including community,” he added.

While being at home would’ve made it easier to observe Ramadan, Muskan Effendi ’24, who serves as the MSA communications chair, noted that conducting the rituals and prayers for herself for the first time has helped her

find more meaning in them.

“I’m finding it nice to be accountable for myself,” she explained. “Sometimes I’ll invite my friends to have “sahur” (the pre-dawn meal) together and pray afterward together outside.”

Balancing the demands of Princeton life with the rituals of Ramadan has presented an additional challenge to students.

However, as Muslim Life Program (MLP) Coordinator Sabrina Mirza explained, they are still able to find meaning in the small moments.

“It’s a month that we consider to be so blessed and anything you do, any charity you give is multiplied. So, I think the students are really trying to balance their schoolwork with finding those moments,” she said.

More than Social Contract restrictions or academic challenges, what has made this Ramadan truly different from past years, for many students, is the loss of Muslim Chaplain Sohaib Sultan.

Sultan died of cancer during the first week of the fast.

Grappling with this shared loss while observing Ramadan has heightened the importance of community.

“Imam Sohaib not being here is definitely really weird. During Ramadan, especially, he and [his wife] Arshe and [daughter] Radiyya were just such a big presence.

And he’d always be the one leading us in prayer and always welcoming us,” Cakir explained.

“The community is really hurting right now, especially during Ramadan, because it’s a time where you intensely reflect back

into your spirituality,” Junaid added. “We’re really missing that spiritual leader. It just feels like a void.”

Many students attended Sultan’s burial in Hamilton Township on Saturday, April 17, which provided a much-needed outlet for support in a time of mourning.

“Imam Sohaib was a really respected figure and his passing has been difficult, to say the least. But I think just in terms of community gatherings and spaces, Ramadan is one of the best times for the community to come together, even if they are grieving,” Chaudhry said.

“It just feels different this year,” Junaid noted. “The loss makes every day feel so slow.”

She also expressed her fear for the future of the Muslim student community. “That’s one thing that I'm really nervous about this Ramadan, and also just for the future, because that leader who cared so much about making so many people feel heard, he's gone now. So it's scary,” she explained.

However, even as they grieve, the organized events of this month demonstrate how Muslim student leaders have taken on the responsibility of continuing Sultan’s legacy of warmth and inclusivity. For some, the student leaders’ efforts give them hope for the future of the community.

“The fact that these students are like ‘let’s arrange for these things on our own,’ that takes a lot of initiative and motivation on their end,” Mirza said. “And so, I’m just super proud of everything that they’re doing.”

JUNE 2021

‘Our moment in the sun’: Transgender alumni reflect on representation, activism, pride

By Jacqueline Lydon

Features Staff Writer

An unprecedented rise in antitransgender legislation this year in the United States has particularly targeted educational settings. Several states have passed laws barring transgender women from women’s sports, with others introducing bills that would mandate reporting of gender nonconformity or explicitly permit misgendering in the classroom.

While this specific backlash against transgender inclusion is a recent phenomenon, transgender people have been a part of even our nation’s most elite academic institutions for decades.

This Pride Month, The Daily Princetonian met with seven transgender and non-binary Princeton alumni who graduated from the University between 1960-2000. Their accounts, along other archived interviews, shed light on how transgender and non-binary alumni explored their identities and navigated the University in their time as undergraduates, as well as how they have renegotiated their relationships with the institution in their time away from it.

Gay Spaces, Trans Closets: Transgender Undergraduate Experiences from the ’60s to ’90s Most of the interviewed alum presented as their gender assigned at birth as undergraduates. Gender identity was not a conscious or explicit part of their time at Princeton, especially for those who graduated in earlier decades.

When Nancy Lamar attended Princeton in the mid-’60s, it was decades before she would realize that she was transgender, and the University was not yet co-ed. She saw its student body as only beginning to integrate — Lamar described the school as, “clean, white, WASPy.” During Lamar’s time at Princeton, she never even heard the word gay or homosexual spoken aloud, and the term transgender was not yet in popular use. This lack of terminology meant that Lamar’s transgender identity remained latent.

“It was always there, at Princeton, and I’m sure it was there within others,” said Lamar, “but to what degree do people recognize it, and to what degree do people live it?”

In the coming decades, alumni noted that there was at least a consciousness of LGBTQ+ identities at Princeton — mostly of cisgender

gay men. In an interview from the LGBT Center’s LGBTQIA Oral History Project Archive, Dana Leslie ’78 recounted that she became aware of her bisexuality as an undergraduate but did not identify as a woman until 1992.

“I was still in the closet, and I hadn’t reached out to the Princeton gay community, which was very small and very hidden and very uncool at that time. And so I didn’t feel like it was something I could do, reach out to that community,” said Leslie.

Attending Princeton just a few years later, Tina Madison White ’82 was also aware of a small gay and lesbian community on campus.

“Things were still pretty hushhush. It was okay to be gay, but it was still kind of a secret,” White said. “I didn’t even know the word trans.”

“I had no idea that there was anyone on Earth like me, really, and so [I] felt very alone and frightened and was quietly obsessed with fixing myself,” she added.

Part of that journey to “fix herself,” White said, included joining Ivy Club, making her technically the first co-ed to join the club. She stresses, though, that her good friend Sally Frank ’80, “really gets credit in [her] book” for the gender integration of

the eating clubs.

By the ’90s, the LGBTQ+ community at Princeton had expanded and become more visible as more students came out and an LGBT student group formed. This environment allowed some students to find connection and support, and some even to come out, but those interviewed recount that transgender identities remained largely undiscussed and unrepresented.

Melody Maia Monet ’93 appreciated seeing happy, out gay students on campus, as well as people who played with gender nonconformity, but she didn’t come out herself. Twenty years later than Lamar and Leslie, Monet recalled a similar lack of language for and visibility of trans identities.

“I didn’t have the language to express who I was. And part of the problem was Princeton was still centered, at least the student community was still centered on gay and lesbian, a little bit bi ... I don’t really recall the word transgender even being used in these spaces,” Monet recalled in an interview from the LGBTQIA Oral History Project Archive.

“I just kind of thought that there was something wrong with me,” Monet continued. “I didn’t have a way to access the [trans] community my high school years or my Princ-

eton years. So I think that was a huge detriment for me. I think it really stunted my development, my exploration.”

Around the same time, Andrea Razi-Thomas ’96 did not have the language to identify herself as nonbinary, but she came out on campus as lesbian her freshman year. A member of the basketball team, she was around other LGBTQ+ athletes, but most were closeted at the time.

“At Princeton, I had a perfectly fine experience in terms of being a gender-bending lesbian person ... My basketball teammates and my good friends were all very supportive.

There weren’t very many ‘out’ people around me but people were great.”

“But I thought I was pretty atypical,” she continued. “I didn’t really realize that there was a huge LGBT community out there.”

Like most interviewees, Cameron Scott ’93 enjoyed his Princeton experience academically but dealt with feelings of social alienation. He was able to access some form of LGBTQ+ community, though, as part of Terrace Club.

In a separate interview from the archive, Scott remembered Barton, a cook at Terrace. “He was a big queen, and he ended up dying of AIDS. I See TRANSGENDER page 19

page 18

The Daily Princetonian

Tuesday July 20, 2021

Tuesday July 20, 2021

Features { www.dailyprincetonian.com }

TRANSGENDER Continued from page 17

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

think just him being there gave it a little bit of a vibe,” said Scott. “And there were some guys that were fully out. God bless them. They had courage.”

Scott remembers social events for LGBTQ+ students at Terrace, too.

“They had some queer mixers … I do remember there was a queer party of some kind at Terrace and I went and there were like five people there … And I was like, oh, man, I so do not fit in,” Scott told the ‘Prince,’ “That was my experience of ‘out’ life at Princeton.”

Navigating the Intersections of Multiple Identities Dr. Joi Weaver ’97 didn’t begin to question their gender identity or sexuality during their time at Princeton.

“My biggest identity and the challenges I met at Princeton were being Black, basically,” said Weaver.

“I was a pre-med student, and so I had a good number of Black pre-med friends and we really supported each other as minorities, and the microaggressions we faced, the racial issues that we faced.”

Weaver reflects that this may have overshadowed questions of sexuality or gender identity.

“When you go to places that are predominantly white you always feel a little different,” Weaver said. “I think I’ve had a whole life of that, so I always thought that that was the difference. So maybe that impaired me from digging deeper to understand that there were some other differences as well.”

Monet also found that intersections between her identities impacted her experience at Princeton and as a trans person, namely being Latina and the daughter of an undocumented immigrant.

“To the extent to which I was used to being marginalized, it helped me. A lot of white trans women are shocked at suddenly becoming marginalized,” said Monet.

“It helped me to be an activist. I was certainly an activist on campus,” she continued.

Being blind shaped Leslie’s experience coming to terms with her identity, as she relied on other

people’s support to transition and to find other LGBTQ+ people. Instead of easing into a transition, she had to begin her journey by coming out.

“I couldn’t do it as a single person looking and exploring. I needed the community just to find out about the community,” said Leslie in her interview from the archive.

At the same time, being blind encouraged her to enter activism, because she had to connect personally with activists and leaders of organizations to get information. “I wound up, just out of necessity, becoming an organizer,” she explained.

Taking on Activism as Alumni Leslie and Monet engaged in activism in their time at Princeton, while others didn’t begin their advocacy efforts until after graduation — but all interviewees now dedicate themselves to various LGBTQ+ issues and communities across the country.

Leslie first focused on bisexual issues and later took on trans activism as well. In her interview from the archive, she recalled one particularly memorable moment from the early days of her activist career in ’87, days after the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights.

“There was a civil disobedience action at the Supreme Court. And I was on the steps of the Supreme Court singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ and all kinds of other protest things reminiscent of the 1960s.”

Leslie was arrested there for not vacating the steps and spent several hours on a paddywagon along with Michael Hardwick, the plaintiff in the landmark Bowers v. Hardwick Supreme Court case which upheld states’ rights to enforce sodomy laws.

White has served on the Board of Directors for the Human Rights Campaign and as executive director of the Blue Ridge Pride Center, as well as traveling as a speaker and helping organize pride marches in North Carolina.

“My story was a good one. My family didn’t abandon me, and I thought they might; my work didn’t fire me, and I thought they might. I wanted to retire and pay it forward by becoming an activist,” White explained. “So I moved to the south, because we need more trans voices in the south.”

Monet’s activism is focused primarily on the digital sphere, where she uses her YouTube channel to ed-

ucate people about trans issues and experiences. Some of her videos have millions of views.

Monet is proud of her channel’s impact. There, she is able to share resources with many people who are beginning to question their gender identities and says she has helped cisgender people understand trans issues better.

“I have literally talked people off of train tracks,” she said. “I know I have saved people’s lives, encouraged people to come out.”

Lamar also helps trans people at the beginning of their journeys through the organization she helps run, Cross Dressers International.

“It’s our main purpose to take beginners by the hand ... give them the feeling that [they’re] not alone,” Lamar explained.

Renegotiating Relationships with Princeton While spending years or decades discovering their identities, transitioning, and even engaging in activist work, many interviewees have had ongoing interactions with the University. They have watched the school change, and for many, their relationships with it have changed too, and even improved. Others are unable to mend the negative associations they have with the institution or reconcile their transitions with memories of their time as undergraduates.

Lamar decided not to come out to former classmates, and like many transgender people her age, prefers living a double life, presenting as male to her family and community.

“Like a lot of people my age — I went to Princeton in the ’60s — I live two lives. I got married, I have a daughter, I have grandchildren, as male me. And I’m also Nancy. I’m both,” she said.

“I went back to reunions as male me, and I went back with my wife, so it was just the standard reunions …

The reunion is an attempt to recapture the years you were there, when in my case neither I nor anybody else there presented as LGBT,” Lamar continued.

Although Scott publicly transitioned, it had little impact on his experience at reunions. Scott felt “visibly queer” by the time he attended his fifth reunion, which he said seemed to surprise or put off

page 19

DESIGN: THANYA BEGUM / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

COURTESY OF SUBJECTS

From left (top): Andrea Razi-Thomas ’96 with her family, Tina Madison White ’82 with Sally Frank ’80, and Dr. Joi Weaver ’97. From left (bottom): Cameron Scott ’93, Melody Maia Monet ’93, and Nancy Lamar. classmates, although no one made direct comments.

“I went to my 25th and no one knew that I transitioned,” said Scott.

Though they could have learned from social media, he didn’t actively explain or come out to people. “It just wasn’t really the most important thing,” he said.

All of those interviewed appreciated the changes they have seen taking place in the University. Leslie enjoyed visiting the LGBT center at reunions.

“There wasn’t an LGBT office — activities office, support services, anything of that sort. But now it was there, and it was so good to get that feeling, to have that support from the Princeton community now,” recounted Leslie in her archived interview.

White not only returned for reunions, but also spoke at and helped run the She Roars conference. After pushing past her nerves, White had a very positive experience reintroducing herself to her classmates as Tina.

“Everyone was very kind,” she said. “I suddenly felt, when I visit Princeton now, and I walk the campus, I feel like I’m really walking on my campus, and I had always felt like a foreigner on my own campus because I hadn’t attended Princeton as me.”

White also loved being a part of She Roars — “everyone was very welcoming.”

“The coolest thing for me was to be there in this sea of women and to

feel connected, because I had never felt that,” she said. “I just felt like I was home. I’d never had that before and it was just so wonderful.”

Monet also found she was able to add happy memories to her connection with Princeton — from working for the Alumni Council and helping run TigerNet, where she launched a discussion board for LGBT alumni, to speaking at the tenth anniversary of the campus’ LGBT Center and reintroducing herself to classmates at her 25th Reunion, to even getting married in the Chapel and having her reception at Prospect House.

“You can reclaim that space,” Monet explained. “If you ever look back at Princeton’s traditions and how they’ve changed over time, they don’t actually date back that far, most of them. It wasn’t long ago that the institution didn’t even allow women.”

“I was in the closet for four years.

There weren’t a lot of us around. But hopefully, the next generation of students won’t be able to say that, and that’s a beautiful thing,” she said.

“We’ve been around forever, but it’s taken us a while to get our moment in the sun.”

Editor’s Note: Interested readers can hear from these individuals, and from dozens of other LGBTQ+ alumni, in the Oral History Archive.

the PROSPECT. The Daily Princetonian

page 20

Tuesday July 20, 2021

DESIGN: DIMITAR CHAKAROV / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

ARTS & CULTURE

FEBRUARY 2021

When The Marriage Pact came to Princeton (and matched a pair of twins)

By Cathleen Weng

Prospect Staff Writer

“Fill out this survey to get matched with your other half,” the Princeton Marriage Pact promised. For the 2,273 Princeton students who completed the survey, it was an intriguing enough promise from a matchmaking service new to the University this year — especially within the context of returning to campus during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the eye-catching advertisements and the buzz surrounding the service, most students may know little about the background of the Marriage Pact, an exciting trend and source of gossip that came and went.

The Marriage Pact began as the brainchild of two students at Stanford University as an economics project and has since grown into a full-fledged company under the command of CEO Liam McGregor.

“We’d heard of what a marriage pact is, and we thought ‘what are the odds that the person you know ... is actually the best person you should make that agreement with?’ ... At a place like Princeton with 5,000 kids, what are the chances that you happen to know the best person for you? Really low! So the question was, can we find that person?” McGregor said.

The Marriage Pact may have begun at Stanford University, but it has since made it to colleges all across the United States — and now to Princeton University. Initially, Princeton’s Class of 2021 class government looked at the algorithm as a potential way to match seniors from Princeton with seniors from Yale for friendship, but when the announcement came that Princeton’s undergraduates would be returning to campus, they decided to focus their attention solely on Princeton’s student body. Since every college is different, each iteration of the Marriage Pact is different.

But its primary value remains in its community building.

“We ... hoped that it would be something that the campus buzzes about, or like a collective shared experience that people can gossip about together, like just have something in common, like a shared experience,” said Class of 2021 social chair Phoebe Park.

In the process of bringing the Marriage Pact to Princeton, the 2021 class government involved the 2022 and 2024 class governments, going through most of the planning and organizing process only a week before they rolled the program out. The 2023 class government chose not to be involved with the Marriage Pact.

The Undergraduate Student Government’s (USG) worked with the Marriage Pact to market it specifically for the Princeton community — using tailored advertisements that were sent through as many platforms as possible.

The Marriage Pact algorithm uses a participant’s answers to their survey to match them up with what the algorithm deems as their “perfect match.” The questions, a combination of

tried and true questions already built into the algorithm and a few more Princeton-specific questions, cover everything from politics to TigerConfessions.

Every iteration of the Marriage Pact also comes with its own problems. At Princeton, most of those problems arose from the survey questions — primarily two that were built into the algorithm and that USG was not privy to before the survey’s launch.

One question asked if participants would support their child if they came out of the closet, and the other asked if their partner gaining weight would be a deal-breaker. Concerns were raised by some students about these questions for being insensitive, and the questions were swiftly removed from the survey. “[Marriage Pact] doesn’t shy away from some of the heavier topics because they’re important to know about if you’re going to make a credible long-term relationship. The presence of a question on the questionnaire is not an endorsement of any particular position on it. I think it’s simply an acknowledgment that people do hold different views across these spectrums, and they’re important to know about for long-term relationships,” McGregor said.

“I think there are ways we could’ve articulated questions differently. However, I do think that there are certain biases that I, as a gay Asian man, would like to avoid, and [the original Marriage Pact survey] did its job in helping me avoid that.

And those questions were — as much as I understand why people found those questions to be problematic — I also appreciate the fact that I wouldn’t get someone with starkly different values based on the algorithm,” said Elliott Hyon, the 2024 class council Marriage Pact representative.

Aside from those concerns, the general reception toward the Marriage Pact was positive.

It drummed up excitement and provided students with gossip and a fun anecdote to tell.

“I thought it was something interesting to do,” Rowen Gesue ’24 said. “It was cool. ... It did give a sense of community, a little bit, for something that other people were doing as well, which is nice during weird times like this.”

Fast forward to 7:49 p.m on

“got matched with my twin brother in the princeton marriage pact. how's your wednesday going?”

— Andrew White (@awhite425) February 4, 2021 Feb. 3, 2021, match day, just a few hours before the actual matches were released, a tweet about

SYDNEY PENG / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Marriage Pact gained some traction. “got matched with my twin brother in the princeton marriage pact. how’s your wednesday going?” tweeted Andrew White ’23, who entered the Princeton Marriage Pact with relatively small expectations and left with an unfortunate tale to tell.

When the Princeton Marriage Pact released the initials of participants’ matches, White and his twin brother received each other’s. Assumptions brewing, about an hour later, they found out that they had indeed been matched by the algorithm.

What’s more? The match was in the 100th percentile.

“I was like wow, a hundred percent, that’s something, isn’t it?” White said. “I mean, we are identical twins, we do similar things, we have similar personalities, so I guess it kind of makes sense that ... we would be matched by an algorithm. It was unfortunate, to say the least.”

At the same time the White twins were matched, over 2,000 other Princeton students were also opening their emails, anticipating the names of their matches. A few minutes prior to the announcement, a group of students unaffiliated with the Marriage Pact or class councils sent out a prank email, “Rickrolling” the listservs by pretending to be Marriage Pact.

A few minutes after the real announcement, Tigerbook (a platform where students can look each other up) crashed, likely from the sheer amount of users searching for their matches. Some matched with people they knew. Some with people they didn’t. The Marriage Pact’s blunder in matching White with his twin wasn’t the only one made that night. Some received the wrong initials at first. Some matched with people whose values were too fundamentally different from their own.

Through aggressive marketing, the Princeton Marriage Pact managed to reduce the deficit of women to men in their heterosexual dating market from 161 unmatched women to closer to 30, but some of the women who signed up on the last open day of the Marriage Pact still ended up matched with a female friend rather than a potential romantic partner.

Not many people took the Marriage Pact survey expecting

to find a future spouse, and most agreed that the Marriage Pact was a fun, unique experience, but its user base does have a few criticisms to lobby. For one, White believes that the problem he faced could have been solved if the Marriage Pact had looked more carefully at edge cases in their algorithm.

“I think that [the possibility of getting matched with your sibling is] an edge case that maybe should’ve been thought through,” White said. “I’m assuming that you can run a fairly quick check to make sure people don’t have the same last name.

Otherwise, you could put in a ‘do not match’ list, like maybe just one person you’re afforded, so you can’t be too picky or selective, but like, one person where you can be like ‘I don’t want to be matched with this person.’”

Another participant with criticisms about the algorithm and survey questions was Orli Epstein ’24, though she enjoyed the experience overall.

“I thought the questions were not what you would ask if you were actually looking for someone to date,” Epstein said. “There were just a lot of irrelevant questions, and they didn’t ask anything that I thought mattered, for the most part.”

Ahmed Farah ’22 agreed that the survey could have been stronger, noting that when an algorithm strives to pair people based on their values, it’s likely that they will end up with a close friend or someone so similar to themselves that they won’t necessarily be compatible for a romantic relationship or, as in White’s case, a sibling. However, Farah also sees the value in Marriage Pact’s algorithm.

“It’s kind of refreshing to see something like this where you get to meet someone that you potentially could’ve spent four years at Princeton and never crossed paths with,” Farah said.

“And the fact that that’s done through some method that tries to optimize for compatibility in terms of whether or not you two are going to get along or feel like you can actually hang out and understand one another because you have some sort of shared ground is, I think, really cool, and there’s definitely a space for it in college. I’m not sure if dating is the right space for it, but I think it’s a really cool thought.”

Members of class council also

note that the Marriage Pact is more about meeting new people and bringing the community together than specifically about finding someone to spend the rest of your life with. And at the very least, they hope that participants in the Marriage Pact took something positive away from the experience.

In the end, 646 freshmen, 447 sophomores, 525 juniors, and 637 seniors took the Princeton Marriage Pact, nearly half of undergraduates at Princeton.

“In other schools, not everyone ended up having anything romantic with their Marriage Pact matches,” Park said. “Rather, some of them became best friends because they were so compatible as people. This survey can’t tell you whether there’s that spark that makes something a relationship.”

“We worked so hard at trying to make sure every student’s voice is heard, and even though there are a lot of problems in rolling out Marriage Pact, and [with] the questionnaire itself, I think we did everything we could at every stage to make sure those concerns were addressed immediately, and I hope that at least people came out of this with a good story to tell,” Hyon said.

The Marriage Pact is still constantly being changed and updated, and with every iteration the team behind it continues to strive to improve their company.

“If there’s ever anything that could be done to make the Marriage Pact experience better, like, let’s do it!” McGregor said.

“Absolutely. And talk to your friends about it, and send us an email. Whatever it is. Marriage Pact should be a great experience. Whatever it takes, and whatever changes can be made, absolutely.”

Thus, it seems many participants found something of value in the process, and even White is taking his results in good humor. “[The Marriage Pact is] successful in as much as it’s a service that’s fun or interesting for students to kind of delve into and if there’s just one perfect match on campus where someone meets a significant other, I think that vastly outweighs the weird ordeal that I went through,” White said. “I’m not that broken up about it. I mostly just find it very funny.”

The Daily Princetonian

Tuesday July 20, 2021 MARCH 2021

MARCH 2021

‘WandaVision’ creator Jac Schaeffer ’00 discusses Princeton connections, sitcom inspiration, and female representation

vol. cxlv editor-in-chief

Emma Treadway ’22 business manager

Louis Aaron ’23

BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88

By Paige Allen

Head Prospect Editor Emeritus

second vice president David Baumgarten ’06 secretary Chanakya A. Sethi ’07 treasurer Douglas Widmann ’90 assistant treasurer Kavita Saini ’09 trustees Francesca Barber Kathleen Crown Gabriel Debenedetti ’12 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 Michael Grabell ’03 John G. Horan ’74 Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Abigail Williams ’14 Tyler Woulfe ’07 trustees ex officio Emma Treadway ’22 Louis Aaron ’23

145TH MANAGING BOARD managing editors Harsimran Makkad ’22 Anna McGee ’22 Kenny Peng ’22 Zachary Shevin ’22 content strategist Omar Farah ’23

Sections listed in alphabetical order. head cartoon editors Sydney Peng ’22 Akaneh Wang ’24 associate cartoon editors Inci Karaaslan ’24 Ambri Ma ’24 head copy editors Celia Buchband ’22 Isabel Rodrigues ’23 associate copy editors Catie Parker ’23 Cecilia Zubler ’23 digital news design editor Anika Maskara ’23 associate digital news design editor Brian Tieu ’23 graphics editor Ashley Chung ’23 instagram design editor Helen So ’22 print design editor Abby Nishiwaki ’23 newsletter editor Rooya Rahin ’23 head features editor Alex Gjaja ’23 Rachel Sturley ’23 associate features editors Annabelle Duval ’23 Ellen Li ’23 Tanvi Nibhanupudi ’23 multimedia liason Mark Dodici ’22 head photo editor Candace Do ’24 head podcast editor Isabel Rodrigues ’23 associate podcast editors Jack Anderson ’23 Francesca Block ’22 Katie Heinzer ’22 head video editor Mindy Burton ’23 associte video editors Uanne Chang ’24 Daniel Drake ’24 Marko Petrovic ’24 head news editors Evelyn Doskoch ’23 Caitlin Limestahl ’23 associte news editors Bharvi Chavre ’23 Naomi Hess ’22 Marissa Michaels ’22 head opinion editor Shannon Chaffers ’22 associte opinion editors Won-Jae Chang ’24 Kristal Grant ’24 Mollika Singh ’24 head prospect editors Cameron Lee ’22 Auhjanae McGee ’23 associte prospect editors José Pablo Fernández García ’23 Aster Zhang ’24 head puzzles editors Gabriel Robare ’24 Owen Travis ’24

145TH BUSINESS BOARD chief technology officer Anthony Hein ’22 Associate Business Manager, Director of Finance Andy He ’23 business directors Benjamin Cai ’24 Nelson Rogers ’24 Lead Software Engineers, System Architects Areeq Hasan ’24 Darius Jankauskas ’24 project manager Gloria Wang ’24 software engineers Pranav Avva ’24 Rishi Mago ’23 business associates David Akpokiere ’24 Abiram Gangavaram ’24 Samantha Lee ’24 Ananya Parashar ’24 Shirley Ren ’24 Jasmine Zhang ’24

Front cover design by Ashley Chung ’23 Layout design by Abby Nishiwaki ’23

page 21 DESIGN: DIMITAR CHAKAROV / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

JOHN EHLING / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Live-actions suck, watch animation instead

By Etiosa Omeike

TV and Shows Critic

The hour-long premiere of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” (2005) debuted 16 years ago, yet here we are in 2021, still reflecting over both its thematic depth. The film masterfully engages with contemporary topics such as nationalism and propaganda in its exploration of the Fire and Earth Nations — and offers meaningful character development, both internal and external, as we navigated the spectacular character arcs of Katara and Zuko.

Likewise, “Shingeki no Kyojin,” better known in the United States as “Attack on Titan,” is currently one of the most-watched shows in America, featuring maneating Titans that the people of Paradise Island must fight in order to leave humanity intact. The show’s unparalleled foreshadowing, sensational character cast, and philosophical groundedness, rival those of the first six seasons of “Game of Thrones,” “Breaking Bad,” and many of the other most popular TV shows, as it jumps from conversations about freedom to the value of relationships.

Animation is beyond capable of creating captivating

There is nothing a live-action film can do that animation can’t. worlds and evoking emotional feelings that leave watchers wanting more, but that doesn’t seem to stop directors from creating “live-action” adaptations that are hard to view as anything but moneygrabs. The most infamous of these is, without a doubt, M. Night Shyamalan's “The Last Airbender” (2010). The whitewashing of Sokka and Katara, the neverending and unnecessary narration, the horrible retelling of the original story, and terrible special effects all certainly contribute to the movie’s well-deserved status of being among the worst films ever created.

But they all suggest a more general issue within live action media: that the unique worlds of animation, full of their many quirks — whether those quirks be special power systems, such as bending in Avatar, or wackily designed characters, such as those of “Inside Out” (2015) — simply don’t translate well into film.

Perhaps it’s unfair to generalize the disaster film that is Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender” to all other live actions, but that just doesn’t seem to be the case. Take, for example, the newly-released adaptation of “Winx Club” (2004) on Netflix, “Fate: The Winx Saga” (2021). Departing from the child-like properties of its predecessor, “The Winx Saga” is far more “mature.” It adds tensions to the main cast of fairies through the creation of love-triangles, subtly deals with pressing contemporary issues such as fatphobia, and is more than willing to be gory, opening up its first episode with the

murder of a man. Maturity in and of itself isn’t the problem here; rather, the issue is the fact that live-action shows such as “The Winx Saga” must be mature. “The Winx Saga” could never capture the episodic fantasy about cute-yet-badass fairies who discover more about their powers that is “Winx Club.”

Instead, because “The Winx Saga” is a live-action show, it has to be darker, more complex.

But therein lies the issue: if all that live-action films and shows can offer us is complexity and “mature” themes, themes that are already prevalent in animated shows/ films such as “Attack on Titan,” of what benefit are they?

My answer is simple: nothing. There is nothing a live-action film can do that animation can’t. Live-action adaptations, as they seek to differentiate themselves from their animated counterparts, have an inherently limited scope as to their genre. Animation is “for kids” and liveaction films and shows are “for adults,” and out of this dichotomy is birthed a myriad of media that should’ve stayed in its original forms.

Of course, this is as much an attack on the very intention of translating animated media for the sake of making it more palatable to adult audiences as it is on liveaction media. The very association with animation and kids is flawed. There are far too many animated shows — like “The Amazing World of Gumball” (2011) — that, while seemingly packaged for children, include humor that many adults would enjoy.

There is, of course, also the issue of branding shows/ movies as “for kids” and “for adults.” Marvel movies such as “The Avengers” sell so well precisely because they break down this dichotomy: rather than seeking to destroy “childish” creations such as superheroes, they use heroes to their full potential on the big screen.

Of course, this isn’t to say that live-action films and

Live-actions — especially adaptations — suck. Watch animation instead. shows aren’t an individually enjoyable medium. Certainly, one could find “The Winx Saga” a captivating story or the Disney+ retelling of “Mulan” (2020) more enjoyable than the animated original.

However, this doesn’t address the fact that live-action adaptations, as they currently are, lack the uniqueness to stand on their own. If live-actions can do what Marvel Studios does, by creating new, reallife worlds that allow for animated stories to flourish on a new medium, then I would certainly receive them more positively. But until then?

Live-actions — especially adaptations — suck. Watch animation instead.

On Jan. 15, the first episode of Marvel’s most recent series, “WandaVision,” landed on the streaming platform Disney+. In its first week, “WandaVision” was one of the 10 mostwatched original shows across streaming platforms, according to Nielsen estimates. By the end of January, it claimed the title of most-watched series across streaming platforms, despite only three of nine episodes having then been released. By Feb. 15, according to Parrot Analytics, it became the most popular series in the world.

The creator, head writer, and executive producer behind the superhero streaming sensation is Jac Schaeffer ’00, a director and writer who concentrated in English at the University before earning her M.F.A. from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Her previous work with Marvel includes contributions to “Captain Marvel” (2019), and she is also a writer for the upcoming “Black Widow” (2021).

Schaeffer spoke with The Daily Princetonian about her process — and how her time at the University influenced her work. This conversation has been edited for clarity and concision.

It includes spoilers for season one of “WandaVision.”

The Daily Princetonian: What do you feel you still carry with you in your work today from your time at Princeton?

Jac Schaeffer: I was heavily involved in theater, behind the scenes and acting. I was in [Princeton] Triangle [Club], and I did some shows at Theatre Intime; I did some thesis productions as well. I did a little bit of choreography for the [Princeton] Shakespeare Company.

I was in the arts, and it’s what I wanted to be doing. I wanted to direct more than anything.

I learned so much about storytelling and mainly about acting. I was never a terrific actor. I played sort of versions of myself, and I like a lot of attention, so it worked out. But I learned the vulnerability involved in performing. I’ve had wonderful and productive relationships with actors, and I do think that a lot of that is born of my experience acting at Princeton.

There was a baby film program — it wasn’t actual film, it was video film — and I took a class, and then I applied to get a certificate, and I didn’t get in, which I find hilarious. It made me feel a little frosty at the time, but even at the time, I was like, well, one day I’ll be hugely famous and I’ll do an interview with The [Daily] Princetonian and say that they didn’t let me into the program.

DP: Did anything from your time at Princeton influence the writing of “WandaVision” specifically?

JS: I wrote my thesis on dystopian literature. It was a comparison of early dystopian novels with contemporary novels that are sort of cyberpunk novels. I had always been very interested in speculative fiction and “what if” stories and near future stories as a social commentary, as a way to look at ourselves. I loved “Twilight Zone” as a kid, and now I love “Black Mirror.” That infused all of my work, and Princeton was where I looked at all of that academically. “WandaVision” is an obvious synthesis — really more of a collision — of tones and influences and genres.

The other thing is I have a group of friends from Princeton: there are 10 of us, and we’re very tight.

Back in the before times, before COVID[-19], we would do a trip together once a year. They’re extraordinary women who live all over the country, who do all kinds of things — doctors, lawyers, environmentalists, some are mothers. They’re just the best women, and they have impacted all of my work greatly. I think about them whenever I write anything.

You know, the character that Monica [Rambeau] met on the show that everybody thought was going to be Reed Richards, the engineer? That character is Major Goodner, and she’s named after one of my friends, Aly Goodner [’00], that I went to Princeton with, who’s part of this group. I made

that choice because that character represents every time one of these women has come through for me and every time they’ve been good at their job. It became this hilarious thing for me that everybody was like, “It’s going to be Reed Richards, it’s going to be some important man,” and I’m like, “No, it’s just a lady who’s awesome at what she does and who will be there for her friends.”

DP: Is Westview, N.J., at all based on Princeton, N.J.?

JS: No, it’s not. The New Jersey piece of it was meaningful to me because of Princeton and because my mom is from Jersey. We were always going to do the Northeast, and I think I probably nudged it toward New Jersey.

Westview was because Kevin Feige is from Westfield and we liked that, but we didn’t want it to be a one-to-one, so then we thought of Westview because “W” [and] “V,” Wanda Vision.

DP: How did you prepare for writing “WandaVision,” a series which draws from a swath of American sitcoms and from Marvel comics?

JS: A lot of the sitcoms were just in my DNA, especially the ’80s and ’90s ones, just being a kid and a teenager and watching them. So I didn’t do a lot of rewatching of those eras, except to be like, “What did that kitchen look like?” and if there was a very special episode, “what was the episode that was the outlier and what did they do?”

There were episodes that stood out in my mind that I wanted to go back to. There was an episode of “Growing Pains” where the daughter had a boyfriend and he died in a car accident, and I remember it so vividly because it was so upsetting at the time. That wasn’t supposed to happen on a sitcom. So I revisited ones that I remembered being sort of a fractured version of themselves.

I was only peripherally aware of “Dick Van Dyke,” I had seen some of it, but I became a connoisseur.

Same with “Malcolm in the Middle.” The episodes were assigned to the writers, and I assigned them the responsibility of becoming experts in their era, so some of that heavy lifting was done by them.

As for the comics, I don’t read comics very much. I respect them, I respect the artistry of them tremendously, but at Marvel, they sort of flag things for me, so I look at what I need to. Mostly, they tell me the good stuff, and then I internalize it, and we discuss it and things happen.

DP: For me, much of what’s clever about “WandaVision,” in addition to its script, comes from its visual storytelling and pastiche — the costumes, the set, the changing aspect ratios. How much did you have a say in those kinds of visual elements?

JS: The script was literally written according to the mode that we were in. There were signifiers on the page of when we’re in sitcom mode and when we’re in cinematic mode. There was essentially a legend, like a map, of where we were aesthetically in any given moment of an episode. That was to communicate to the director and to the department heads and, perhaps most importantly, to the actors so that they would know what style of performance to employ in a given moment.

DP: When writing the series, how did you balance accomplishing the big picture goals that moved the broader plotline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe [MCU] forward while also letting “WandaVision” have its own life?

JS: I didn’t really look at it in that black-and-white way. It was Kevin Feige’s idea to do a brief story about Wanda and Vision using the history of television sitcoms.

I thought it was an extremely difficult prospect. I believed it could happen, but I was like, this is a real trick. There is a high probability that this could just be parody with no heart or a thought experiment with no heart.

Read the full article at linktr.ee/princetonian.

page 22

The Daily Princetonian

Tuesday July 20, 2021

DESIGN: DIMITAR CHAKAROV / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

APRIL 2021

Barely hanging on

By Kristal Grant

Associate Opinion Editor

Recently, there was an email sent to faculty by the administration with the subject line, “Important Memo about End of Term Student Stress.” The contents of the email encouraged professors to at least acknowledge the unbearable stress that we’re currently facing. However, this is an email that we see coming too late, too lackadaisically, too inadequately.

This is not “end of term student stress”; I’m barely hanging on.

This is a sentiment that, based on the horrifying depression and increased anxiety that overwhelms Tiger Confessions (the private Facebook group for anonymous posts by Princeton students), I think much of the student body resonates with.

During midterms week, my grandmother died unexpectedly.

Around this period, I had two papers for my English classes due, a reflection for one of those English classes due, a Molecular Biology exam, and a German exam.

The night I got the news that my grandmother died, I was in the midst of making final edits to one of my papers. I still had two major edits to get through, and it was 8 p.m. The next three hours were a bit of a blur: I was physically unable to write.

That paper was submitted two hours late. The reflection I had due for another class shared a similar fate. Upon receiving that reflection days late, my instructor informed me that this was the only time they would accept a late assignment. Two weeks later, not only do I still feel ashamed to have submitted the assignment late, but I have been buried in an unfathomable fury since I received that response. For the days follow-

ing that message, I felt ashamed that I could not somehow force myself to work. I figured that if I had wanted a better response, I should have told my instructor or my DSL that my grandmother passed.

Yet, I can’t help but consider how ridiculous that is: as “unexpected” as my grandmother’s death may have been, the phrase “unexpected” seems so unfitting.

In this time of vast devastation and death defining every corner of our lives, what about death is so unexpected?

Why should I have to disclose death?

Should it not be assumed?

My grandmother and I weren’t particularly close. It was a difficult relationship, characterized by my “abominable” queerness and my family’s toxic dynamics.

Mostly, the sacrifices I’ve made in regards to our relationship have been the only source of the grief I’ve faced in the past couple of days, and much of it has absolutely nothing to do with her. Yet, as innumerable students are losing loved ones they were actually close with, the University maintains this expectation for students to put their grief on display before professors will even consider awarding any leniency.

Similarly, even after Dean Dolan sent that email, my friend — a fellow ’24 — sent an email to her professor asking if she could receive a short extension on her paper. The response she received to this email was essentially a regurgitation of the syllabus, “No

late work will be accepted for your course project (e.g., the podcast or interactive project) or writing exercises except under extraordinary circumstances. You must have a letter from the Dean of your college that is supportive of your choice to submit your project late. Late work accepted under these circumstances will be sub-

ject to an aut om at ic 20% penalty.”

This professor’s audacity in replying with such an outrageous reply makes me wonder whether he’s existing on another planet separate from the rest of us. Are we not living through “extraordinary circumstances” every single day right now?

And yet, this comes after we see the administration inform-

ing professors that students are struggling with “stress.” They send pointless emails telling students to take walks outside and connect with friends. They promote mental health stickers and phone wallets across campus as if that will somehow relieve the burden so many of us face. Truly, if this school cared at all about my mental health, they would reconsider sending me emails: my mental health would be greatly served without having to bear witness to outrageous, vain emails that gaslight students and place the blame of not being able to protect one's mental health on students rather than the institution.

When I decide to heed this advice and “take a walk,” who does my ass i g n m e n t s?

Who ensures that my future is secured, because I sure as hell don’t have a safety net?

Please, Princeton, if you don’t intend to actually take steps to alleviate what often feels like an immense burden, leave me alone. Stop sending me emails.

I’m doing my part: I see a therapist and journal every other day.

Yet, those are the only things keeping me from the very edge of an absolute mental breakdown. Even after “going on a walk” and sitting in the sun, by the end of most nights I feel so numb and tragically confused as to where the day went because I barely remember any of it. Other days, I’m buried under the uncompromising grief of my depression and anxiety, unable to leave my bed even for

classes.

S o many students already suffer from mental health issues and now also have to suffer the burden of an administration that time and again has shown it does not fully grasp the urgency of the crisis we’re experiencing, and whose lack of concrete action may only be interpreted as this administration’s complete ineptitude.

Weak trickle-down suggestions from deans to directors and then faculty are not nearly enough when faculty all too often respond similarly to my friend’s professor. Such an unwillingness to show up for students should make us question whether any of these administrators deserve their positions of power when they refuse to fulfill their most basic task of listening to students and acting on our behalf.

The mounts of coursework in addition to frequent exams and 15-page papers have become another unbearable price of existing. Until you’re willing to actually lighten this load, stop sending me emails. I’m not facing “end of term stress”; I’m barely holding on, and I would love for you to leave me alone if you aren’t willing to help.

This struggle is one faced by our entire community, including graduate students. We’re experiencing what my therapist refers to as “collective grief,” as we worry about whether our Black siblings will survive an encounter with the police at their college in Upstate New York or whether our Asian-American and Asian friends will be victims of violent vengeance. No amount of “taking a walk,” pasting mental health stickers on my laptop, or reading anti-racist books will shift that reality. So, I beg, unless you’re willing to lessen our load, leave us alone.

AHMED AKHTAR / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Tuesday July 20, 2021

The Daily Princetonian

Cartoon

page 23

In a Virtual Pickle

By Sophia Colmenares ’24

"He had it coming," say bystanders

By C Leane ’24

Challenger Approaching

By Grace Chung ’23

Year in Review By Sydney Peng ’22 Caught Speeding

By Abigail Litvak ’24

Frosh Cub

By Sophia Colmenares ’24

The Daily Princetonian

page 24

Tuesday July 20, 2021

TIGER TO MARCH 2021

We tried 4 boba places in Princeton so you don’t have to

Welcome to Tiger Town Treats — a new Prospect series where I compare delicious snacks ’n sips from local businesses so you know where to go to satisfy that one craving or reward yourself after that rough p-set!

Our first treat: BOBA!

Fruity Yogurt & Cafe

Boba Rating: 4/10

The boba was on the firmer side, making it a little hard to chew, and it wasn’t overly sweet. It wasn’t my favorite, but it wasn’t terrible either.

Milk Tea Rating: 4/10

The tea itself wasn’t too sweet, verging on slightly bitter. But that could be good for those who prefer their drinks less sweet!

Vibe:

Price: $4.10 (16oz) *all prices listed before tax

Verdict:

I sampled boba from four establishments right on Nassau: Fruity Yogurt & Cafe, Kung Fu Tea, KBG Korean BBQ, and Ficus.

At each location, I got a standard milk tea with tapioca pearls so I could be sure I was making a fair comparison. But of course, every location has its own specialties, so I also asked the staff about their favorite drinks. Along with my reviews, you can find other recommendations for inside scoops and specialties!

I’ll be rating these treats on a 10-point scale, with 10 being the best I’ve ever had, five being average, and one being not too great.

But, keep in mind, an “average” treat is still pretty delicious!

Kung Fu Tea

FY&C is full of bright colors and is rather cute. Even their cups and lids depict adorable children surrounded by hearts and bubbles.

The shop has a fair bit of seating, but it is mostly closed off for health and safety at the moment.

The tea was sweet and creamy! I got full sugar this time, but in the future, I might get it 75 percent or half sweet. Overall, it was a solid, classic milk tea.

Milk Tea Rating: 9/10 Price: $4.00 (16oz)

Vibe:

Vibe:

Boba Rating: 8/10

The boba was incredibly fresh: warm and soft, soaked in a sticky and flavorful syrup that mixed very nicely into the tea. They were aromatic, with a slight coffee-like undertone. Another bonus: you aren’t charged extra for it! Boba is a free addition to any The tea was creamy and light without being very sweet. It was a perfect balance of deep, well-steeped tea and a light, creamy finish!

The pearls were sweet and soft, but not mushy! They were in a light syrup, making them slightly sticky (but in a good way).

Milk Tea Rating: 6/10

FY&C had a perfectly adequate, standard boba tea. It wasn’t a personal favorite, but FY&C specializes in the fruity and sweet, so give the staff recommendation a try! The cashiers love the Mango Fruit Milk Tea with Boba ($4.10) for something tart and tropical!

KBG Korean BBQ

Boba Rating: 6/10

Price: $4.00 (16oz)

Verdict:

KFT has a rather chill, relaxed atmosphere, though it is far more corporate than the other shops on this list. KFT is the largest chain out of these locations, and its decor, TV monitor menus, and colorful posters reflect that status.

KFT was exactly what you would expect out of a shop with “actually good” boba tea. If the classic is too standard for you, try the staff recommendations of Taro Milk Tea and Honey Milk Tea (both $4.00)!

Ficus

Boba Rating: 8/10 The boba was rich, warm, and the perfect texture, doused in a decadent, thick brown-sugar syrup.

Milk Tea Rating: 7/10 The tea was light and very sweet. However, the sweetness came mostly from the brown-sugar boba syrup, rather than the milk tea itself.

KBG was incredibly busy, even within five minutes of their closing time. Students were lined up even outside the shop front. The environment is typical fast-casual dining, with efficient and appetizing food and boba bars.

Verdict:

This was some of the best boba I’ve had in a while! This might be because KBG specializes in traditional boba flavors, with the Classic Boba Tea being one of the staff favorites, along with the Taro Milk Tea (both $4.00)!

Vibe:

Price: $5.85 (16oz)

Ficus gives off a trendier, more highbrow vibe than its boba shop counterparts. With plenty of natural light and minimalist decor, it is an immediately calming environment, perfect for a weekend brunch with some friends.

The drink itself was considerably more expensive than the others I sampled, but the overall aesthetic was also more distinct and “Instagrammable.” If you are looking to feel a little bougie, Ficus is the shop to hit.

Verdict: Ficus’s milk tea with boba definitely hit the spot and is a wonderful way to splurge a little and treat yourself. Ficus’s menu also has plenty of more innovative boba drinks. The staff favorites include their layered Valentine’s (or other holiday) speciality drinks ($5.00–$7.00) and the Black Peach Tea with Strawberry Popping Boba ($5.85).

Now get out there, support Princeton's local businesses, and try some boba!

The Daily Princetonian

Tuesday July 20, 2021

WN TREATS

page 25 DESIGN: GIAO VU DINH / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

By Sydney Eck

Staff Prospect Writer

MARCH 2021

We tried ice cream from 3 different shops so you don't have to

Welcome back to Tiger Town Treats! A Prospect series where I compare delicious snacks-’n-sips from local businesses so you know where to go to satisfy that one craving or reward yourself after that rough p-set!

Halo Pub

HP’s ice cream was light and not too heavy on the cream side. You can tell it is made partly with skim milk instead of 100 percent heavy cream. But I found that this lighter texture was very enjoyable: it allowed me to eat more without feeling the effects of too much richness.

Next up: ICE CREAM I sampled ice cream from three establishments in town: Halo Pub, Bent Spoon, and Thomas Sweet. At each location, I got a small vanilla scoop in a cup, just to be sure I was making a fair comparison. But, of course, every shop has its own specialties, so I also asked the staff about their favorite flavors. Along with my reviews you can find other recommendations for inside scoops and specialties!

I’ll be rating the texture and flavor of these treats on a 10-point scale, with 10 being the best I’ve ever had, five being average, and one being not too great. But, keep in mind, even a slightly “below average” treat is still pretty delicious! And after midterms, I am humbled enough to admit that even coming close to the mean is to be appreciated, especially when Princeton’s ice cream is so delicious on average! I’ll also be giving you my impressions of the “vibe” of each shop.

Bent Spoon

Texture Rating: 6/10

HP’s ice cream was light and not too heavy on the cream side. You can tell it is made partly with skim milk instead of 100 percent heavy cream. But I found that this lighter texture was very enjoyable: it allowed me to eat more without feeling the effects of too much richness.

Flavor Rating: 7/10

Price: $4.20 for 6oz or $6 per pint

Vibe:

Verdict:

All in all, HP is a great place to stop and grab a scoop or a pint (note: pints of HP ice cream are the cheapest pints in Princeton). Their vanilla was perfect on its own, but if you wanna shake it up, try a bite of the staff favorites: cookie dough or cookies & cream (priced the same as their vanilla)!

Thomas Sweet

HP’s bourbon vanilla was a well-executed classic. Without being too bold, it was clear there was a distinctly vanilla flavor, rather than it being just a “plain” ice cream. It would pair great with some warm cookies or a bowl of fresh fruit.

Verdict:

All in all, HP is a great place to stop and grab a scoop or a pint (note: pints of HP ice cream are the cheapest pints in Princeton). Their vanilla was perfect on its own, but if you wanna shake it up, try a bite of the staff favorites: cookie dough or cookies & cream (priced the same as their vanilla)!

Texture Rating: 3.5/10

TS’s ice cream has a slightly sticky or gummy texture. I also encountered some small chunks of ice, which added a fun crunch, but I cannot say that I loved them. Generally, I wasn’t a fan of their scooped vanilla’s texture, but the staff did recommend the soft-serve and blend-ins for those who want a creamier, softer treat.

Flavor Rating: 5/10

Vibe:

HP has that old-fashioned-classy-soda-shop aesthetic that makes sitting there with friends almost as enjoyable as actually eating their ice cream. And you actually can sit inside there! This is a welcome added bonus when the weather keeps deciding to revert back to winter.

HP’s bourbon vanilla was a well-executed classic. Without being too bold, it was clear there was a distinctly vanilla flavor, rather than it being just a “plain” ice cream. It would pair great with some warm cookies or a bowl of fresh fruit.

HP has that old-fashioned-classy-soda-shop aesthetic that makes sitting there with friends almost as enjoyable as actually eating their ice cream. And you actually can sit inside there! This is a welcome added bonus when the weather keeps deciding to revert back to winter.

Flavor Rating: 7/10

Price: $6 for 8oz or $10 per pint

Texture Rating: 6/10

Price: $4.15 for 6oz or $7.75 per pint

Vibe:

TS’s vanilla had more of a “sweet cream” than a vanilla flavor, and it wasn’t overly sweet. It was a fairly standard ice cream that would serve as a great neutral base for a wide variety of toppings and sauces.

TS felt like every local ice cream shop in an American suburb. It felt homey and like there was a sense of community. The walls are painted with a fun mural depicting Princeton locals and students alike enjoying cones and cups (they even added masks, which was just adorable). Also, the tip jar at the front has a handwritten, Crayola marker sign that reads “College Fund” with a list of the staff’s schools or prospective schools.

Verdict: While the vanilla was not an all-time favorite, I’ve heard from multiple sources that TS’s peanut butter chocolate outdoes that of HP with a bolder, more cohesive flavor. And the staff raved about the chocolate chip cookie ice cream as well as their other build-your-own blend-in flavors. At the end of the day, ice cream is ice cream, and I finished the whole scoop, enjoying each bite!

The Daily Princetonian

page 26

Tuesday July 20, 2021

DESIGN: GIAO VU DINH / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

M AY 2 0 2 1

Where can I get spicy food in Princeton?

By Kristiana Filipov

Contributing Prospect Writer

Tiger Noodles

Perfect for friends with dietary restrictions

Located at 235 Nassau Street, right next to Ficus, Thai Village has a cozy, almost nostalgic environment to it. Their menu choices are truly expansive, and the best thing about them is that you can customize your spice level! The levels range from mild to spicy to extra hot — all of which live up to their labels!

My favorite dishes so far are the Red Curry ($14.95+ depending on protein choice, $10.95 during lunch special until 2 p.m.) and the Curry Fried Rice ($12.95+ depending on protein choice,

Taste of Mexico

Tiger Noodles has a wide range of dishes for all tastes. It’s located at 252 Nassau Street (a bit further down Nassau than Hoagie Haven). If you are or you’re going out with friends who are vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, or who have other dietary restrictions, this is a good place to try!

In addition to the classic General Tso’s chicken and fried rice, two spicier dishes I would recommend are the Sichuan Wontons in Spicy Sauce ($5.50) and the Sichuan Noodles (Spicy Ground Pork) ($9.00). The wontons are served in a peanut sauce with tons of rich flavor and a delicious pork filling, and they’re great to share! The Sichuan noodles are also divine, based around a silky, bouncy wheat noodle slathered in a spicy sauce that is less peanut-y than the wontons and has a bit more sesame, umami flavor.

$7.95 during lunch special until 2 p.m.). The red curry is classically creamy, fresh, and includes succulent chunks of pineapple — which may seem weird at first but actually balance perfectly with the spice of the sauce. The curry fried rice is a bit atypical for fried rice, but the flavor is unbeatable.

It’s warm and comforting but also has an incredibly unique spice blend that I honestly could not place. I would gladly go to the mat on this one — seriously, try it.

As I mentioned above, I think the lunch specials are incredibly

You've gotta try the spicy salsa verde

worth it at Thai Village because they come with a choice of a small salad, soup, or spring roll and are significantly cheaper than their dinner-sized counterparts. I will also say that every time I get takeout from Thai Village, the food lasts me for 2-3 meals, depending on my appetite.

And as a bonus: the Thai Iced Tea ($2.50) is a great cooling drink with a complex flavor, made with specially seasoned Ceylon tea and condensed milk, and the delicate floral creaminess of the drink pairs perfectly with a spicy dish.

Tucked in an alleyway between the Christian Science Reading Room and Lil Thai Pin, Taste of Mexico is one of the hidden gems of Princeton restaurants. It’s situated down a small alleyway, and the vibes inside are impeccable. It has a vibrant family feel and an authentic presence that reminds me of so many Mexican restaurants from my childhood. The dishes here are not as specifically spicy as at other restaurants, but they can be dressed up with sides to customize your desired level of spice.

Food and the act of eating is such a communal and community-building thing, and my hope with this piece is to give you some ideas of where to go with friends to get some refreshing, flavorful spicy food near campus. Whether you go out to Mamoun’s for a quick lunch or sit down at Tiger Noodles for a long meal full of great conversation and great food, I hope you will experience the same level of comfort and happiness that I do every time I taste the warm, spicy flavors of my youth. You don’t have to splurge to get delicious spicy food, especially if you try the lunch specials at Thai Village or Taste of Mexico, or get a big Family Pack at Chennai Chimney with friends!

Thai Village

Best if you want to customize your spice

The best condiment you can ask for is the spicy salsa verde (with cilantro, tomatillo, and jalapeños), which has a ton of fresh, crisp flavor. It adds verve to any dish, but I particularly recommend the Flautas de Pollo ($9.95), which are crispy rolled tortillas filled with juicy, shredded chicken and slathered in fresh crema, lettuce, pico de gallo, and queso fresco. All of the entree platters come with beans and rice, and with the added spice of the salsa verde, everything sings with flavor.

I also highly recommend the lunch specials here, because they provide perfect portions (for me personally) at significantly lower prices during the day. The 2 Tamales ($7.95) are delicious paired with extra jalapeños and salsa verde.

Bonus round, part two: The Horchata Agua Fresca ($2.50), made with rice milk and cinnamon, is a delicious pairing with the spicier dishes. I could enjoy its light texture and subtle flavor any day of the week.

Tuesday July 20, 2021

The Daily Princetonian

Chennai Chimney

Perfect for a picnic with friends Chennai Chimney, located at 19 Chambers Street, has delicious Indian food — and the best part is, you can customize your level of spice! Like Thai Village, you can choose spicy, medium, or mild for any dish, so you can take out with friends and not have to worry whether everyone has the same spice tolerance. It’s a bit tucked away from most other restaurants, but still very close to campus — worth a little trek back and forth to your dorm if it means hot, fresh, delicious curry. My favorite entree is the Paneer Tikka Masala ($14.95), with tender cubes of soft paneer cheese — which tastes a bit like tofu, but so much better (in my opinion). All of the curries are richly spiced and delicious — go crazy!

Chennai Chimney is on the pricier side, though, so if you’re really craving curry but not craving an empty wallet, I would recommend splitting a Curry Family Pack ($32.99+) with some friends — depending on appetites, it can easily feed 5–7 people!

page 27

DESIGN: GIAO VU DINH / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Mamoun’s Falafel

Ideal for a quick lunch between classes

The atmosphere in Mamoun’s, located at 20 Witherspoon Street, is warm, fun, and casual. The restaurant stretches back from the door into a large eating area, with the order counter at the very back. The lacquered wooden tables are enclosed by exposed-brick walls and framed sepia photographs.

The crown jewel of Mamoun’s Falafel is, obviously, the Falafel Sandwich ($4.95), which comes packed with lettuce, tomatoes, tahini, and perfectly crispy fried balls of falafel, which are made of ground chickpeas, fava beans, and herbs. The service is quick, and the sandwiches are convenient to take to-go, plus the restaurant is almost as close to campus as you can be.

The crucial thing to ask for at Mamoun’s is their free hot sauce. It’s punchy, incredibly spicy, and gives a kind of dry, smoky heat that no other hot sauce I’ve ever tried has had. It comes in little condiment containers, so you can pour however much as you want on your sandwich. But beware — it’s a lingering burn!

I love spicy food. The fresh spice of jalapeños in homemade pico de gallo, the buzzing heat of cayenne in Hungarian goulash, and the lingering sting of Jamaican jerk seasoning are the flavors of my childhood, and since my youth, my tolerance and appreciation for spice have been steadily growing.

When I moved on campus for the first time this semester, I was surprised by the lack of spice in any of the meal options at the dining halls. They probably cater to a large portion of the student body who may not appreciate the levels of heat I’m used to. I quickly realized that if I wanted spice, I needed to find it myself — and I’m proud to report that through extensive research and investigation, I have developed a list of restaurants with cheap, tasty, and (most importantly) spicy meals that you can swing by in between classes, after a long week of papers and p-sets, or even on dates!

ADVICE

page 28

The Daily Princetonian

Tuesday July 20, 2021

DESIGN: MARK DODICI / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

for the Great Class of 2025

“You never have ‘enough time’ — you either do the thing or you don’t.

If it’ll fuel your soul, take the risk!”

- Emily Della Pietra ’24, Puzzles Constructor

“Plan out your weeks — and set aside time for yourself and hold yourself to keeping it!

Having designated time off is key to being your best all week.”

- Mirabella Smith ’24, Features Writer “Wear shower shoes. There are restaurants other than Thai Village. You may learn more from 3am talks with friends on Poe Field than from any class.”

- Marie-Rose Sheinerman ’23, Senior News Writer “Give yourself the grace and time you need to adjust to Princeton. Finding your perfect balance between academics, extracurriculars, and a social life is a challenge but you're never, ever going through this process alone. Your fellow classmates are going through the same process — lean on them as a support system and learn from them.”

- Anika Buch ’24, Assistant News Editor “Send it.”

- Benjamin Cai ’24, Assistant Business Manager

“The thing that's giving you butterflies or anxiety — an email to a professor in your drafts, an audition for an extracurricular group, grabbing a meal or reaching out to someone you don't know super well, whether or not to keep wearing the pajama pants from home that have dog paw prints on them — just do it! Princeton is best experienced without regrets and with you being the most 'you' you can be.”

- Abby de Riel ’22, Senior Copy Editor “You can take a gap year AFTER your freshman year. Improve your mental health, rack up more work experiences or take a break from stressful academics.”

- Anne Wen ’23, Assistant Content Strategy Editor “Be kind to yourself, unapologetically. Don't be ashamed of needing to quit an extracurricular or step down from a leadership position if it becomes too much, don't be ashamed if you have to drop a class, and certainly don't be ashamed if you need to ask a professor for a little extra help or time on an assignment. Even if it's just in how you think about your relationship with someone or what your social life looks like, prioritize yourself and don't feel guilty about doing so!”

- Katherine Dailey ’24, Assistant News Editor “A little cliché but please take the time to meet your fellow Princeton students! Having a meal with people from my precepts, dorm hall, and clubs has been one of the highlights of my undergrad experience so far. The people here are not only amazing and extremely talented, but are generally fun to get to know.”

- Sophia Colmenares ’24, Staff Cartoonist “Trite as it sounds, try new things — Princeton has too many opportunities available for you not to take advantage of them! Academic-wise, make sure you go to office hours, and know that despite what it may look like, everyone is struggling with classes. Don't fall prey to duck syndrome!”

- Elizabeth Medina ’24, Staff Cartoonist “Nothing is more important than being happy with who you are. Coming to Princeton, it can be easy to lose sight of yourself when you're surrounded by so many incredibly smart and talented people. But please remember that it's not the grades or the awards but how you treat yourself and those around you that matter. The greatest accomplishments can be found in holding true to yourself and simply being there for someone else.”

- Harsimran Makkad ’22, Managing Editor “As a rising senior, I wish I had documented more of my time at Princeton. Whether that’s through writing down memories through journaling or taking pictures of random moments, I recommend making more of an effort to take the time to appreciate and remember what you’re learning and the fun you’re having. Four years go by quickly, but the memories will last forever!”

- Naomi Hess ’22, Associate News Editor

Tuesday July 20, 2021

Sports

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } APRIL 2021

page 29

DESIGN: ISABEL KIM / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

‘Creating our competitive identity’:

Women’s swimming and diving sets eyes on the fall

By Rachel Posner and Nolan Musslewhite Senior Sports Writer and Sports Contributor

The days leading up to Feb. 22, 2020 were among the best in the history of women’s swimming and diving at Princeton. The Tigers dominated the pool at the 2020 Ivy League Championships to clinch an epic 107-point victory over Harvard, bringing the Frank Keefe Trophy home to New Jersey for the 23rd time. Over four days of competition the team shattered six school records, three pool records, and a conference record in front of a roaring crowd.

Three weeks later, the University ordered its students home as COVID-19 lockdowns forced nearly all swimming facilities to shutter, abruptly truncating the team’s success.

“That was a very emotional time,” recalled Anna Durak ’22.

“You’re coming off of this really high high, and then being sent home with a lot of pools shut down was mentally hard.”

Over a year later, the team is regaining its confidence and positioning itself for a competitive fall as training and team-building resume.

With campus closed in the fall of 2020, the women’s team scattered into training pods across the country. Some swimmers remained in their hometowns with their pre-collegiate club teams; others gathered to train with teams in Virginia Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and San Diego.

Durak, who is still swimming with the Virginia Beach pod at Tide Swimming, explained her decision as one of athletic necessity.

The lockdowns marked the longest pause she had taken from swimming since she was five years old.

“The pools have definitely been hit hard by COVID regulations,” she said. “Some people weren’t allowed to swim for eight months, which is why I came here! My pool was getting shut down and reopened, shut down and reopened, shut down and reopened.”

Even while scattered, the team found ways to stay connected virtually throughout the fall. The swimmers began “lapchats,” random pairings that serve as short conversation-starters during the week,

regular team FaceTimes and Kahoots, and team “families,” small support subgroups to encourage social bonding and team unity.

“We would try to do group workouts and have team goals to give us a purpose and unite us as athletes,” explained Jen Secrest ’23, a sophomore team captain who also trained with the Virginia Beach pod in the fall but returned to campus in January.

When students were invited to return to campus this spring, seven swimmers and three divers capitalized on the opportunity to train together again. The on-campus training squad completes daily twohour practices complemented by drylands, and can train all together due to the small size of the squad and the extra capacity in DeNunzio Pool. The team has taken advantage of the modified season to experiment with new training regimens.

“We’ve gotten really big into something called ‘surf and turf,’” Secrest explained, describing it as “a mix between swim and dryland,” balancing in-water and out-of-water training more than in a typical season.

The long, competition-free season has also given the team an opportunity to focus on stroke fundamentals and body mechanics.

“The team is uniting around technique,” Secrest said. The lack of meets during what is normally a lengthy and intense racing season allowed the coaches to hone in on stroke work in ways that would have been more challenging before the pandemic, with swimmers having to prepare and taper more for racing.

Even while off campus, Durak feels the team is rekindling its fighting spirit after the disappointment of a canceled season. The women now have their sights set on the fall.

“We’ve started to create our competitive identity again,” she said. “We’re working on mindset — remembering to keep things in perspective, to make sure that all of our decisions are for the team and that we’re keeping ourselves and our teammates accountable.”

COURTESY OF ANNA DURAK

Anna Durak (left) and teammate Macey Mannion (right) on the beach in Virginia.

Coming out of this year, the swimmers aren’t taking anything for granted, and they are training to be in the best possible situation heading into next season. The team wants to use its success at Ivies in 2020 to cultivate another stellar season.

“We wanted to use that confidence and excitement to propel us forward,” Secrest said. “We didn’t want to become just satisfied with where we were.”

After their success last February, the team met and created individual and group goals for the next four years. Secrest credits that goal-making process with fending off team inactivity and demoralization: “Creating those big goals really helped motivate us throughout this time rather than just remaining stagnant.”

For Durak, the upcoming season — her last as a Princeton athlete — is particularly sentimental. She’s taken up the motto “be great and be grateful,” and looks to savor every moment while preparing for what she hopes will be an excellent season ahead.

For the seniors, this season is more bittersweet. Many opted

to return to campus hoping to experience some vestige of this year’s competition season, but the cancellation of winter and spring athletics shattered that dream.

“It’s been hard for the seniors,” Durak said. Many of them trained throughout the fall for competition only to have their racing and personal goals thwarted by the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions. “It’s very difficult to have a very strict cutoff and know that you’ll never compete again,” explained Secrest.

In the absence of a final competition season for seniors, the team has done its best to preserve the usual final-season accoutrements. They have spotlighted seniors on Instagram, delivered speeches, sent gifts of photo albums, embroidered blankets, and more.

“We were trying our best to appreciate them,” Durak explained.

For their part, the seniors have given back. The senior class “has been incredible at still staying involved and helping us out with school and social activities,” Secrest said. “It’s been super nice to still be con-

nected to them.”

Looking back on the challenges of the past year, Durak believes they gave her renewed insight into the importance of swimming in her life.

“We all had our own crisis as a swimmer,” she said of closed pools, distanced friends, and canceled competition. “But ultimately it has helped us realize how important swimming is in our lives. We’ve all been doing it since we were really young and it is definitely a big part of who we are.”

For Secrest, those challenges gave her a new appreciation of her team and her teammates.

“They’re the most motivated group of people I’ve ever met in my entire life,” she said. “I’m so so lucky to be surrounded by them on a daily basis.”

As next season approaches, Secrest believes that team spirit will give them strength. “I forgot how easy it was to work so hard when you’re surrounded by everyone,” she said with a smile.

“It’s gonna be a wild time, but it’ll be fun,” Durak added. “We love a good challenge.”

M AY 2 0 2 1

Women’s rugby to become a varsity sport in 2022–23

By Emily Philippides Head Sports Editor

The women’s rugby team will be promoted to the varsity level in the 2022–23 academic year, according to a recent Athletics Department email and public announcement.

The new varsity status would allow the team greater access to facilities, fields, coaching, and

equipment — as well as support travel costs and other expenses — needed to compete at a higher intercollegiate level.

The women’s rugby team was established as a club sport at Princeton in 1979 and competes under the national governing body USA Rugby. The team won national championship titles in 1995 and 1996, which initiated funding of

the Princeton University Rugby Endowment. The Tigers also advanced to the Final Four in 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004 and 2005; placed third in the USA Rugby Sevens Collegiate National Championships in 2011, 2012, and 2018; and won the Ivy League Championships in 2013.

Upon elevation to varsity status, the team will compete as

COURTESY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY RUGBY FOOTBALL CLUB

one of 27 members of the National Intercollegiate Rugby Association (NIRA), which includes other Division I institutions such as Brown University, Dartmouth College, and Harvard.

“This is an exciting day for Princeton women’s rugby and Princeton Athletics,” Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan ’91 said. “The women’s rugby team has been a transformative experience for generations of Princetonians, providing valuable educational opportunities and offering a strong, vibrant, empowering and diverse community. A tremendous amount of effort has gone into this process, and I am thankful for the passionate work of the club’s student officers and members of the Princeton University Rugby Endowment board. We look forward to working together on a smooth transition from club to varsity status.”

In a letter sent to the executive director of the Ivy League Council of Presidents in June, a “consortium of advocates for women and girls in sports” concluded that all eight Ivy League institutions failed to provide equal benefits and opportunities to female athletes, as required by Title IX. Signees of the letter include Nancy Hogshead-Makar, CEO of Champion

Women, and Amy Poyer, Senior Staff Attorney of the California Women’s Law Center. Title IX, passed by Congress and signed into law by former President Richard Nixon in 1972, prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in athletic benefits and opportunities.

The NCAA identifies women’s rugby as one of five sports on its “Emerging Sports For Women” list, which intends to help schools provide more equal athletics opportunities. The other four sports are women’s acrobatics, equestrian, triathlon, and wrestling.

“We are proudly celebrating the 50th anniversary of women’s athletics at Princeton this year, and I can think of no better way to continue that celebration than by making this announcement which will provide even more opportunities for female student-athletes to enjoy the enormous benefits of varsity athletics participation,” Samaan said in the announcement.

The rugby team will become Princeton’s 19th varsity program for women. The number of club sports offered will therefore drop from 37 to 36 in the 2022–23 academic year.

No change has been made to the men’s rugby club status.

Tuesday July 20, 2021

FEBRUARY 2020

Sports

page 30

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

DESIGN: ISABEL KIM / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Seven Princetonians to compete in Tokyo Olympics

By Ben Burns

Associate Sports Editor

Keep an eye out for Tigers when watching this summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo.

So far, five Princeton alumni and two current students have qualified to represent their home countries in the games. This includes four members of Team USA, one athlete representing Egypt, one athlete representing New Zealand, and one athlete representing Norway.

Eliza Stone ’13, who was a political theory concentrator at Princeton, qualified for the Olympics in saber fencing thanks to her performance at the Sabre World Cup in Budapest, Hungary this March. She reached the podium at the NCAA Championships three times from 2011–2013, winning the gold medal in 2013 for individual sabre. Princeton also won the team gold that year.

Stone is joined by Kat Holmes ’17, a neuroscience concentrator who qualified in epee fencing after delivering a standout performance at the Epee World Cup in Kazan, Russia, just one week after Stone qualified. Holmes represented the USA at the Rio Olympics in 2016, coming in 25th overall in the epee event. Team USA finished 5th overall.

At the same event in Kazan,

Holmes’ classmate Anna Van Brummen ’17, who concentrated in geoscience, qualified as a replacement athlete in epee fencing. Van Brummen defeated Holmes in the 2017 NCAA Championship to win the gold medal in epee. She also won bronze in epee at the NCAA Championships in 2015.

The Tigers have qualified a male fencer, too; Mohamed Hamza ’23, who is concentrating in mechanical and aerospace engineering, will represent Egypt this summer in foil fencing. Hamza was an All-American in the 2018– 19 season and finished sixth at the NCAA Championships. He also competed for Egypt at Rio 2016. Hamza is excited to return to the Olympics, noting that his experience in Rio will serve him well.

“It’s nice to have already experienced the Olympic atmosphere and the unique pressures that come along with it,” he said. “I feel very much ready and have been working hard to hopefully achieve something great and prove that us young athletes are just as great as our older opponents, of which there are plenty in fencing.”

So far, three non-fencing athletes from Princeton have also secured their spots in Tokyo. Gev-

vie Stone ’07 (no relation to Eliza), who also has an M.D. from Tufts University School of Medicine, will compete for Team USA in double sculls rowing. Stone, who is the daughter of two former Team USA rowers, represented the United States at London 2012 and Rio 2016, where she finished 7th and 2nd, respectively.

Julia Ratcliffe ’17 became the third member of her class to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics when she made Team New Zealand on March 26 in the hammer throw. Ratcliffe’s qualifying throw of 73.55 meters set the Oceania record in the event. She was also the NCAA Champion in the hammer throw in 2014, and was an All-American all four years at Princeton.

Finally, Sondre Guttormsen ‘23 has reached the Olympic Games entry standard in the pole vault with his personal-best jump of 5.80 meters, achieved in 2019.

Guttormsen transferred to Princeton in the fall from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and set an Ivy League record earlier in the year with his jump of 5.66 meters. As of April 27, he is ranked 26th in the world in the pole vault, according to World Athletics. Guttormsen will be representing his home country, Norway.

COURTESY OF GOPRINCETONTIGERS.COM

Julia Ratcliffe ’17 will represent New Zealand in the hammer throw at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

With an impressive list of athletes already qualified, the Tigers could still see more current and former athletes representing their home countries this summer. In an email to The Daily Princetonian, a representa-

tive for Princeton Athletics said that the full list of Princetonian participants in the games should be available by the end of May, when the United States Olympic Committee will have the teams named.

MARCH 2021

Athletic Director Mollie Marcoux Samaan ’91 on recruiting during a pandemic

By Wilson Conn

Sports Staff Writer

Although the Ivy League has not held any athletic competitions this school year, recruitment — one of the most important processes in collegiate athletics — has chugged along at the University, despite the obvious challenges the pandemic has presented.

“Like everything during COVID, the recruiting process has required a lot of creativity and flexibility and sort of rethinking how you do your work,” said Mollie Marcoux Samaan ’91, Princeton’s Director of Athletics. “Coaches have had to sort of step back and say, ‘How do we get to know prospective student athletes?’”

The cancellation of high school sports seasons nationwide has been one of the challenges causing coaches to restructure their evaluation processes, especially for fall and winter sports, as many states had to either delay or cancel the season last year. Because of cancellations in their home states, many athletes were unable to produce game film or statistics for coaches.

In a typical recruitment cycle, coaches would not rely solely on game film to get a sense of their most preferred recruits. Instead, they would be watching recruits at games and showcases nationwide. However, many of these events have been canceled due to COVID-19.

Even in places where they are being held, the NCAA recruiting dead period — which prevents coaches from conducting in-person visits with recruits — has made attending these events impossible. The dead period has been in place since the start of the pandemic and was recently extended through May 31, 2021.

“Coaches have had recruits go on virtual tours sponsored by the admissions office,” Marcoux Samaan said, in reference to work-arounds that coaches have relied upon during the dead period. “Coaches have been watching a lot of videos high school athletes have been sending in,” she added. Some athletes are able to send in film from their 2020–21 school season, while others may have footage from club showcases or previous seasons.

Furthermore, the status of Princeton’s summer athletic camps, which many coaches use to evaluate recruits, remains unknown. “We’re very hopeful that we can run some camps this summer … [but] we want to make sure that our community is healthy and safe,” Marcoux Samaan said. The University has not yet made a final decision on whether or not it will allow for any camps to be held this summer.

In a November interview with the ‘Prince,’ men’s soccer head coach Jim Barlow referenced the challenges of handling this level of film, saying that his staff is “inundated.”

Marcoux Samaan commented that although coaches have been handling a lot of film, the sheer number of recruits contacting teams has given coaches insight into recruiting from different areas that they hadn’t previously looked into.

“They have a little more time on their hands, so they can scour the country more aggressively,” she said. “We have had coach calls every week, and they share ideas on finding recruits in different pockets, not just going back to the same places,” she added.

Marcoux Samaan also applauded coaches for being flexible and resilient in the past year.

“Coaches work seven days a week until late hours, and they are still working really hard to support their student-athletes,” she remarked. Instead of planning for competitions, coaches have instead directed that energy towards recruiting, as well as virtual team activities.

The recruiting challenges that coaches have faced during the pandemic have varied from sport to sport. “We have 37 sports, and each one is slightly different … in the way they recruit,” Marcoux Samaan explained. “For some sports, [recruiting] is a little bit easier because you have a finite metric of what their times are … or what their golf scores are. For those types of sports … the measures are just a bit more objective,” she added.

Despite differences in obstacles between sports, there are principles that have uniformly shaped recruiting across the entire University coaching community. “We’re looking for how

LAUREN FROMKIN AND AKANEH WANG / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

a student-athlete would grow,” Marcoux Samaan said. “It’s just about finding the student, the athlete, and the person … These [principles] are really constant throughout the recruiting process.”

Challenges in domestic recruitment presented themselves in international recruitment, too. Coaches have had to deal with changing travel restrictions and uncertainty with respect to when prospective students may be able to come to campus. “There are still some unknowns on what international travel will look like in the future,” she explained. “I think the numbers of [international recruits] are down slightly compared to what they’ve been.”

Aside from dealing with the dead period and international recruitment, another common problem is trying to calculate the number of recruits coaches would like to admit. “Each coach has a number of student-athletes they can support through the process,” Marcoux Samaan shared. “Admissions makes the decisions, and so the number of athletes fluctuates [for each sport] from year to year.” In a normal year, this process would be fairly simple; coaches would simply replace graduating seniors and other players planning on leaving the team with incoming first-years and transfers. However, this process has been greatly complicated across all sports by the number of athletes who have decided to take leaves of absence. In the fall,

approximately 13 percent of the University’s student body took a leave of absence.

“The percentage of studentathletes that have taken a leave of absence is slightly higher than the percentage of non-athletes,” Marcoux Samaan said.

“We didn’t put the athletes under any pressure to not take a gap year or to take a gap year. We said, ‘Do what makes the most sense for you as a student, as an athlete, and as a person.’”

Marcoux Samaan clarified that for many athletes, the decision to take a leave was not solely influenced by a desire to avoid season cancellations. “A lot of people made decisions based on academics … based on their personal situations,” she remarked.

Nonetheless, leaves of absence have caused varying levels of recruiting complications among the coaching ranks.

Some coaches, like Barlow, have been lucky; the team’s leave numbers have been even across classes. Other coaches have seen a large disparity in leave numbers across classes. “We want to make sure that when [athletes on leave] return next year, that we don’t have huge roster sizes,” Marcoux Samaan said. “When prospective student athletes come in, [we want to ensure] they're walking into a situation where they have the opportunity to thrive and reach their peak performance.”

Though the department is working with coaches to ensure balanced class sizes on their teams, that flexibility is lim-

ited. “It’s not a coach’s choice to say ‘I’m going to do it this way,’ but we worked with them really specifically … to make sure they had what they needed,” she clarified. She cited constraints on the number of athletes the department can support at once, as well as the fact that the admissions department is ultimately in charge of which athletes can be admitted.

Aside from these restrictions on recruitment, another concern recruits may have when looking at the University is the Ivy League’s regulations on athletic activity during the pandemic, compared to other Division I schools. However, Marcoux Samaan said that the Ivy League’s caution in the athletic arena has not affected recruitment in any noticeable way. “I think coaches will tell you they’re having really good recruiting years … They have been impressed with the students they have found who are interested in Princeton,” she said. “We're very hopeful that [COVID-19] is a finite short-term challenge for the whole country,” she added. “We’ll be back in action, hopefully sooner rather than later.”

“We’re very strong and committed to who we are as a league,” she continued. “While it’s been wildly disappointing not to be able to compete … [The Ivy League] will come out better in the end.”

Read the full article at linktr.ee/princetonian.

Tuesday July 20, 2021

Sports

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } APRIL 2021

page 31

DESIGN: ISABEL KIM / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Opening success for men’s and women’s track and field teams at Weaver Stadium

By Julia Nguyen

Sports Staff Writer

On Sunday, six days after Princeton Athletics entered Phase IV of the Ivy League’s fourphase plan, the track and field team held a meet at Weaver Track Stadium against The College of New Jersey and Temple University.

Despite holding two intersquad meets this season, competing in an official meet with athletes from other schools brought a new atmosphere of excitement.

“The energy I felt on Sunday reminded me of how track meetings were like in high school so it was exciting to get back to it,” commented Daniel Duncan, a freshman sprinter.

Duncan ran the 200m in 21.20s and the 100m in 10.61s in his first collegiate season opener, already putting him fifth and ninth, respectively, on Princeton’s all-time list for those events.

In reference to Duncan’s successful debut, Kelton Chastulik, a senior thrower, said that his highlight of the day was “seeing people like Danny compete outdoors for the first time, having their first collegiate meet ever. That's just so exciting. I remember having the thought … that this is a meet that counts.” Chastulik, who threw 16.32m in the shot-put, will be joining the workforce after graduation but hopes to participate in post-collegiate competitions.

William Cauley, a freshman thrower, finished first

in hammer throw at 59.46m, the tenth-best mark in Princeton’s history for the event. Two freshmen sprinters, William Doyle and Ladislav Töpfer, ran the 400m in 47.48s and 47.75s, respectively. Ethan Reese, a sophomore middle-distance runner, finished first in 800m in a time of 1:53.13, followed by teammate Jordan Kaplan, a freshman, in 1:54.96.

The women’s track and field team also had a successful season opener with multiple personal records (PRs) and school records broken.

Freshman Kate Joyce threw 50.44m in the javelin, breaking the school record of 48.01m held previously by junior Rylie Pease, who is currently on a gap year. Joyce, who had been throwing around the 50m mark in the inter-squad meets, said, “I was kind of expecting it to happen, but it still was really exciting to have it count.”

Luisa Chantler Edmond, a junior thrower, broke her PR with a hammer throw of 53.59m, placing her sixth all-time in Princeton’s record books. In the discus throw, senior Obiageri Amaechi, a

First-Team All-American and 2019 Ivy League Outdoor Champion, also registered a new PR of 55.59m. Amaechi plans on c o m p e ting for the

Tar Heels at UNC Chapel Hill next year.

“I had already come to

terms with the possibility of not competing with Princeton ever again,” Amaechi said. “And just to have the opportunity to compete again, it's just really great. It made you feel like, all around, progress happening is in the world … in different places.”

A d d i t i o n a l l y, Kara Steele, a senior jumper, debuted 12.56m in the triple jump, which broke her PR and moved her to second all-time at Princeton.

With

their marks, J o y c e , Amaiche, and Steele have qualified for the NCAA M id-Atlantic Regional.

However, the athletes are aw a iting an a n nouncement from the University to see whether they will be able to compete at the event per current guide-

lines.

The runners of the team also had successful season openers. Junior Page Lester, who had not competed on the track since her sophomore year of high school due to injuries, placed first in the 5k in 16:28.51. Lester was followed by senior distance runner Katherine Leggat-Barr, who ran a PR of 16:48.21.

Michelle Eisenreich, the women’s track and field head coach, noted that “It was awesome to see everyone at Weaver Stadium. I saw a bunch of our administrators there, and I didn't actually see President Eisgruber but I heard he was there. It was a big relief just because it's been such a long, long time and a long road to be able to earn the opportunity to get here. It was awesome.”

Many of the athletes shared similar sentiments.

“I know people work hard — they’ve been working hard over these last few months, and I think seeing that all come to fruition has been really exciting. Above all, seeing teammates compete and have a good time and being able to actually compete was a big highlight on Sunday,” Chastulik said.

Next, the team will be on the road to Rowan University’s Coach Richard Wackar Stadium for another meet on May 1.

COURTESY OF GOPRINCETONTIGERS.COM

Freshman Kate Joyce broke Princeton's all-time record in the javelin.

page 32

The Daily Princetonian

Tuesday July 20, 2021