The Freshman Issue 2013

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Founded 1876 daily since 1892 online since 1998

The Freshman Issue summer 2013 vol. cxxxvii no. 63

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com}

WELCOME TO THE

JUNGLE

The Freshman Dictionary p. 19

A new website, a new era p. 2

Bonfire! Relive the magic p. 30


The Daily Princetonian

page 2 IN THIS ISSUE

The Freshman Issue summer 2013

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

A new website, a new era

News................................................................................................p.3 Street..............................................................................................p.S1 Opinion.........................................................................................p.15 Welcome to Princeton..............................................................p.18 Sports.............................................................................................p.23 ONLINE

We go on tap with the Dean’s Date Fairies, meet some prefrosh, play squash against the men’s varsity team, interview incoming president Christopher Eisgruber ’83 and show you why you should join the ‘Prince.’

Check out our multimedia work at youtube.com/dailyprincetonian. Interested? Contact editor Christine Wang at multimedia@dailyprincetonian.com.

Over at arts & entertainment blog Intersections, Max Gollin reviews Daft Punk’s summer album Random Access Memories, Karen Jin previews the Netflix revival of “Arrested Development,” Rishi Kaneriya reviews Lost Child: Sayon’s Journey and Jarred Mihalik interviews Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. Check us out at blogs.dailyprincetonian.com/intersections. Interested? Contact editor Amy Garland at garland@princeton.edu.

At the Prox, freshman opinion columnists look back on their first years of college and the photography department spotlights notable events from this past year. Check us out at blogs.dailyprincetonian.com/prox. Interested? Contact editor Dan Santoro at dmsantor@princeton.edu.

By Luc Cohen editor-in-chief

O

ver the course of your four years at Princeton, more than 500 issues of The Daily Princetonian will be published. This is the first of them. In all likelihood, the rest of them won’t be quite as large or overwhelming as this one, but the purpose will remain the same: to inform members of the University community on the Princeton-related news they need and to drive the campus conversation. The ‘Prince’ is a team of more than 200 students who cover the news, write about sports and the arts, shoot photos, produce videos, design graphics and do so much more each and every day. We receive no financial support or oversight from the University, allowing us to report the news completely independently and objectively. It’s a huge responsibility, but it’s also a richly rewarding experience and, for many of us, the highlight of our Princeton careers. I came to Princeton knowing I wanted to be involved in the “student newspaper,” the product you’re holding right now (if you’re reading this in print, of course). The physical paper remains a core component of our identity, but over the past three years the ‘Prince’ has become so much more. We’ve transitioned into a multi-platform, roundthe-clock news organization that delivers information to members of the University community when they need it and through whatever medium they use. You don’t need to be told about the disruption and changes occurring at media organizations across the country and the world. While we feel some of the same effects here at the ‘Prince,’ we are financially stable, and our

print edition remains popular among students, faculty and administrators. Our transition to an online-first product has not been out of existential necessity but due to excitement among our staff surrounding the opportunities the web has to offer, as well as due to our readers’ shifting expectations of when and how news is to be delivered. About a year and a half ago, ‘Prince’ leaders decided that the transition could not be complete with the current website. Come September, we will be ready to launch a new one. You may have seen the preview we launched over Reunions — if you don’t know what that means, check out the Dictionary — but for those of you who didn’t, the site contains almost unlimited flexibility to tell stories however we want to. It is fully integrated with social media. The home page contains an intelligent feed that is much more than a listing of articles; it responds to popularity, so you won’t miss whichever stories, videos, photos or blog posts are trending most. Pages for individual articles and sections have also received a facelift, allowing for a much cleaner presentation of multimedia items and a better user experience. Despite the new site’s strengths, we will not be able to make the most of it without your help. In particular, we’re in the hunt for members of the Class of 2017 with an interest in web development or design. Joining the ‘Prince’ is the best opportunity to get hands-on experience and demonstrate your creativity, and you’d be able to get started as soon as you set foot on campus. Multimedia will also play a more central role, so if photography or video has been a hobby for you or if you’re interested in getting started, we want you on our team. And, as always, we’re looking

for intrepid reporters who will cover and uncover the news this campus needs to know about, talented writers to cover sports and the arts and write for our Opinion page, designers to improve our print layout and presentation and copy editors to ensure the accuracy and quality of all our work. We’re also looking for new members of our business staff, which is separate from the editorial side and coordinates advertisements, subscriptions, and general operations. Business keeps this production running, and it’s also excellent real-world experience. The most common response I hear from students who say they’re not interested in joining the ‘Prince’ is, “I’m not a good writer!” The ‘Prince’ has a place for everyone, no matter what your talents are or what skills you want to develop. We have a team of more than 200 students with a diverse set of skills and roles, and we’re looking to expand that with you, the members of the Class of 2017. While some of us came here knowing we wanted to do this, no prior experience is necessary, and some of our most successful staff members took up journalism for the first time at the ‘Prince.’ When you arrive on campus, stop by our table at the Activities Fair and come to our open houses to see what one of the largest and longest-lasting organizations at Princeton is all about. If you’re interested in joining or just have questions about the ‘Prince’ in general, shoot me an email at luccohen@ princeton.edu. I’d love to hear from you. Enjoy the rest of your summer, and I’m looking forward to meeting you in the fall. Luc Cohen, the Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Princetonian, is a Wilson School major from New York, N.Y. He can be reached at luccohen@ princeton.edu.


Founded 1876 daily since 1892 online since 1998

The Freshman Issue summer 2013 vol. cxxxvii no. 63

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On Campus The Daily Princetonian will be hosting open houses at the newsroom at 48 University Place for interested freshmen in the fall. Be on the lookout for details!

S T U D E N T L I F E | J U LY 3

News & Notes Student with bacterial meningitis hospitalized abroad in fifth case linked to University since March

a male university student was hospitalized after being diagnosed with bacterial meningitis on June 30 during an academic program abroad, the University announced in an email sent to undergraduate students Tuesday afternoon. Fourteen other students who were on the trip received prophylactic treatment, according to University spokesperson Martin Mbugua. The student was treated for bacterial meningitis and is in stable condition, Mbugua said. He declined to provide additional details about the student or the nature of the trip, citing privacy concerns. At this time, there is no link between the most recently reported case of bacterial meningitis and the four other cases associated with the University in recent months, according to New Jersey State Department of Health Communications Manager Daniel Emmer. He added that NJDOH is currently working with other public health agencies to investigate the case, though he did not specify which agencies. To the University’s knowledge, the male student was not in contact with any of the students who contracted meningitis in the past few months, Mbugua said. This is the fifth reported case of bacterial meningitis linked to the University since March. The first and second cases, reported on March 25 and April 12, involved a female student and a male visitor to campus, respectively. The third and fourth cases, reported May 7 and May 20, both involved male students. Each of the four previous cases were caused by a type of bacterial meningitis known as meningococcal bacteria type B, which has no vaccine but is treated with antibiotics, according to the University email announcement. State law requires University students to be vaccinated against bacterial meningitis before enrolling at Princeton, but Mbugua said in May that four current students have not received the vaccine, citing a religious exemption. Bacterial meningitis is contagious and can be spread through close contact such as coughing, sneezing, and sharing utensils. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light and altered mental status, according to Centers for Disease Control’s website. —Daily Princetonian Staff

Eisgruber named next U. president By James Evans staff writer

University Provost Christopher Eisgruber ’83 was named the 20th president of the University on Sunday. The selection was announced at a press conference held at Nassau Hall, where the University Board of Trustees unanimously approved the search committee’s recommendation of Eisgruber. He will succeed President Shirley Tilghman, who announced in September that she was stepping down after 12 years on the job. In a November email to The Daily Princetonian, Eisgruber said he did not consider himself a candidate for the presidency. “It is flattering that people would mention my name in this connection, but I do not consider myself a candidate,” he wrote. “I have always assumed that I would return to my teaching and research — which I love — after my time as provost is done. That remains my (happy) expectation.” At the press conference, Eisgruber was asked what changed between November and last week, when he was formally of-

fered the position of President. “I realized this was a very important time for the University. This was also a very important time in higher education, and one where ideals that I care deeply about are going to be affected in very significant ways,” Eisgruber said. “I have loved serving as Provost for the last nine years, in addition to spending time teaching and doing research ... And as I talked to people about those challenges, I became convinced that if this opportunity were available I would very much want to take it.” New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who serves as an exofficio member of the board, said he was thrilled with Eisgruber’s appointment. “The prerequisite of Chris is that he’s not going to need a manual to run this place, right?,” Christie said, laughing. “So what he’s going to be able to do is focus his time on getting both from inside himself and from the faculty and the supporters of the place a vision for what’s next and that’s I think really important and one of the great advantages I think he brings to the job.” See EISGRUBER page 6

STUDENT LIFE | MARCH 4

S T U D E N T L I F E | N O V. 8

2008 U. survey quantifies 5 clubs adopt new Bicker system campus sexual assault

By Sohee Khim senior writer

More than 15 percent of female undergraduates reported experiencing non-consensual vaginal penetration during their time at the University, according to an unpublished survey conducted in 2008 by several University offices. The survey, a version of a standard survey format called the “Sexual Experience Survey” was developed in 2007 by Mary Koss, a University of Arizona Public Health professor specializing in sexual

violence, and consisted of 17 multiple choice questions. The survey estimates the frequency of different types of unwanted sexual acts and measures “behaviors that meet legal definitions of various sex crimes,” according to the website of the Measurement Instrument Database for the Social Sciences. The survey presented different scenarios relating to sexual experiences and asked respondents how frequently they had experienced those incidents while they had been enrolled at the University. The results suggest that

rates of sexual assault and sexual harassment on campus may be substantially higher than the rate at which incidents of sexual misconduct are reported or adjudicated. However, Princeton’s numbers are slightly lower than the national average. National surveys conducted in the early 2000s estimate that about one in five women are raped during their college careers. It remains unclear why the survey was never publicly released, but one University administrator said the University did not want to draw See SURVEY page 4

U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S | O C T. 1 2

U. stores student ID data without policy By Marcelo Rochabrun associate news editor for enterprise

Someone at the University is able to know when you last used your University ID card to go to the gym, eat late pizza at Frist, have a meal at any dining hall, access your dorm room, enter a building after hours and check out a book from a campus library. Every time a student uses a PUID, the student leaves a trail that is recorded by a number of University databases. And starting next year, the dorm room information will not only be recorded but will be securely streamed real-time over the campus Wi-Fi network. The recent installation of the keyless lock system over the summer, and the planned expansion of its capabilities, is just the latest addition to datagathering practices that have expanded over the years since the introduction of the TigerCard in 2004. The PUID data are stored in separate databases with separate restrictions on which administrators can view them. However, the University retains the capability to draw

on data from different sources to create a composite image of a student’s daily whereabouts on campus. Policies governing the access and storage of this data have not been updated in conjunction with the data-gathering expansion. The University currently has no explicit policy that regulates data gathered from students, such as when they use their PUIDs, nor a policy that specifies the length of time this data will be stored for, according to University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua. Data recorded from student cards currently goes back to June 2010, when a new system was installed. Mbugua declined to discuss the technical details of this new system. “That seems like a long time,” said computer science professor Ed Felten, the former chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission and the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy, referring to the twoand-a-half years back to 2010. He said the University should See PRIVACY page 7

By Luc Cohen

editor-in-chief

This winter, students will have the option of bickering more than one eating club at a time for the first time since the 1980s as part of a new dual-club bicker process. Cannon Dial Elm Club, Cap & Gown Club, Charter Club, Cottage Club and Tiger Inn will participate in the new system, according to an announcement by the Interclub Council late Wednesday night. Ivy Club and Tower Club, the other two bicker clubs, will not participate. During Bicker week, both

sophomores and upperclassmen hoping to join one of the five participating clubs can enter in the selection process for up to two of them. Students can either bicker two selective clubs or bicker one selective club and attend events at Charter, which is not a bicker club, to accumulate points. Students can accumulate points at Charter by attending events at the club, boosting their chances of gaining membership. Charter has used this weighted sign-in system for two years and has filled to capacity in the first round of See BICKER page 6

F E AT U R E | M A Y 1

Slaughter ’80 remembers undergraduate years By Catherine Duazo senior writer

Before she became the first female director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department and before she tried to “have it all,” Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80 was an undergraduate in the Wilson School, drank a lot of coffee and pulled all nighters — but not because she procrastinated. “When she would study for a course, there were times she wouldn’t sleep and sometimes we used to call it ‘work herself into a coma’ because she was such a hard worker,” classmate Hovey Brock ’80 said. “We used to tell her it was okay, that she would probably get the grade she wanted without having to work so hard, but she was one of those people who had a lot of drive, had a lot of focus, would never let up.” The Wilson School professor and former Wilson School dean will leave the University at the end of the academic year to become president of the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank, in Washington, D.C. But unlike her two-year public service leave from the University to work at the State Department, this time Slaughter has no immediate plans to return. During her 10 years at the University, Slaughter expanded the focus of the Wilson School, saw the school through the Robertson family lawsuit and left for two years to become a member of the State Department and also spent a year in Shanghai. She stirred the national debate on balancing a fulfilling career and family life and was speculated as a front-running candidate in the recent University presidential search.

FILE PHOTO

According to interviews with former classmates and a search of Princeton’s archives, Slaughter was a studious undergraduate at the University. She earned the Daniel M. Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating Scholarship at the end of her senior year, which is awarded to students who wish to pursue careers in politics or public service. She also participated in junior varsity rowing, theatre activities and wrote for a campus publication. Despite her current political background, friends said that Slaughter was not See SLAUGHTER page 5



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As undergrad, Slaughter “drank a lot of coffee ... had a variety of boyfriends” SLAUGHTER Continued from page 3

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involved in student politics or in student government and that, while she did express a passion for foreign policy, she did not consider herself a leader. Slaughter said that search firms acting on behalf of other universities had contacted her asking if she would be interested in serving as president, she refused every time. Currently, Slaughter explained, she is not in a position to accept a 10-year job. Slaughter said that the Princeton presidential search worked differently in that candidates were not asked to put their own names forward. For the past seven months, provost Christopher Eisgruber ’83 and Slaughter were considered the frontrunners for the University presidency that ultimately went to Eisgruber. She also noted that she was first asked to consider applying for the post of dean of the Wilson School by Eisgruber, a fellow lawyer. At the time, Eisgruber served in the search committee that eventually chose Slaughter for the position. “Anne-Marie colored glasses” Slaughter was an undergraduate student at the Wilson School and received a certificate in European cultural studies before returning to the school 22 years later as its first female dean. Slaughter explored international relations during her undergraduate years at the University through both academics and activities. She was an intern on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the summer between her junior and senior years and, upon her return to campus, published a guest column in The Daily Princetonian about SALT II, one of the nuclear arms disarmament programs considered at the time. In the midst of the Cold War years, Slaughter took German classes and wrote a thesis titled “Creativity and Change: The Cultural Opposition and Soviet Reform: Implications for United States Human Rights Policy.” Brock, who met Slaughter when they lived in the same entryway in Pyne during freshman year and dated her during their freshman and sophomore years, said he recognized her interest in foreign policy early on when they both took a survey course on foreign relations through the 20th century. “I enjoyed the course, but I could tell that this was really what she was passionate about,” Brock, a working painter living in New York City, said. Freshman-year entrywaymate and sophomore-and-junior-year roommate Nora Joffe Elish ’80 — whom Slaughter thanks in the acknowledgements of her thesis for helping her type her thesis — agreed that Slaughter’s passion as an undergraduate was already in public policy and international relations. It was also a general consensus among Slaughter’s peers that she was driven, hard working and particularly strongminded. “The joke was that she saw everything through what we called ‘Anne-Marie colored glasses’ because she had a very specific take and would be surprised if anybody else would disagree with her,” Brock explained. She was known to frequently stay up late to perfect her school work. “If she did an all-nighter, it was because it was already really good and she wanted to make it great,” Elizabeth Sacksteder ’80 said. Sacksteder met Slaughter when they lived in the same entryway in Pyne during their freshman year. She is now the Global Head of Litigation and Regulatory Investigations for Citigroup Inc. Slaughter also remained busy outside of the classroom. She was a Residential Advisor during her senior year, a poetry editor of the Nassau Literary Review, an editor of social sciences and history for the Princeton Journal of the Arts and Sciences, a stage manager for theatre productions and a junior varsity rower.

Sacksteder noted that the effort that she put into rowing, which was something she had never done before coming to Princeton, was representative of the intensity at which she engaged in everything. But on top of her busy schedule, Slaughter did manage to maintain a social life and enjoy many of the same activities that current Princeton students engage in. “She drank a lot of coffee,” Sacksteder said. “She drank other things as well from time to time, and she had a variety of boyfriends over the course of our four years at Princeton.” Joffe Elish, who Slaughter describes as her “best friend,” remembered the “endless cups of coffee in the student center” and impromptu trips to New York. “I think the remarkable thing for both of us when we look back is frankly we could fill any amount of time we were given together,” said Joffe Elish, who is now the director of the elementary school program at The Dalton School in New York. “Obviously we don’t have that kind of time, but it feels like we slip back into it when we are together, and that’s what I cherish most.” While friends remembered Slaughter, a Charlottesville, Va. native, as a Southerner, Slaughter said she disagrees with that perception though she admits that there is a Southern ease about her. However, she said that she identifies much more with her mother’s Belgian heritage. Her father, Edward Slaughter ’53, who also was an undergraduate student in the Wilson School, met her mother in Brussels while there on a Rotary fellowship. Slaughter was briefly a member of Colonial Club and Cloister Inn until she ultimately went independent with Joffe Elish because she is “the kind of person who doesn’t like eating in the same place every night,” Slaughter said. However, Slaughter said it was hard to cook while living on campus at the time and said that she and Joffe Elish “ended up living on M&Ms.” Joffe Elish noted that Slaughter did not consider herself a leader when she was an undergraduate, not getting too involved in student politics or student government. An advertisement in the ‘Prince’ archives shows that Slaughter was a member of the USG Advisory Committee on Undergraduate Residential Life, which addressed the structure of social and dining options on campus. As a senior, she was named the Daniel M. Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating Scholar, which enabled her to study EuropeanSoviet relations and earn an M.Phil. in International Affairs from Oxford in 1982. From the Wilson School to law school and back After receiving her M.Phil., Slaughter went to Harvard Law School and graduated in 1985. She returned to Oxford and received her D.Phil. in International Relations in 1992. While working on her D.Phil., she served on the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School before joining the faculty of the Harvard Law School. Slaughter said that as an undergraduate, she would not have expected to return to Princeton. She explained that in 2002, she accepted the position at the Wilson School to be a dean and not to teach foreign policy. Had the administrative position never been offered, she would have probably remained at a law school. “As much as I love Princeton and the Wilson School, it is not my intellectual home,” Slaughter said. “I would probably not have been able to stay here longterm as a scholar.” Slaughter explained that she identifies more with law than she does with political science, even though she had academic experience with foreign policy as an undergraduate. She noted that there is a difference between practicing foreign policy and being a scholar of foreign policy. “I’m trained as a legal scholar,” Slaughter said. “I think differently than political scientists and economists, and it’s just a different discipline and it’s my home discipline. If Princeton had a law school, then who knows? Maybe I’d stay.”

Although there are a few lawyers on campus, the lack of a law school at Princeton has meant that Slaughter hasn’t found a scholarly community at the University. But even the initial decision to go into academia surprised her, Slaughter said. She went to law school intending to work at a big law firm in New York and go in-and-out of government. The way to do foreign policy was through law. After working for a summer in a New York law firm, she realized that she was not interested in practicing corporate law. “I really didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew what I didn’t want to do,” she said. Prompted by a need to financially support herself, she reapplied to Oxford to receive a D.Phil., which made her eligible for a predoctoral fellow-

ship. However, she stressed that her entry into academia was through law. Eisgruber, who convinced Slaughter to enter her name for consideration for the position as dean of the Wilson School, said that he called Slaughter one day to “source” her about potential candidates and suggestions about the future trajectory of the school. Because of her insightful responses to the questions, Eisgruber said he asked Slaughter at the end of the call whether she would rule out being a candidate herself. A major factor in her decision to accept the position, Slaughter explained, was the opportunity to work with Shirley Tilghman and the opportunity to make changes that she saw were necessary for the Wilson School. Slaughter became the first woman to hold the position of

dean of the Wilson School, a post she assumed in 2002. Under her tenure, she expanded the faculty of the department, successfully recruiting faculty members from a variety of disciplines to the Wilson School. She was also instrumental in the creation of the Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative fellowship in 2006. “She was absolutely critical to our strengthening the field of international relations in Princeton, which had been less strong during the 90s,” Tilghman said in an interview. Slaughter was also the dean when the Robertson Foundation — representing the $35 million gift given by Charles Robertson ’26 to the school — filed a lawsuit against the University challenging the direction of the Wilson School and financial management of the foundation’s assets.

The Foundation argued that the Robertson gift was intended to support an educational institution dedicated to public service, but the family believed that too few graduates were actually pursuing careers in the public sector. They intended to reclaim the money and give it to a different university. The University settled in 2008 and agreed to pay $50 million plus legal fees. “Her ability to navigate or lead the school during that difficult time was absolutely critical,” Tilghman noted. Slaughter left the position in 2009 when she was appointed to be the director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department by Hillary Clinton. Slaughter was also the first woman to hold this position. In 2011, she returned to the University as a professor in the Wilson School.


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Provost-turned-president Eisgruber Multi-club Bicker revived, reworked BICKER a respected constitutional scholar Continued from page 3

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Tilghman, who will begin a one-year leave of absence from the University in June, expressed equal excitement. “I think April 21 is going to go down as a great day for Princeton,” she said. “I think we have in Chris the leader that we’re going to need for the next decade or so, and I don’t think we could be in better hands.” Eisgruber graduated magna cum laude from Princeton in 1983 with a degree in physics. On Sunday, Eisgruber said the time he spent at Princeton as an undergraduate were some of his defining years. “My four years here were transformative, happy, they were years that stretched me, that gave me friendships that have lasted a lifetime since then that forced me to rethink the ideals that I brought to the University and enabled me to come away with understandings of ideas and of people and of places that I didn’t have before I came,” he said. He then went on to earn an M.Litt. in politics from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and received his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1988. While at U. Chicago, Eisgruber served as the editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Law Review. After serving as a clerk first to Patrick E. Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals and then to Judge John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court, Eisgruber obtained his first academic appointment in 1990, when he joined the New York University School of Law as an assistant professor. Eisgruber taught at NYU until July 2001. In September of 2000, Eisgruber began a Visiting Research Fellowship at Princeton in the Program in Law and Public Affairs, for which he later served

as the director for nearly three years. After completing his fellowship, he was hired as the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in the Wilson School and the University Center for Human Values. After former Provost Amy Gutmann resigned to accept the presidency at the University of Pennsylvania, Tilghman offered the position to Eisgruber in 2004. In an interview with the ‘Prince’ last spring, Eisgruber said he had been shocked to be in contention for the position of provost. “I hadn’t thought about the position,” Eisgruber said, “much less how long I would do it.” In June, Eisgruber will complete his ninth year as provost and will end his tenure as the second-longest-serving provost in the University’s history. Since the Office of the Provost was first established in the 1966-67 academic year, only Neil Rudenstine ’56, who served between 1977 and 1988, has held the position for a longer period. During his time on the Princeton faculty, Eisgruber has remained an active scholar in the legal community. His first book, “Constitutional SelfGovernment,” was published in 2001, and was followed in 2007 by “The Next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court Appointments Process” and “Religious Freedom and the Constitution,” which he co-authored with Lawrence G. Sager from The University of Texas at Austin. One year after those books were published, the University faced its most significant financial setback in decades at the onset of the financial crisis. In the 2008-09 fiscal year, the endowment contracted in value by 22.7 percent — shrinking from $16.3 billion to $12.6 billion. By instituting sweeping cost-cutting measures,

which included laying off 43 employees in October of 2009, Eisgruber helped re-balance the University’s books. In her remarks on Sunday, Tilghman praised Eisgruber’s “instinct for transparency” throughout the process. “I think the work that Chris provided to us during the depths of the recession in ‘08 and ‘09 were absolutely critical to the way in which the University ultimately successfully navigated those years,” she said. “And I would just point out one really important aspect of his leadership, and that was the transparency with which he went about explaining to the campus over and over again what the circumstances of the decline in the endowment were and what we needed to do and why ... I think that instinct for transparency was one of the most impressive things during the depths of the recession.” In the fiscal year which ended in June 2012, the University did not draw on one-time reserves for the first time since the 2008 recession, indicating renewed fiscal health and stability. Andy Golden, President of the Princeton University Investment Company, joined Tilghman in singing Eisgruber’s praises. “Chris and PRINCO have worked very closely through the ultimate stress test,” Golden said. “So it’s hard to imagine anything other than a productive, effective and efficient relationship.” As provost, Eisgruber has also made strengthening Princeton’s international presence a priority. After co-commissioning the 2007 “Princeton in the World” report with Tilghman, he appointed Diana Davies as the first Vice Provost for International Initiatives in 2008. Eisgruber has also worked to strengthen the Bridge Year and International Internship Programs.

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sign-ins in previous years. The change to the Bicker process accompanied a commitment by all 11 clubs to synchronize their membership selection processes and provide more open events to showcase the clubs to underclassmen. “It was more about changing the mindset of the Street at a very fundamental level to make it more open and accepting,” said ICC president Alec Egan ’13, who is also president of Cap & Gown. Egan added that the change to the Bicker system “was just a fringe thing that we wanted to go ahead and move forward with too.” There will still be three days of bicker under the new schedule, featuring two twohour bicker sessions on the Sunday of bicker week and two 90-minute sessions on the Monday and Tuesday. Students bickering two clubs will attend one Bicker session each day at both clubs. Students who are only bickering one club will only be able to attend one session a day. These timing changes were made partly to ensure that students bickering only one club do not have an advantage in the selection process. Egan said clubs will be policing their own members during discussions and Bicker to prevent unfair advantages, and sophomores bickering only one club will be expected not to mention that fact during Bicker. Egan acknowledged that the change could potentially result in a large increase in the number of students bickering each club. This could make discussions last much longer or instead reduce the amount of time club members spend discussing each student bickering. “That’s been a big concern for everyone,” Egan said. In response, pickups will be moved to Saturday to give the clubs an extra day of discussions on Friday. TI president Ben Barron ’13 said all the clubs were in support of the changes that were being made, even though Tower and Ivy are not implementing the system right away. “We think that it’s going to be a process that is beneficial for both people seeking to gain admission to the clubs and people who are members of the clubs and club culture,” Barron said. Barron said the new change would likely impact the number of students who bicker TI in February. Nevertheless,

he emphasized that students who choose to bicker only TI will not have any advantage over students who bicker another club as well. “That’s a pretty pivotal point of the new proposal and will be one of the things that we are working hardest to implement as we implement the new system,” he said. Tower president Jamie Joseph ’13 said her club did not adopt the new system in part because it would reduce the amount of time sophomores could spend at the club during Bicker. Currently, Joseph said students could spend as few as nine and as many as 15 hours bickering the club. Under the new system, students can only spend five hours bickering a particular club. “If you have less time with members of the club and less quality interactions with members of the club during Bicker, then your experience during Bicker will be less significant than your interactions with the club prior to Bicker,” Joseph said. “We want our process to welcome students along the spectrum of familiarity with our club.” Charter’s events will occur during the same time as the Bicker events, according to Charter president Rodrigo Menezes ’13, who praised the change. “It makes it less stressful. It allows sophomores not to have all their eggs in one basket,” Menezes said. “It’s a little ironic that we’re being put in the selective group while simultaneously becoming more open.” Wednesday evening’s announcement is the culmination of a three-year evaluation of the eating club admission process, a discussion that has always had Bicker reforms as its backdrop. On May 14, University Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee ’69 confirmed that the eating clubs were in talks about a possible multi-club bicker system, though he did not say which clubs, if any, supported the proposal. Durkee’s confirmation came a day after Joseph emailed Tower members indicating that the system under discussion would have allowed sophomores to bicker two clubs at a time. Discussions continued into this fall. In September, before the ICC publicly announced any changes to the club selection process, Menendez announced that the club would revise its sign-in process as a result of the new system. In an email to Charter members, he said sophomores would be able to attend events that would give

them the points they needed to get into Charter even while they were bickering two other clubs. This year’s changes to the eating club admission process were kicked off in May 2010 by the report of the Task Force on Relationships between the University and the Eating Clubs. University President Shirley Tilghman established the Eating Clubs Task Force — which was chaired by Durkee — in September 2009. She charged the group with, among other things, reexamining the process by which the clubs admit members. In the report, the Task Force recommended implementing a “match” system by which students bickered a number of clubs, and later rank their preferences. The selective clubs would also rank the students they wanted to admit, and a mutual match would be made. The system has been compared to the process sororities use to admit new members and the system medical schools use to admit students. Eating club presidents expressed disapproval of this proposed change at the time. Then-ICC adviser Tim Prugar told The Daily Princetonian that clubs were concerned about the increased volume of students that would bicker and the impact this would have on the length of discussions. According to the Task Force’s report, the process of Bicker first appeared at certain eating clubs in 1914. By midcentury, students bickered every club and were guaranteed a spot in at least one — a system known as “100-percent bicker.” In the “Dirty Bicker” of 1958, 23 students, more than half of them Jewish, did not receive bids. By 1962, clubs had dropped their commitment to granting every student at least one spot. In the 1967, Terrace became the first club to drop bicker and begin admitting students on an open basis. By the late 1970s, Cap & Gown, Cottage, Ivy, TI and Tower were the only clubs that still conducted bicker. By that point students chose which clubs they wanted to bicker, and frequently bickered more than one. But by the late 1980s, the current system of bickering just one club was solidified. The University has attempted to implement a multi-club bicker system many times in the past, most recently in 1999, but these efforts have been largely unsuccessful. Contributor Kristen McNierney contributed reporting.


The Daily Princetonian

The Freshman Issue summer 2013

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THE COMBO SERIES | APRIL 25

Students from wealthier backgrounds overrepresented at U., survey finds The second in a three-part series on the findings of the most recent COMBO survey. By Sarah Cen and Austin Lee staff writers

Gerson Leiva ’16 grew up in Trenton, N.J. — a city that has reported extremely low high school graduation rates — and attended its public schools through the ninth grade. In 2012, the Trenton public school system had the lowest high school graduation rate in the state at 48 percent, according to the New Jersey Department of Education. “Day in and day out, there were fights left and right,” Leiva said. “It was just a really bad environment to be in. I wasn’t really surrounded by individuals who wanted to push themselves.” Coming out of middle school, Leiva applied to two prestigious private college preparatory schools: the Hun School of Princeton and the Lawrenceville School. He was denied by Lawrenceville and, given his annual household income of about $45,000, could not attend the Hun School due to the amount of financial aid he would require. The next year, Leiva applied yet again to the Hun School and to Peddie School, a private boarding school in Hightstown, N.J. Despite an initial hesitation to leave his friends and the environment in which he had grown up, Leiva accepted the offer to attend Peddie, characterizing the change as both an

academic and social transition. “Peddie was just completely different. When I got there, it was a new world to me. I was with students who were really, really dedicated to their studies, to their athletics and just everything in general. At Trenton High, good athletes were mostly bad students,” Leiva, a longtime soccer player, said. “When you get to a classroom where the teachers are good, the students are really on top of their game, and I’m just like ‘Damn, I’m surrounded by academics,’ ” he explained. “When I grew up, I wasn’t really pushed toward the books, I was pushed more toward sports. So I didn’t spend that much time reading or anything like that so obviously the more you read the more sophisticated your vocabulary is. So when I got there, I hear these kids speaking huge words and some of them are younger than me.” According to the Committee on Background and Opportunity III report released in fall 2012, Leiva falls into the 14 percent of students at the University whose annual household incomes fall below $50,000. The survey, conducted by the Undergraduate Student Government during the summer of 2011, was taken by over 1,800 students from the Classes of 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. The survey identi-

fied each student by his or her background and compared it to his or her campus experiences and opportunities. The background of each participant was evaluated using 13 categories such as race, geographic region, household income and gender. Life at the University was then measured using 12 categories, like employment, academic life and eating club membership. The results show that students from wealthier economic backgrounds are overrepresented at the University. A third of students reported household incomes of over $200,000, compared to 3.8 percent of households nationwide according to the U.S. 2010 Census. Despite the fact that so many students’ households were clustered among the nation’s highest incomes, only 10 percent of students described themselves as upper class, while close to half described themselves as upper middle class. In addition, about 40 percent attended private high schools compared to 7.7 percent of high school students nationwide, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. According to the COMBO report, wealthier students are more likely to feel comfortable in academic environments than students with lower income levels, report lower levels of stress

AUSTIN LEE :: STAFF DESIGNER

Students from higher-income families succesfully bicker at higher frequencies. Source: The USG’s COMBO III survey.

and are more likely to bicker an eating club, as well as more likely to bicker successfully. Of students with household incomes over $200,000, 75 percent reported being accepted to a bicker club, while among students with reported incomes under $75,000, slightly over half were successful. Comfort levels Leiva, now a freshman at the University, described Princeton as similar to Peddie, the private high school he ultimately attended. He noted that though he has become more accustomed to the much more “preppy,” academic-focused environment, he finds that his background does influence his comfort level in, for example, a classroom. “I was intimidated just by the fact that now I’m in a room with people who know what they’re talking about,” he said. According to the survey

report, students like Leiva feel less comfortable in precepts or seminar discussions than students with self-reported annual household incomes greater than $200,000. A similar trend was found with students’ incomes and their levels of comfort with professors. Earlier this year the University created the Trustee Ad Hoc Committee on College Access in order to increase the access for lowerincome students to higher education. In the committee’s initial statement, President Shirley Tilghman acknowledged that students from the top 5 percent are overrepresented in the University’s applicant pool and that more can be done to diversify the student body. The committee is expected to meet twice before the end of the 2012-13 academic year. In the comments section of the COMBO survey, a student noted that socioeconomic status visibly affected how comfortable others seem to

feel at the University. Despite expressing comfort at the University, the student noted different feelings among lower-income students. “I have noticed that students who come from less financially successful families, who are of racial minorities or who are academically unprepared do not feel that they fit in initially at Princeton, and I don’t think their condition improves that much over the four years,” the student wrote. Another student, who did not report feeling very comfortable at the University, said the dissatisfaction that is expressed as resulting from status or class divisions can be misinterpreted. “When I was young, my family was much, much less well off than it is now, which has inf luenced me in some ways,” the student wrote. “I used to point to that fact a lot when thinking about why I don’t fit in here. As much as I’d like to See COMBO page 9

U. stores identity, specific location of every attempt to open dorm doors PRIVACY Continued from page 3

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only retain the data for as long as it can be useful, especially for crime investigations. Data stored beyond a certain length of time is unlikely to reveal new crimes, he said. A possible value for retaining historical data, he said, is to compare when crimes are discovered on campus and when they actually happened. He said that in his judgment, data should only be stored for the period of time when it is reasonable that a crime will be discovered. But Mbugua said the University does not actively mine its data looking for crimes. “The University does not search data to see if it reveals an incident,” he said. ‘We know where everybody went’ The new keyless locks, made by Spain-based security company SALTO, register every attempt to open a room door, a feat impossible with the previous brass key locks. SALTO itself advertises its system highlighting this feature. “Without having to go to the doors we know where everybody went at any point in time,” Marc Handels, SALTO vice president of marketing and sales, said in a company video. According to Mbugua, the University currently stores the identity and specific location of every attempt to open a dorm room. The advertisement shows that doors are not connected to Wi-Fi, and that door entry information is stored in every card and periodically added to a database through a Wi-Fi connected hotspot. In a recent interview with a campus security website, however, Michael Mahon, SALTO senior vice president and the official responsible for work-

ing the keyless lock deal with the University, told a campus security website that the Princeton system did actually allow for real-time door tracking. “Princeton opted to connect the interior XSR locks via Wi-Fi to enable real-time audit tracking for access transactions, instantaneous lock down and remote door scheduling,” Mahon said. He declined to comment to The Daily Princetonian. According to Mbugua, the Wi-Fi system will only be available on campus locks in 2013. In the meantime, dorm room access data is only updated four times a year, the number of times students have to present their cards to a SALTO hotspot to have the card revalidated. But data gathered from accessing campus buildings is already gathered live by the Department of Public Safety. Warnings are received live by DPS whenever an exterior door is left open for too long, according to Mbugua. A University database also records the identity of every student that enters a building using his PUID. In any case, the University would not face legal barriers if it sought to record information from students. “American law doesn’t require a specific authorization for information to be gathered by an institution like the University,” University Counsel Hannah Ross said. The recorded data can be disclosed to third parties in the case of a subpoena or court order but according to Ross this has never been requested. However, internal offices including Housing, Life Safety and Security Systems, Dining Services, the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students and the Department of Public Safety do have access, under different circumstances, to all or parts of this data that can track the location of students throughout the day.

Data access limited to specific officials There is no uniform access policy for all the PUID-related information. Only “system administrators and authorized staff” have routine access to PUID data, Mbugua said, as part of their work duties. Most notably, the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students has access to all data recorded from the PUIDs. Besides Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan, there is one other ODUS administrator who has access to this data: secretary to the Committee of Discipline, Associate Dean Victoria Jueds. Data from PUIDs can be used for internal disciplinary and criminal investigations, Mbugua confirmed. The Department of Public Safety, however, only has routine access to building entry data. Any other data that may prove useful in an investigation must be requested from ODUS. “The request must be with a specific purpose and within a specific time frame,” Mbugua said. Administrators within the Facilities Life Safety and Security Systems office have routine access only to building and room entrance information. Mbugua said that the official responsible for administering the keyless locks system, Life Safety and Security Administrator Keith Tuccillo, has access to this data. Housing, Dining Services, and Library administrators only have access to data relevant to their offices. Housing and Dining Services said they did not monitor this information. Library administrators can only match a student with a particular book as long as the book is checked out by the student, Mbugua said. Mbugua and Information Technology Security Officer Anthony Scaturro declined to

identify the specific identity or number of individuals who have access to data recorded from PUIDs, citing concern for the security of the data. While the University does not have explicit policies regulating the conditions under which authorized administrators have access to student data, the access is restricted to as few people as possible, according to Scaturro. “The University uses a concept called the principle of least privilege,” Scaturro said. “If a person doesn’t need the data to do his or her job, no access is granted.” He added he did not have access to most University databases. None of the PUID-associated data are specifically listed in the University’s Information Security policy, but Scaturro said that data not specifically mentioned are considered “confidential,” which is the fourth-highest level in the University’s fivelevel information sensitivity hierarchy. Policies provide little specifics Two departments do have guidelines governing data use — Life Safety and Security Systems Office and the Library. Both acknowledge that data may be disclosed to third parties if a court order or subpoena is issued. The most specific policy to discuss PUID-related records is the Campus Access Control System privacypolicy, which regulates records associated with door entry. The policy was last updated in October 2010, before the introduction of the keyless lock system, but, according to Mbugua, it regulates both entry to buildings and entry to dorm rooms. The policy says authorized personnel “shall not use CACS data to investigate the whereabouts of a specific individual.” However, data can be moni-

tored “as required for internal control, governmental regulations or other legitimate business purposes.” But, the University does not have an overarching policy regulating PUID-associated data as a whole, and policies governing access to certain types of data do not provide specifics on how data can be stored or for what length of time. It is not clear whether federal law that governs University handling of student data applies to PUID data. Mbugua said data retention policies are governed by the overall University guidelines on data retention, which outline rules for the handling of University records, including student academic information. There are no specifics related to the PUID. The University records retention website also has a section on records held by Public Safety, but that section is currently under construction. In addition, the University Information Security policy does not address the length that data gathered from students will be stored for. “The policy is designed to be a framework and not a data classification library,” Scaturro said. In addition, there is one federal act that protects the confidentially of students’ educational records. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, however, does not detail how long records should be kept for and leaves this decision to the discretion of every school. The University defines educational records as “those records, files, documents and other materials that contain information directly related to a student and that are maintained by the University.” These records can also be disclosed to school officials for educational reasons. Students serving on University commit-

tees, such as the Committee on Discipline, are considered school officials, in addition to employees “fulfilling their professional responsibilities,” according to Ross, the University counsel. But the University is unsure whether card data can be considered an education record under FERPA law in the first place. Ross said she believes it is “likely” that the data is covered under the act. However, due to the uncertainty, Princeton protects this data as if it fell under FERPA. Frank LoMonte, a specialist in FERPA law and executive director of the Student Press Law Center said, however, that the data probably does not fall under the act. A record only becomes regulated by FERPA when an individual record is put together, he said. In that case, though, “that doesn’t mean [the data] is not legally confidential,” LoMonte said. FERPA also allows any student to ask for his or her personal information kept under the act to be disclosed. In general, Mbugua says there is good reason to keep records of student data. “In every area you look at there is a reason why the data is being noted or recorded. The primary reason is to provide services to students,” he said. For Scaturro, who said he had attended some of the meetings between the University and SALTO before the installation of the keyless locks system, there are safety reasons why the University would monitor the data. “If there is an emergency or a kind of situation that involves violence ... it would be nice to know who is in the building,” he said. “I can vouch for the fact that invasion of people’s privacy is definitely not something that was even suspected [in these meetings].”


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The Freshman Issue summer 2013

U. conducted anonymous sexual experiences survey, did not release results SURVEY

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unwanted attention by publicizing the report’s findings when they were in line with national averages. The survey was completed by 1,595 graduate and undergraduate students from the classes of 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, and aimed to “establish and quantify the extent to which Princeton University students experience assault,” according to a summary of the survey results. A confidential summary of the survey’s data and a report detailing the results for female undergraduate students were provided to The Daily Princetonian. According to the survey, more than 28 percent of fe-

male undergraduate students reported that they were touched in a sexual manner or had their clothes removed without consent. About 12 percent said they were forced to receive or perform oral sex, and an additional 14 percent were said they were victims of attempted forced oral sex. Another 6.2 percent of female undergraduate respondents said they experienced attempted non-consensual vaginal penetration. Of the 809 female undergraduates who filled out the undergraduate female survey, more than 120 answered affirmatively to the statement, “A man put his penis into my vagina, or someone inserted fingers or objects without my consent.” Of the respondents, a disproportionate 70 percent were

female. Otherwise, the demographics of the respondents are consistent with those of the broader student population according to the University’s official enrollment statistics at the time. Of the students who filled out the survey, 65 percent were white, 13 percent were Asian, 8 percent were Latino and 8 percent were African/African-American. In addition, 91.5 percent of survey respondents identified as heterosexual. Between 2006 and 2009 — which includes the year in which the survey was distributed — the University ruled on four cases of sexual misconduct, according to reports provided by Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Victoria Jueds, who oversees disciplinary proceedings. Of these, two students were

placed on disciplinary probation, one student was suspended and one was required to withdraw from the University. Jueds said she could not comment on the total number of cases involving sexual assault and sexual harassment that have come before the Committee on Discipline. According to Jueds, ODUS only keeps records for students formally found responsible for disciplinary violations. If a student considers filing a formal complaint but never does, or if a student is charged and is found not responsible, ODUS does not maintain a record. Between the calendar years 2006 and 2008, 44 cases of forcible sex offenses were reported to the Department of Public Safety, according to

the Department’s annual reports. These numbers include all cases reported within the University campus and are not limited to acts allegedly committed by students. More recently, between 2009 and 2012, five students were disciplined by ODUS for acts of sexual misconduct. Of these, one student was suspended for “an act of nonconsensual penetration,” two students were suspended for sexual assault and two students were placed on disciplinary probation for sexual harassment. Forty forcible sex offenses were reported to Public Safety between 2009 and 2011. ‘Not anything unexpected’ According to the survey’s data summary, the survey was intended to help the University “assess the need for survivor support and education services and to utilize the information to improve prevention techniques on the Princeton campus.” However, it remains unclear if the data gathered from the survey has been used to influence University policy. Amada Sandoval, Director of the Women’s Center, said that in recent years, the Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising, Resources and Education program has been focusing more on bystander intervention and prevention rather than awareness, and there have been changes to the disciplinary process. SHARE is a division of University Health Services. However, Sandoval could not comment on whether these changes were a result of the survey, whose results she said were “not anything unexpected.” Although she explained she was not aware of the precise reasons the survey’s results were kept private, Sandoval said the results were probably never released because they were consistent with national averages and because other universities do not publicize such data. “Anything about Princeton goes international, practically, and no other universities do that, so does Princeton want to be the one to say that this many of our students are sexually assaulted? I don’t think so,” Sandoval said. Whether other Universities have conducted similar surveys or released results to the public remains unclear, but no similar statistics have been found by the ‘Prince.’ “I don’t know that there is a real benefit to releasing it,” Sandoval added. “I think if we had found something very different from the national average, that would be one thing, because that’s a real story. A story that Princeton’s rates of students who have been assaulted is on line with national averages is really not a story, but I mean in this news environment, people would make a big deal about it.” Erica Wojcik ’09, a former president of SpeakOut — a now-inactive group that was formed in 2006 following several high-profile sexual assault and rape cases, some of which occurred during spring eating club initiations — said she did not perceive any efforts to suppress the results. “[The administration was] always very supportive of what we did,” Wojcik said. “I didn’t perceive anything malicious.” According to Abigail Boyer, the director of communications and outreach at the Clery Center for Security on Campus, the survey statistics are in line with the national average. According to a study done by the National Institute of Justice in November, 14-30 percent of college students “experience some type of sexual violence during their college career,” Boyer said. ‘It probably wasn’t so at Princeton’ The 2008 Sexual Experiences Survey was conducted in conjunction with the the Princeton University Survey Center — which designs surveys for faculty and administrators — by former

SHARE director Suraiya Baluch, Sandoval, Dante Ricci GS and Amy Unterman ‘08, who was at the time a member of SpeakOut. Baluch did not respond to requests for comment. Current SHARE Director Jacqueline Deitch-Stackhouse said she could comment on the report in particular because she was not at the University when it was administered and did not want to comment on research conducted by others. Deitch-Stackhouse said SHARE is now focused on providing bystander intervention training, in part by informing the community that one in eight Princeton students is a victim of “power-based personal violence,” a broader term which encompasses sexual assault. “I use [the figure] to familiarize people with its prevalence on this campus because everybody knows eight people,” Deitch-Stackhouse said, adding that the figure was provided to Residential College Advisers this summer. Ricci, who was the volunteer Men’s Program coordinator at SHARE at the time, said that the project was initiated by SHARE and Speakout, but supported by the University administration. He added he thought the data could be useful to show the student body that sexual misconduct occurs at Princeton. “We got the impression that undergraduate students, even if they accepted the national statistic ... [were] convinced that it probably wasn’t so at Princeton,” Ricci explained. “We thought if we were going to have a conversation about sexual harassment and assault at Princeton, it would be helpful to know ... the prevalence to better serve students and help students understand the prevalence was at the University specifically.” In addition, Sarah Erickson ’07 — who was SpeakOut’s cofounder and its president for two years — said she sought to dispel the myth that Princeton was immune from sexual assault and sexual harassment. “We were interested in bringing awareness on campus that sexual assault does happen at Princeton, and we wanted to help change the culture in such a way that people were more receptive to that [fact],” she said. The survey, according to Ricci, was always a side project, and SHARE has many other projects and tasks at a given time. Although the number of incidents Public Safety or ODUS learn of are low compared to the number of incidents female undergraduates anonymously reported in the survey, Jueds said that she hopes that students will not interpret the results of the survey as an indication that the University discourages students from coming forward. “I think that what you see when you read the policy on sexual misconduct is an unambiguous statement by the University that sexual misconduct will not be tolerated, and that is a firm commitment,” Jueds said. “It’s my hope and my belief that students, who are required to read [Rights, Rules and Responsibilities], will read that, and appreciate the commitment of this University, the sincere commitment of this University to supporting the victims of sexual misconduct and responding to violations of the policy with significant sanctions.” In RRR, sexual assault is defined as “Any sexual physical contact that involves the use or threat of force or violence or any other form of coercion or intimidation ... [or] any sexual physical contact with a person who is unable to consent due to incapacity or impairment, mental or physical. ‘Incapacity’ or ‘impairment’ normally includes but is not limited to being asleep or under the influence of alcohol or drugs.” Staff writer Alice Kilpatrick contributed reporting.


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The Daily Princetonian

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Student income levels bias on-campus experiences, USG survey finds COMBO

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blame my discomfort here on others and act like the social stratification here is a result of general hostility on the part of people from nicer backgrounds, I sort of suspect it’s more the result of some of my own innate problems.” USG president Shawon Jackson ’15 said he thinks students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds may face extra stressors that result in a generally lower level of comfort in the classroom. “One thing that I may suspect is that students from a lower socioeconomic background may feel an added pressure if they have to work and, in addition, go to class, so they might not be able to devote their full attention to that, which may lead to a lower level of comfort in the classroom,” Jackson said. He added that the USG and the University should focus not only on attracting students to come to the University, but also on making sure they stay. The University currently has a 98 percent retention rate from freshman to sophomore year, according to its latest data set. Richard Polo ’16, a freshman from Calabasas, Calif., attended both public and private schools before coming to Princeton. “In public school, classes were, on average 35 to 40 kids, at least for me,” Polo said. “So, the class environment wasn’t one in which the teacher would call on students — it was more of a pure lecture.” Whereas in public school, the classes were mostly lectures, with little room for teachers to call on students due to the size of the classes, Polo said, private school provided students with op-

portunities to get used to visiting and speaking with teachers. “Here, Princeton has office hours and kids are encouraged to go visit their teachers whenever they have problems.” Polo said. “[Coming from private school], we had no problem speaking up with teachers — you are already used to it. But I think, for kids who didn’t have that in high school, that’s something they really have to get used to and learn to use throughout their time here.” While the survey shows that students from private high schools are overrepresented at the University, the COMBO report did not find a strong relationship between these students and their experiences at Princeton. A campus that “exudes wealth” Based on a study that he published a few years ago of academically selective colleges and universities, sociology professor Thomas Espenshade said there are strong correlations between both the academic performance and overall satisfaction of students and their social class backgrounds. In his study, students coming from higher social class backgrounds were more likely to be highly satisfied with their college experience, and that satisfaction is a big predictor of whether students graduate on time or not, Espenshade said. He said he believes a large part of this difference may be due to the very nature of universities, which are of far more luxury and wealth than some students may be used to. “One doesn’t have to spend very much time on the Princeton campus to see that it exudes wealth — you just have to look at the architecture of the buildings,” Espenshade said. “These institutions were, in some sense, wealthy

from the get-go, and because of that, those students who come from a more modest economic background can be in Princeton, but not necessarily of Princeton.” In addition, there was a similar relationship shown between academic performance and social background, Espenshade said, with higher graduation rates and class ranks correlated with higher social class backgrounds. “Upper-middle and upper-class students are overrepresented in the highest quintile [in graduating class rank], and working class students are overrepresented in the bottom quintile,” Espenshade said. Bickering Princeton “Eating clubs are still prohibitively expensive for students who don’t qualify for financial aid, but whose parents feel social expenses should be paid by the student,” a student who filled out the survey wrote in the comments section. The COMBO report shows that wealthier students are more likely to bicker an eating club and be accepted. While 21 percent of students with reported household incomes under $75,000 bickered an eating club, 40 percent of students with incomes over $250,000 also bickered. Of the wealthier students, 77 percent were accepted, compared to 58 percent for the lower income students. The University currently offers an extra $2,000 in financial aid for all juniors and seniors on aid. While the intention is to offset the higher costs of eating clubs compared to the University’s dining halls, the total amount offered still falls short of the cost of most eating clubs. Because the eating clubs are independent from the University, the USG cannot directly inf luence eat-

ing club policies. However, former USG president Bruce Easop ’13, who oversaw the COMBO survey, noted that one of the purposes for releasing the report is to inform the student body about campus life in order to bring students to reflect on, for example, the Bicker process. “There is a reputation that bicker eating clubs are more welcoming to students with a higher socioeconomic background,” Easop said. “There is some data to reflect a greater level of comfort for students from higher socioeconomic background with bicker clubs. It’s important to have that data because it makes the student body reflect and think, more than just the reputation, that there is some basis in terms of the perception that students have.” More directly, the level of a student’s family income may also influence his or her summer plans, according to the survey. During the year, students receive financial aid from the University, but for the summer, lower-income students noted a struggle to accept job or internship opportunities that require additional financial support such as housing. “I had to forgo an internship in D.C. this summer because I could not afford housing, whereas for other students, housing is a nonissue. All they have to worry about is securing the internship,” a student wrote in the comments section. “I just wish Princeton had more resources for low-income students like myself. While they help us out during the school year with generous financial aid, the same cannot be said about summer plans. I also feel that people who don’t need these grants are the ones who receive them which defeats their intended purpose.” Easop said he hopes that

once more COMBO surveys are performed, the USG will be able to see trends in student backgrounds and campus life over time. The ultimate goal, he said, is to make sure University resources are not directed only at a certain set of students. “One of the things for me that the data shows is that students from different backgrounds experience Prince-

ton differently and they also receive information differently from the University,” Easop said. “Making sure we’re conscious of how resources present themselves to students and making sure that that messaging is accessible to students from a variety of backgrounds so that they’re appealing to not just a certain demographic of students is important.”

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: The Daily Princetonian (USPS 751-070) is published daily except Saturday and

Sunday from September through May and three times a week during January and May by The Daily Princetonian Publishing Company, Inc., 48 University Place, Princeton, New Jersey 08540. Mailing address: P.O. Box 469, Princeton, N.J. 08542. Periodical Postage paid at Princeton Post Office, Princeton, N.J. 08542. Subscription rates: Delivered on campus, $45.00 per year: $30.00 per semester. Mailed in the United States, $75.00 a year, $45.00 a term. Office hours: Monday through Friday, 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. Telephones: Area Code (609), Business: 2588110; News and Editorial: 258-3632. Fax machine: 258-8117. Reproduction of any material in this newspaper without expressed permission of The Daily Princetonian Publishing Company, Inc., is strictly prohibited. Copyright 2006, The Daily Princetonian Publishing Company, Inc. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Daily Princetonian, P.O. Box 469, Princeton, N.J. 08542.


The Daily Princetonian

page 10

The Freshman Issue summer 2013

STUDENT LIFE | APRIL 2

Alumna letter urges students to marry, draws national attention By Ronan O’Brien and Anna Mazarakis contributor and staff writer

Susan Patton ’77 made international headlines over the weekend in response to the letter she wrote to the editor of The Daily Princetonian, published on Friday. The letter encouraged female Princeton students to find a husband at the University before graduation, stating that they would never again be surrounded by such a concentration of intellectually stimulating men. The letter received im-

mediate attention from students, alumni and the blogosphere, receiving an estimated 2,000 views on The Daily Princetonian’s website before the site became unavailable Friday afternoon. It also received about 1,000 views on the ‘Prince’s’ temporary website. The letter was republished by a number of national news outlets and blogs, including The Huffington Post, ABC, CNN and Jezebel. Patton told the ‘Prince’ in an interview that she wrote the letter because she wanted to diversify the current ad-

vice being given to women at Princeton and other universities, which she said is geared only toward professional aspirations and development. “The truth of the matter is, work-life balance means it’s not just work,” Patton said. “All I’m saying is to look around now because if you invest the first 10 years after college doing nothing but developing your career, you find yourself in your early 30s with a wonderful career and nothing to balance it with.” The issue of work-life balance, which attracted international attention af-

ter Wilson School professor Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80 published an article in The Atlantic last summer titled, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” was discussed on campus during a public conversation between Slaughter and University President Shirley Tilghman on women’s leadership in February. “Princeton is an educational institution. It’s not a marriage bureau,” Tilghman told the ‘Prince.’ “The purpose of a Princeton education is not to find a spouse; the purpose is to prepare yourself for a meaningful life. While it is the case that there are lucky individuals who find their life partner very early in life, I think, in general, the likelihood that you are the ages of 18 to 22, ready to make that decision, seems extremely unlikely to me, for most people. There are exceptions, and we celebrate those exceptions.” University alumni have also expressed their views on Patton’s letter. Lisa Belkin ’82, a senior writer at The Huffington Post, was highly critical of the letter as a guest on the CBS show “This Morning.” “If you do happen to meet your soulmate in college, wonderful,” Belkin said on the show. “That’s wonderful. But to say this is a test and here’s the finish line, and if you haven’t done it by the time you’re a senior, somehow you’ve ruined your life, I mean what kind of advice to the daughter I never had is that?” Patton, however, said that Belkin missed the substance of her advice. “I’m certainly not saying that if you don’t find a husband during your undergraduate years that you somehow have failed — clearly not. I’m not saying anything like that,” Patton said in response to Belkin’s television appearance. “We obviously see this differently, and that’s OK. One of the things the women’s movement has afforded us is the empowerment to voice our opinions and make choices, even if those choices, to some, seem retrogressive. I don’t see that there’s anything retrogressive about the desire to have children and be married, but Lisa Belkin seemed to think it was something 1950s about my advice.” Slaughter, whose February dialogue with Tilghman was referenced by Patton in the letter, said she thought Patton’s thinking was behind the times. “I think that this takes us firmly backwards,” Slaughter said. “The idea that you go to college to find a husband is something the women’s movement escaped long ago.” Belkin said that between the work of Slaughter, Ya-

hoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, the women’s movement is facing a potentially pivotal moment for work-life change. Director of the Program in Gender & Sexuality Studies Jill Dolan said public discourse should focus more on the issues that came up in Slaughter and Tilghman’s conversation rather than the contents of Patton’s letter. “What I think is unfortunate about the whole thing is that the Slaughter-Tilghman conversation was actually really wonderful … for Susan Patton to reduce it to ‘You should be at Princeton to find a husband’ just seems to me really to throw the whole conversation onto a tangent,” Dolan said. Former Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel, who is currently writing a book on the history of coeducation at Princeton, said she found Patton’s words surprising. “I was perplexed that an alumna would choose to write in this fashion in 2013. It reminded me of the way people were thinking and speaking a half century ago,” Malkiel said. “My generation in college in the 60s was being told, ‘Not so fast; take advantage of the educational opportunities, grow up, turn into a mature, fully-formed human being. Marriage and family will come if you want them, but there’s a lot more to going to college than finding a mate.’” Mary Gilstad ’15 said that she was not impressed by the national response condemning Patton. “I see the article as the valid opinions of a recently divorced woman who did not get the intellectual stimulus she needed from her relationship and now wants to tell younger girls that they should not make the same mistake she did,” Gilstad explained. She said she knew of other women who shared the sentiment and suggested that Patton might mean to advise female students to develop personal relationships with their peers to maintain their dating prospects in the future, when both parties are ready for marriage. “In other words, finding a husband at Princeton does not mean marrying him at 22,” Gilstad explained. “It means finding men you like and want to stay in touch with so that when you are ready for marriage, you already have a circle of friends you are still in contact with and who are more likely to share your love of and aptitude for learning and engaging with the world on a high intellectual level.” Wardah Bari ’16 said she saw Patton’s advice as elitist above everything else. “I don’t think the Princeton name automatically makes people here better than anyone else,” Bari said. “Intelligence is a lot more than just having a degree from a name-brand school. Personally, I would want to marry someone who is not only intelligent, but also somebody I can relate to and have silly conversations — someone funny and witty.” Tilghman also noted elitism in the letter’s problematic conclusions. “I also find it difficult to absorb the elitist overtones of that letter, which appear to suggest that there are no people out there in the world who are smarter than Princeton graduates, and that you’d better strike while the iron’s hot and while you’re surrounded by lots of very smart people,” she said. “All of those views strike me as throwbacks to an era that I thought was well behind us.” Most students, both male and female, are so heavily invested in their classes and extracurricular commitments that they don’t often plan for their personal life after graduation, according to Bari. “I don’t think she necessarily understands that so many people on campus

aren’t considering marriage or long-term relationships at this stage in their lives,” she said. “Most people here have so much going on that it’s really hard to even think about finding someone to settle down with.” But Belkin said she doesn’t necessarily think that students have lost track of any romantic desires. “The most important choice you make in your life is who you are going to spend that life with,” Belkin said. “It’s not unimportant and, yes, you shouldn’t lose track of that fact in the march toward professional glory. But I don’t think any [Princeton students] lost track of that fact … I don’t think anyone at Princeton has forgotten that they would like to be in love.” Patton’s letter also argued that female students should start looking for husbands earlier since they lose a class of potential mates every year, alluding to the fact that wom-

::::::::::::::::::::: “Princeton is an educational institution. It’s not a marriage bureau.” shirley tilghman outgoing university president

::::::::::::::::::::: en cannot date younger men. Namkyu Oh ’16 said that he thought Patton’s claim that women would ultimately marry older men was legitimate but noted that he had never consciously chosen not to date an older woman. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with guys dating women who are older than them,” Oh explained. “But because there’s a norm that women aren’t usually the older ones in relationships, it sets up this dynamic that men don’t hang out with women who are older than them, making it hard to date them in general.” Though the article has elicited negative public reactions — including claims that Patton’s letter is anti-feminist and retrogressive — Patton said she has also privately received positive feedback. “I have been warmed by the number of letters I’ve gotten from women who are on campus and women who are on other campuses saying it’s exactly what they’ve always thought, but it’s so politically unpopular to say such a thing that they haven’t been having the conversation, but now they are,” she said. “I’ve also gotten so many letters from parents saying that this is precisely the conversation they wanted to have with their own daughters and didn’t even know how to begin; they didn’t even know how to broach the topic.” Instead of focusing on the idea of Princeton women finding a husband, Dolan said she wishes that Patton “had made other suggestions about how Princeton students, in general, can see themselves as part of a larger social framework.” Regardless of the reactions on both sides, Patton said she is not swayed. “The response doesn’t change my thinking; it doesn’t change my opinion,” she said. “This is, again, advice, and the nature of all advice is take it, don’t take it.” Patton, who is an executive coach and human resource consultant, said she gives advice professionally. In the future, she said she would like to have a radio talk show to continue to give advice to a larger audience. Contributor Seth Merkin Morokoff contributed reporting.



The Daily Princetonian

The Freshman Issue summer 2013

page S1

the daily

PRINCETONIAN LIKE ARTS? LIKE BLOGS? CHECK OUT OUR ARTS BLOG, INTERSECTIONS, ONLINE.

YOUR WEEKLY DOSE OF ARTS + CULTURE. STREET PUBLISHES THURSDAYS, WITH WEB UPDATES THROUGHOUT THE WEEK.

STREET’S TAKE ON THE STREET Your guide to Prospect Avenue

SOPHOMORE’S MAP

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In January, Street polled a sampling of sophomores for their impressions of each club. Here’s some of what they said.

EMILY TSENG :: MANAGING EDITOR

1. Cannon

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hen you return to campus after your OA trips sweaty and frightened, having built a house or killed a bear or whatever you do on frosh trips these days, you will face a new set of challenges. You will now have to walk around campus without a map, figure out exactly what a Prox is used for and awkwardly bond with your roommates. What you will soon discover, however, is that the week before classes is the biggest party week of the year for the rest of the school. While you’re getting set up, everyone else is getting down. It is during this time that you will first be introduced to the eating club scene. If you went on a frosh trip, your first trip to the Street will look like this: You and seven of your newest best friends will be huddled together, shuffling down Prospect behind one of your kind and gentle trip leaders to his or her eating club. You will be heckled by the drunken hordes of upperclassmen that will recognize you as freshmen since people don’t generally go to Prospect in huge groups unless they are afraid of getting lost or eaten, the way freshmen are. Don’t mind us, though. We’re just looking for fresh souls to destroy. That’s generally what us upperclassmen are up to. But to be fair, we decided to make it a bit easier for you. As the arts and culture section of the ‘Prince,’ in addition to providing the sample of our coverage you’ll find on the inside pages, it’s our obligation to ensure you’re properly prepared for your first forays onto our namesake Street. Yes, we know Prospect Avenue is an avenue. But it is known only as the Street. Nothing else. That was lesson number one. Lesson number two is to always read the ‘Prince.’ Even better, join it. That way you’ll always know what’s going on. But we digress. Below, you’ll find a handy guide to the conventional wisdom about each club. A standard disclaimer: these are stereotypes that you should take with a grain of salt. Like most things in life, the eating clubs are what you make of them. Do your best to visit them all before settling on your favorite. The eating clubs are the center of social life on campus, and for many upperclassmen they become homes and families. And it’s not very often people get to pick their families, so do your research. Best of luck, kids.

Bicker: Cannon reopened two years ago after being closed for 34 years. Membership consists of large people like the football team and a growing assortment of others. The labyrinthine basement houses not one, not two, but three taprooms. Street’s Take: Cannon’s explosion onto the eating club scene has added some variety, rowdiness and great food to the Street. Whether it’s the grind wall, foam parties or smoothies, Cannon can draw in large crowds — especially after big games — for even bigger parties. Some of the clubs can be tricky to recognize on your first foray to the Street, but this is not the case with Cannon Club. It’s the one with the huge-ass cannon in the front.

2. Cap & Gown Bicker: If you’re an athlete — or an athlete wannabe — this may very well be your club. Boasting a recently remodeled taproom with an enlarged bar, Cap often draws healthy crowds. Street’s Take: Cap wrested the title of most-bickered club from perennial favorite Tower last year. Although the dance floor isn’t the most happening on the Street, drinking games abound, and comfy couches offer a nice break. A great place to check out the athletes, especially track and field, who are, after all, the only ones who can make the trek all the way down the Street to Cap.

3. Charter Sign-in: Charter consistently draws engineers, thanks to its proximity to the E-quad. It boasts a wealthy graduate board and a large, well-kept building. Most crowded on Friday nights. Street’s Take: Charter can be a fun club to go to with a group of friends, as it is one of the Street’s freshman-friendliest. However, as Charter is often one of the only options on Fridays, it can also get a little desperate (ladies, someone will find a way to salivate directly into your cleavage). Make good choices. Go home (or to Colonial).

4. Cloister Sign-in: Most of Cloister’s membership funnels from the swim, dive and crew teams. The club is moderately popular on weekends, but members don’t actively seek a larger crowd — the floaters and boaters generally hang together.

Street’s Take: Cloister’s waterlogged members prefer to be wet at all times, judging by the amount of beer thrown. They also have a deep desire to have their abdomens recognized, resulting in an atmosphere of general shirtlessness on most nights.

Street’s Take: You may forget Quad exists unless you join or you’re in an organization that rents it out for parties.

5. Colonial

Bicker: TI is Princeton’s answer to “Animal House” — rowdy and proud to be. Famous for its twicea-year State Nights, TI is like a magical portal to the state school social scene of every Ivy Leaguer’s dreams.

Sign-in: Although Colonial’s antebellum architecture might appear to be a remnant from Sherman’s March to the Sea, the club boasts an exceedingly diverse membership. Popular stereotypes hold that the club is most popular among Princeton’s Asians, but recently good food, good beer and crowd-pleasing Friday night themes have drawn healthy, varied crowds. Colonial is one of the most popular and accessible clubs for freshmen. Street’s Take: Great random nights can be had at Colonial when you least expect it. Recently the club has made moves to reclaim Friday nights from Charter.

6. Cottage Bicker: Known in a bygone era as the “gentleman’s club,” the club still retains a conservative Southern feel, with a large portion of its membership composed of male jocks and sorority girls. It’s the only club that uses a guest list every night. Street’s Take: Cottage is impossible to get into on most nights unless you’re a member, are dating a member or spend enough time crying outside the door. Don’t try the crying thing. After three hours it gets tiresome, and it takes at least four to get in.

7. Ivy Bicker: The oldest of the clubs, Ivy has an elitist stereotype, though it’s much more down-to-earth than its outdated reputation would suggest. This is evidenced, of course, by Ivy’s candlelit dinners featuring waiter service. Street’s Take: Ivy Club is like “Gossip Girl,” except with fewer headbands. It’s the eating club all your out-of-town friends want to go to — dark wood paneling, white tablecloths, antique chairs, secrecy, exclusivity, a crypt and the meanest bouncers you will ever encounter.

8. Quadrangle Sign-in: Recently experienced a decline in membership. Usually pretty welcoming to freshmen and hosts the main band for Lawnparties because of its huge backyard.

9. Tiger Inn

Street’s Take: With the highest per-capita alcohol and hot dog consumption, as well as the most booting on the Street, TI is not for the faint of heart. Other than that, it’s a totally chill place to hang out. Don’t choke on the goldfish.

10. Tower Bicker: Featuring some of the best food on the Street, Tower is home to many Triangle Club members and Wilson School/politics majors. Freshmanfriendly and easy to get into on weekends, it is consistently one of the most-bickered clubs. Street’s Take: Tower is an activities club. You will be taken there by someone you meet in an organization. Members care a little too deeply about their extracurriculars. It’s like they’re still trying to get into college. That annoying kid from your precept? He’s definitely in Tower.

11. Terrace Sign-in: Known as the artsy club, Terrace is often considered the last bastion of uncompromising liberalism on campus. Weekend activities include all-night raves, poetry readings and the annual Pride Alliance Drag Ball. Hosts live music any and all days of the week. Street’s Take: Terrace is filled with hipsters, misfits and artsy types who just want to chill. Just don’t call them hipsters, or you’ll get a Lucky Strike put out on your arm. The club is a popular final stop on Thursday and Saturday nights.

12. Campus Reopened: In 2006, after several years of declining membership, the Campus graduate board opted to close the club’s doors and transferred ownership to the University. Campus now functions as a “hangout space” for students and faculty. Street’s Take: This is not an eating club. It just looks like one.


The Daily Princetonian

page S2 DANCE | APRIL 18

FUSE: A cerebral collective Christine Wang Senior Writer

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his past weekend, FUSE Dance Collective, a relatively new student-run dance collective, finished their spring show, “7 Happenings.” Street sat down with some of FUSE’s dancers to discuss the collective’s first year. FUSE was first conceptualized by Tess Bernhard ’14, Sam Gebb ’14 and Casey Brown ’14 in the spring of their sophomore year. They had been entertaining the idea of starting their own dance group since freshman year, when they noticed that there were no student-run experimental dance groups. Bernhard also added that the girls wanted an opportunity to work with one another and experience each other’s styles. “Casey, Sam and I have very different methods of experimentation. I like to push what’s the gray area between dance and theater, whereas Casey is more musically driven. Sam is an architecture student and is very into things and materials,” Bernhard said. Since its inception, FUSE has avoided strict definitions and accepted all styles of choreography and choreographic processes. Brown and Bernhard talked about the collective as if it were a physical space, a laboratory for dance. “It was founded to be a haven for a lot of different platforms of dance, whether that’s dance in class or in an experimental, site-specific works,” Brown said, adding that “collaborations with musicians and visual artists are also a big part of our process.” At first glance, FUSE might seem stylistically redundant considering how many of its dancers and choreographers are also in the dance certificate program, which tends to favor modern and contemporary choreography. But the collective provides students an opportunity to explore any kind of move-

ment they desire. This total stylistic freedom is something that attracted Jennifer Chew ’15. “The certificate program does provide students with an opportunity to choreograph and learn different styles and trends, but FUSE is nice because it allows students to explore these styles on their own,” Chew said. “The dance department exposes you to a lot of professional dancers, which is great, but they’re the ones setting the choreography.”

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: “It was founded to be a haven for a lot of different platforms of dance, whether that’s dance in class or in an experimental, sitespecific works.” ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: FUSE complements the dance department by providing these dancers with a friendly environment to workshop their concepts and ideas. The choreographers meet a couple times each semester to watch each other’s pieces and give constructive criticism. However, Brown added that the function of these workshops isn’t to rank pieces, but to harness the creative eyes of the other dancers and choreographers. “Our role is to support one another, not edit each other’s work,” Brown said. Over the summer, Bernhard, Gebb and Brown discussed their ambitions for the collective. Brown quoted one of Bernhard’s replies in the email chain, in which she articulated the importance of expanding their own movement vocabularies and exploring how to communicate using these different vocabularies. “Language can create different ideas or physical ramifications,” Bernhard said. “[The col-

lective should] create a language around a space that’s more open, more communal.” Chew echoed this idea when she mentioned the value of sharing ideas. FUSE might seem almost too cerebral in its process, but this impression stems from the dancers’ academic connections to dance. In reality, the collective is fairly informal in its interactions with each another. “FUSE is a place to hold conversation through dance. I guess that’s the best way to describe the collective,” said Chew, laughing a little. “But the beauty is in its lack of formality.” Because the collective is student-driven, its future iterations will depend largely on who participates. Brown commented on the self-selective nature of the group, and how it doesn’t fit with the audition-based model for a student dance organization. “I think the multi-faceted nature of the collective lets people self-select what they want to do and dictate how engaged they want to be,” she said. With this in mind, holding auditions for membership would directly contradict everything that FUSE is trying to do. Its dancers and choreographers choose to participate and don’t bar others from doing so. “The dance world outside of Princeton, especially the world that FUSE would most readily connect with, isn’t auditionbased either,” Brown said, clarifying her point by adding that “there are people who dance professionally, but only dance with people that they know.” The organic nature of FUSE’s membership is a bit puzzling, considering how much the auditions process dictates participation in the arts on campus. Some might question whether this model will be sustainable, but Chew isn’t terribly worried. “We’ll just continue to offer this space to people,” Chew said, “And just let them know: ‘This opportunity exists! Just let us know if you want to take it.’”

The Freshman Issue summer 2013

LOVE AND LUST IN THE BUBBLE

Fade out on first love

Abby Williams Street Editor

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hen i was 17, I thought I’d found the love of my life. At the beginning of my senior year of high school, I stumbled out of an unusually long awkward phase and into John’s arms. He was everything I had hoped my first boyfriend would be: charming, funny, handsome, actually interested in me — all the essentials, really. Everyone who met him was drawn to him by the sheer power of his personality, and I was no different. I wanted John, but even more than that, I was swept up in a desperate need for him to want me back. One night, he put his Honda Accord in park and leaned over to give me my first real kiss. I might not have been thinking of forever that night, but by the time we were both heading off to college a year later, I didn’t know how to let him go. John and I had agreed that we didn’t want to start out college tied down to our high school sweethearts. Naturally, this highly logical agreement manifested itself in constant texting, emotional phone calls and one very drunk, sobbing freshman on Princetoween. (I cried myself to sleep listening to the Goo Goo Dolls. Seriously.) By winter break, we were back together. Three months after that the relationship faltered, with one short phone call putting us on hiatus once more. But it seemed that no matter what we said or did, the relationship was never over. Every time we saw each other we fell back into those old rhythms of togetherness. He spoke about our future as if it was a certainty, rather than a highly improbable series of events. I knew the odds were stacked against us, but I chose to believe him anyway. First loves tend to suspend reality like that. So when John told me that we needed to talk one day during

winter break of sophomore year, I was expecting yet another minor speed bump in our relationship. I was not expecting the lifechanging revelation that, in fact, John was gay. He came out to me as we drove around our hometown, in the same Honda Accord where we shared our first kiss. At first I thought he was joking; I laughed and asked him to be serious. But as he continued to describe his long struggle with his sexuality, I became desperate to make it stop. I begged him to stop messing around, hoping he would take it all back. Because if it wasn’t a joke, what did that say about the last two years of my life? What did it say about me? No one ever prepares you for the possibility that Prince Charming might be gay. When a relationship implodes, there are usually myriad reasons that people can point to and instantly understand. Infidelity, lying, drifting apart … the list continues on indefinitely. “Boyfriend coming out of the closet” hadn’t even made it on my list. I was wholly unprepared to deal with John’s revelation, but I attempted to handle my grief on my own. I feared what my friends would say to me when they found out, but particularly dreaded what they would say to each other. I was afraid that every poisonous thought that had already crossed my mind a thousand times — “Why didn’t I know? How could I not have known?” — would be voiced by the people closest to me. My reluctance to reach out and ask for help only hurt me more. I had never felt lonelier or more adrift. When John came out, I didn’t just lose a boyfriend — I lost the entire future he had constructed for us that I had so eagerly bought into. I was stricken by the loss, but also furious with him for the careless promises he had made. I was even angrier at myself, for my naivete in believing I had found “the one” at 17. In the end, the anger stuck around much longer than the sadness. It

was my anger that burned away the vestiges of our relationship. John wanted to remain close friends. I believed at first that it was possible to maintain the friendship we had cultivated over the years. But as my mood swung from sadness to frustration, I increasingly blamed him for everything that had gone wrong. I couldn’t separate my own pain from John’s coming-out story, and I couldn’t stick around to watch. I broke off contact weeks into our attempt at friendship. We haven’t spoken since.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: No one ever prepares you for the possibility that Prince Charming might be gay. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Looking back, I realize that the source of my anger was simply my refusal to believe that I had been a pit stop on someone else’s road to self-discovery. The relationship that had been so formative and important to me was now a thing of the past, a part of John’s period of sexual experimentation. Coming to the realization that my role in John’s life story would be confined to a single chapter was difficult. When you spend your whole life visualizing yourself as the main character of the novel, it’s hard to conceptualize that you might in fact have a supporting role. Sometimes I’ll pull up John’s Facebook page and let my cursor hover over the ‘message’ button. I think about the ways I could break a year-long silence, but no words seem to match the size or importance of that act. Maybe one day the words will come to me. But until then, I’ll continue to reflect on our relationship for everything it was, rather than everything it wasn’t.


The Freshman Issue summer 2013

The Daily Princetonian

page S3

LOVE AND LUST IN THE BUBBLE

Harboring half-confessions Anonymous Staff Writer

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wasn’t that drunk. Slipping and sliding on patches of slush in my going-out boots, my hand clutched the crook of her arm. It wasn’t to steady myself, but to bring her more firmly to me somehow — to tether her in a way that would make it easier for me to say what I wanted to say. I’d never been the one to confess feelings for anyone before, let alone another girl. I wasn’t that drunk, and I didn’t need to be clutching her the way I was, and when I finally had the words in my throat, I let go of her elbow and grabbed onto a nearby lamppost. “I had a huge crush on you freshman year,” I blurted, “and I’m sorry, but you’re pretty perfect, and anyway it hasn’t been a thing for a while, but I thought you should know.” There were several lies here. It was true that I had spent a couple weeks of freshman year gazing at her profile pictures on Facebook and thinking furiously of clever things to say to her at parties. It wasn’t true, however, that my little crush was a thing of the past. I was enamored with her in a way I recognized bleakly, with a distant, distracted sense of foreboding at what I was doing to myself. There are a lot of stories about unrequited love and how it all works out for the better if only you have the courage to tell her. Let’s be objective about this, though — what proportion of those stories are about straight girls who find themselves crushing on other straight girls? Of those, how many stories are about girls who end up sharing a common room? We weren’t the type of suitemates who might as well be strangers, either — we went to meals together, studied to-

gether, watched TV together, pregamed together and went out to the Street together. We were even starting to adopt the same sense of humor. I wanted to kiss her with a wild sort of desperation. What proportion of those conventional wisdoms, advice columns and PrincetonFMLs account for that? “I had a huge crush on you freshman year, and I’m sorry, but you’re pretty perfect, and anyway it hasn’t been a thing for a while, but I thought you should know.” I was drunk but not that drunk, I had let go of her arm in favor of the lamppost (which had a much smaller potential for breaking my heart), and I couldn’t look at her. I thought I had feigned enough sloppy intoxication to get away with cramming my hands into my pockets and fixing my eyes on the building to the left of her head. My months of loving and lusting, angsting and worrying, drunken crying and anonymous (heterosexual) fucking had steeled me for what I knew she was going to say. I don’t even remember what she said to me in response, just that it was kinder than I’d expected, and that she told me not to apologize. And when I mumbled “I kind of hope I won’t remember this in the morning” as she fished for the keys to our room, she had the grace to say nothing but “okay.” I’m going to venture a guess and say I could’ve handled my little confession better. There were, of course, endless opportunities for me to tell her sober, to make a joke out of it, even perhaps to be confident and tell her seriously. Instead, I had wallowed, letting my secret run me straight through alcoholic mania into anonymous boys’ beds and, more mornings than I’d like to admit, onto the couches in the waiting rooms of UHS

and CPS. I’ve never been one to deal with personal revelations or struggles too well, and she had come along at a time when my confusions were at their

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: “I had a huge crush on you freshman year, and I’m sorry, but you’re pretty perfect, and anyway it hasn’t been a thing for a while, but I thought you should know.” ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: height. This particular secret exposed the raw, nervy viscera of everything I’d been grappling with, from my sexuality to my self-worth. There are only so many times a girl can delude herself into being the Other Woman, the booty call, the one-night stand or the “I’m not looking for a relationship” girl before it starts to eat at her self-esteem. By the time I made my little confession, I was sure that the objects of my affection were never going to surprise me for the better, and even more sure that I would be swallowing unrequited feelings for a long, long time. I also couldn’t even bring myself to fathom the idea that I might be queer. I was pretty sure after a decent number of sexual experiences (heterosexual and not, satisfying and less than) that I liked girls and boys in equal measure, but the thought of being anything but a straight girl didn’t bring me any more certainty or confidence. It still doesn’t.

IN DEFENSE OF | FEB. 28

In defense of: New Jersey Annie Tao Staff Writer

L

et’s be honest. Princeton’s your second home, yet when your classmates at UCs gush about the beaches or your NYU friends send you sketchy Snapchats of the Sprouse twins, you can’t help but get a little annoyed at the apparent dearth of prospects in New Jersey. Sadly, people just don’t seem to appreciate how important it is to have a state like New Jersey, a place so utterly mediocre that it makes everywhere else look good. You may not have thought much of your home state before coming here, but Jersey has a way of making lame states look cool and cool states look cooler. With only a few overused selling points (i.e. Six Flags, Chris Christie), it makes an easy target for even the most pathetic of opponents. Ashamed of your capital city? You can’t get any dumpier than Trenton. Embarrassed by your team’s losing streak? At least you have sports teams. Tired of people making “Sister Wives” jokes every time you mention you’re from Utah? Bring up “Jersey Shore.” At least no one’s asking whether you’re friends with The Situation or majoring in “GTL.” Nevadans, don’t worry — we all know Atlantic City is just a poor man’s Vegas. And Kansas kids, if you think you’ll snap if one more person smugly comments, “You’re not in Kansas anymore,” you can always retort that at least Dorothy actually wanted to go back home. I don’t know about you, but I would choose the Land of Oz over Jersey, any day. But honestly, where would we be without New Jersey? Well, for starters, we wouldn’t be able to travel between Pennsylvania and New York without distractions. We often take it for granted that

we need somewhere to pass through on our way to bigger and better things. If it weren’t for the glorious N.J. Turnpike, we’d all find ourselves wanting for a speedy way to Philly or the Big Apple. New Jersey is really just being considerate by being so boring. Unlike other states, which offer “scenic views” for drivers, New Jersey doesn’t want to distract you from your destination by encouraging any more than the bare minimum of rest stops. And while we’re on the subject of travel, let’s talk about Newark. You probably thought you’d seen the worst of it with LAX and LaGuardia, but Newark Liberty International takes the tedium of flying to a nightmarish level. What you may not realize is that Newark makes you so cranky that you never feel the usual twinge of departure sadness. Better yet, you can now claim to have flown into and out of the worst airport in the country. As the car theft capital of the nation, Newark is also the backbone of our recovering economy. It’s thanks to countless hardworking hot-wirers stealing people’s cars in Newark that the American auto industry has even survived to this day. We all owe them so much for incentivizing people to buy new cars and thus generating demand for new vehicles. If, like me, you’re actually from the good ol’ Garden State, chances are you’ve been living with a chip on your shoulder for ages. But without New Jersey, there would be no Bon Jovi. Hell, there would be no “Livin’ on a Prayer,” which we all know was inspired by the sheer misery of living here for so long. Without New Jersey, the world would also never have been exposed to the groundbreaking musical genius of the Jonas Brothers. Those braces-wearing, gumsnapping, squealing girls who come storming through Twist every Friday afternoon? They

need heroes, too. Shopaholics, where else could you find enough strip malls to circle the earth three times if laid end to end*? Sure, we only have about five different department stores, but at least you’ll never be more than 10 miles from a Target or a Home Depot. Where my toxic-waste lovers at? Yeah, thought so. Well, you can thank New Jersey for taking care of that nasty business. With 108 toxic waste dumps, New Jersey has more than any other state. We also probably have the most toxic waste pollution, but that’s just the sacrifice that New Jersey makes for the rest of the nation. Sometimes it may seem as if a fat squirrel dive-bombing you from the trees is the extent of excitement available to you, unless of course you want to leave Princeton for a One Direction or TSwift concert in Camden (only the second most violent city in America). No, really though, New Jersey’s great. Except for Camden, Trenton, Newark … you know what? Just stay in Princeton. In a way, you owe some of your closest friendships to New Jersey. When your friends at Columbia complain about the lack of campus life due to the pull of the City, you can smile smugly to yourself, knowing that no one will ever feel the same need to venture outside the Orange Bubble. Why would they, when a single trip to Nassau Street costs you an arm, a leg and your firstborn child? Rest assured your friends will never leave you, if only because they have nowhere else to run. Where could they go, when to the north lie miles and miles of suburbia, to the west, acres upon acres of farmland, to the east, Snooki, and to the south, empty, radioactive swampland? *All facts in this article are 103 percent true and not made up by the writer at all.

My not-that-drunken halfconfession didn’t suddenly release a stream of good vibrations that lifted the cloud of self-hatred I carried. It just made me better at grinning and bearing it. After all, we were becoming so close, and it was unfair of me to put her in that position just because I couldn’t keep my feelings secret. I grinned and bore it through the rest of a year spent becoming better and better friends with her, which turned out to be a lateral move: She became less perfect as I got to know her, and as I got to know her our friendship somehow became more physical and less frustrating. One drunken Saturday night, months after my sort-of confession, we made out on a dare in a room full of people. I didn’t collapse into a sobbing drunken heap. What would’ve been wrenching therapist fodder just months before ended up another story for Sunday brunch. I guess there’s a lesson in here about honesty, but I prefer to think instead of smoothing jagged edges — of babyproofing. The next summer, after a heterosexual fling that teetered on the edge of a fullfledged relationship had fallen apart, I realized I had never been brave with her — not in the way that matters, anyway. I had written my confession with her embarrassment in mind instead of my own; it had all been built around her way out. “I’m sorry, but you’re pretty perfect, and anyway it hasn’t been a thing for a while, but I just thought you should know.” I’d protected myself. I hadn’t structured it as a real confession that might have merited a real rejection. My half-confession wasn’t bravery: It was resignation, the finish of a conversation I’d already started and ended with myself. Ellipses at the close.

Shake it like a Polaroid picture. Join ‘Prince’ photo. Email photo@dailyprincetonian.com for more.


The Daily Princetonian

page S4

The Freshman Issue summer 2013

{ your guide to weekend arts & entertainment }

‘ADMISSION’

Abby Williams gives you a behind-the-scenes look at Princeton’s role in Tina Fey’s movie. The road outside of Whig Hall

Blair Arch The movie opens on this classic Princetonian image. Later, inside of the arch, Portia Nathan (Tina Fey) spies Mark (Michael Sheen), her ex-boyfriend, and his new wife at the bottom of the steps. She turns around and pushes her way through the Nassoons as they perform “Tigertown Blues.”

Portia drives by as her ex-boyfriend and his new wife exit their wedding to the cheers of their guests. Portia accidentally rearends their car.

The path from Alexander to Blair Portia runs into John Pressman (Paul Rudd) and his student Jeremiah Balakian (Nat Wolff) as they take a tour of campus.

Q&A with Paul Weitz Street sat down with “Admission” director Paul Weitz to talk about his experiences filming at Princeton. Q: You filmed at Princeton over the summer. Could you describe your time on Princeton’s campus? A: Well, there were certain things that we weren’t supposed to shoot, like the admissions building. So that was a bit of a puzzler, because you’d have a character walking across campus and you’d say, “Wait a minute; I can’t shoot that,” and then you’d have to find a different place to put the camera. I think the thing is that when you’re going to a place, there are certain iconic images of the place that, if you are living there or going to school at Princeton, you’re not necessarily looking at Blair Arch all the time and going, “Wow, it’s Blair Arch!” That’s not how you experience the University. So while there’s some of that in the film, it was almost preferable to shoot things that were visually interesting but were not necessarily what would be on a brochure. And then we were just running around as fast as possible to shoot as much as possible because we only had a limited time. It was certainly exciting to be there. Q: How did you decide to feature the Princeton Nassoons in the arch sing scene? A: It seemed like the epitome of a certain type of tradition. Clearly Princeton has changed so much over the last few decades and is an extremely diverse place, and yet part of the diversity is this tradition. We really wanted that represented in that exact moment, which is Tina’s low point in the movie — she’s sobbing and comes across these guys in blazers singing “Tigertown Blues.” So that was great. It was so nice to not have to worry about whether they were going to do it properly, because they so know how to do it. Q: What drew you to the character of Portia Nathan? A: I felt like her strengths were her weaknesses. Her intellectual ability and ability to justify her decisions in life allowed her to hide an aspect from herself, and I really like that. Because I think that’s the case with a lot of people who are smart, and I imagine it’s the case with a lot of Princeton students. They’re so capable of doing certain things that it’s easy to neglect large aspects of your growth. And even sort of the aspect of having gotten over this huge hurdle of getting into Princeton, which is an amazing achievement, and at the same time your life doesn’t stop then — it’s just at a new phase, so what are you going to gain from it? I like that aspect of her character, that she’s achieved something and then she’s just stuck there.

Q: One of my favorite parts of the movie was the round table discussion about applicants and the visual in which applicants would literally fall through the floor after being rejected. How did you craft the tension of qualified applicants slipping through the cracks? A: Well, I definitely believe, and especially in talking to admissions officers, that they’re not cynical about the process. They’re really trying to get people who are going to succeed and benefit from being there. My personal belief is that there’s almost like a DNA double-helix effect of your education, and what breaks you get in life, and your personality. That situation [in the movie] is fun because Tina suddenly is so desperate to get this one kid into the school, which seems kind of horrible, and at the same time that is some essence of it, that you’re making an arbitrary decision about who’s going to have this particular experience of going to Princeton. And you don’t know who’s going to benefit from it. You can have somebody who’s an incredibly high achiever who’s going to crash and burn, or you can have somebody who’s underachieving but at the point when they’re exposed to certain classes or a certain community might really come to life. So it seems like a really hard job, and a very, very subjective one, no matter how hard they try to make it objective. Q: Did Princeton give you all of their actual promotional materials for the film?

MOVIE PREVIEW Fact: Tina Fey’s hair is as glossy in real life as it is in her Garnier Nutrisse commercial. Fact: Paul Rudd is actually as charming and funny as he is in Judd Apatow’s films. I was able to glean these critical journalistic tidbits from a short press conference on Fey and Rudd’s newest project, “Admission.” After pre-screening the film for an audience of college journalists in New York, Fey, Rudd, actor Nat Wolff and director Paul Weitz answered questions for a student press corps. Street was there with the people behind “Admission” to discuss the film, Princeton and the cancellation of “30 Rock.” “Admission” follows Portia Nathan, an admission officer at Princeton, as an explosive secret from her past lands on her desk in a single college application. Portia, played by Fey, begins the movie as a careerdriven employee who seeks validation for her hard work in a major promotion within the admission office. But when John Pressman (Rudd) calls to invite Portia to visit the alternative high school New Quest, he inadvertently changes the course of her life and career. Portia encounters John’s student, Jeremiah Balakian (Wolff), a prodigy with an abysmal transcript. Initially dismissive of Jeremiah’s chances at admission to Princeton, Portia changes her tune when John informs her that he believes Jeremiah is her son. She

Outside Firestone Portia sits and cries as she realizes that Jeremiah might in fact be her long lost son. Her ex-boyfriend finds her there, and awkwardness ensues.

MAP COURTESY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MANAGING EDITOR EMILY TSENG PAGE DESIGN BY STAFF WRITER LIN KING

begins to question the validity of the admission process and the value of her personal relationships as she struggles to grant Jeremiah admission. In doing so, Portia is forced to make several admissions of her own. The movie’s message about the subjectivity of the college admission process comes through loud and clear on screen, a point that Weitz reinforced during the press conference. “It’s not about where you go to college but who you come across when you’re there,” he said. “You could be coming out of a great school having no idea of the most important things in life.” Paul Rudd added a light-hearted anecdote to the discussion. “I didn’t apply to colleges,” Rudd said. “You just showed up?” Fey interrupted. “Yup, I bought the shirt,” he joked. “Like, okay, this is the high school I go to, and this is the college I go to.” Despite the film’s not-so-rosy outlook on the admission process, Fey still enjoyed her time on Princeton’s campus. “My favorite scene that we shot on campus was with the a cappella group,” Fey said, referring to the cameo by the Princeton Nassoons. “I’m, like, in tears, and they are singing their collegiate a cappella song, and they always sounded so good that we kept on letting them finish the song every take.” Tina, you’re welcome back to the Orange Bubble anytime! Be sure to look out for “Admission,” coming to theaters near you on March 22!

PROS

Tina Fey and Paul Rudd have compelling chemistry. Princeton’s campus is heavily featured.

CONS

Fey is a crying mess for much of the film. The film makes heavy-handed moral judgments concerning the admission process.

A: Yeah, they did, which was very lucky. I mean, I was really scared about what we were going to do if we didn’t get Princeton because I didn’t think there was any other university that fit the bill in this way, because of the size of the school and because of the range of applicants. So it was a huge relief when they said, “Okay, we’ll let you do this.” Q: What are your words of advice for high school students who are currently waiting on acceptances from schools? A: It probably, on some level, feels like the end of the world, whether you get in somewhere or not, but it doesn’t matter. You have to have control over your intellectual growth and your growth as a person. Good for you if you get into Princeton — that’s fantastic, but that doesn’t solve anything. Don’t let anybody tell you that you’re not worthwhile because you don’t achieve a specific thing. Sometimes it’s how you react to failure that makes you as a person. I definitely feel that for myself. You can be a champion prizefighter and step into the ring and get hit with a hook in the first minute and fall to the ground. Just keep arm’s-length from it psychologically.

COURTESY OF ASSOCIATE PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR MEREDITH WRIGHT

Tina Fey and Michael Sheen take a break between takes while filming near Blair Arch in July 2012.


Nathan Mathabane associate editor for opinion emeritus

Nothing bad about remedial

S

TEM. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. This acronym has become a buzzword for education policymakers across the country and around the world. President Obama himself has said — both in speeches and in his halfautobiography, half-manifesto “The Audacity of Hope” — that he “wished America had fewer lawyers and more engineers.” This statement arises from a general trend in undergraduate degree preferences, wherein the fields of business, marketing and social science have seen booms in the past few decades — accounting for nearly 25 percent of all degrees awarded — while the number of STEM degrees has been holding steady or declining. Our nation’s leaders, for a variety of reasons, believe that there is something wrong with our dearth of scientific enrollment, a claim with which I agree. This dilemma is even more complicated at Princeton, where the vast majority of students have demonstrated pronounced math and science capability in the past. If you were to ask a non-STEM Princeton student about math or science, you’d likely receive some variation of: “Oh, I used to be really good at math in high school, but I just can’t do it here,” or “I would major in a science, but it’s too intense at Princeton.” Naturally, this is not the case for everyone — there are myriad reasons why students select their field of study — but I am convinced there are a good number of Princetonians who enjoy the “hard” sciences but are intimidated by their rigor.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

In the long run, interest and passion for a subject are what will sustain and contribute to your success in a field. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

This should not be happening. We should not have students enter Princeton with STEMfield aspirations only to be dissuaded from their path by the difficulty of introductory courses. In a day and age where the demand for STEM majors is ever increasing, it behooves Princeton to consider whether its introductory course structure excessively discourages potential concentrators. It is my belief, therefore, that Princeton should offer remedial math and science courses aimed at students lacking rigorous high school preparation. I know that for many readers the word “remedial” carries some baggage, conjuring images of failing high school delinquents hustling drugs on the street corner. There is a cavernous gap in ability between the highest-achieving students at Princeton and the lowest-achieving students, a gap that we sometimes pretend does not exist. Dumping everyone into the same introductory classes, especially when those classes are quantitative in nature, does a disservice to many of those taking the course. At Princeton, the “lowest-achieving” students in an introductory math course would be acing tests at other institutions. These students, discouraged by their poor test results, decide to switch to a field where they can receive more positive reinforcement. We lose these undergrads, many of whom have found and could continue to find joy and fulfillment in the STEM fields, because of the severe standard expected in some introductory courses. If there were remedial classes available for those students who love numbers but may not have taken AP Calculus in high school, we could halt some of the attrition that we see. The same goes for subjects like physics and computer science. In many cases, there are “easier” courses available in these departments, such as PHY 101 and 102. Too often, though, these courses are intended for non-majors, and students taking these courses are not encouraged to pursue the subject any further. In the long run, interest and passion for a subject are what will sustain and contribute to your academic success in a field. Our present system of introductory courses in the STEM fields sometimes siphons off that passion through negative reinforcement and discouragement. There are many paths to a successful academic career, and not all students who want to major in a subject should necessarily need to be stellar at it when they’re 18 or 19 years old. By offering catch-up courses in math and science, we would be better able to even the playing field among students from disparate educational backgrounds and to encourage students to follow their interests. Princeton is full of a lot of truly smart individuals, and to have many of those individuals turned away from math and sciences simply because they aren’t the best students here doesn’t make sense. We have a massive intellectual reservoir here that we can leverage to increase involvement in STEM fields for our nation’s sharpest minds. Nathan Mathabane is a Class of 2013 geosciences major from Portland, Ore. He can be reached at natethegreat120@gmail.com.

Opinion

The Freshman Issue summer 2013

page 15

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

EDITORIAL

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Honor Code Reforms

he honor committee recently announced that it would be holding focus groups to solicit student opinions regarding the punishment for writing after time has been called on exams. In an op-ed published in the ‘Prince,’ Honor Committee chair Antonia Hyman ’13 reported that there has been a significant increase in the number of students reported taking extra time on exams. The Editorial Board welcomes the Honor Committee’s initiative and calls for even greater transparency. Taking into account our judgment about the relative severity of working over time and the likely effects of a policy change, the Board believes that the default sentence for writing over time on an exam should be a zero on the exam and academic probation, rather than a oneyear suspension. Firstly, the Board calls on the Honor Committee to practice greater transparency and provide the student body with the maximum amount of relevant information with which to weigh in on this issue. The Honor Committee should release data regarding the number of accusations for this infraction, the number of hearings held and the number of punishments imposed. While the Honor Committee has declined to release these numbers in the past, citing student privacy, it is clear that these statistics by themselves do not compromise the privacy of any accused or convicted student. Furthermore, such statistics are important since they would allow the student body to understand the scope of the problem, make informed recommendations to the Honor Committee and better understand the typical fashion in which the Honor Committee adjudicates its cases. That being said, the Board believes that this violation of the Honor Code is, on average, less severe than other violations for which a one-year suspension is the current standard punishment. Writing over time generally confers a comparatively small advantage to the student and is a smaller deviation from accepted norms of fairness. Contrast, for example, working 30 seconds past time with copying answers off of a neighbor. If the average case of writing over time is a less severe violation than say, the average case of copying, the default punishment for the offense should reflect this judgment. Moreover, according to Dean Kathleen Deignan, chair of the Committee on Disci-

vol. cxxxvii

pline, the COD has previously punished students who lie to professors about personal circumsances in order to gain extra time on papers with probation, rather than suspension, when there are no other exacerbating factors. The Board believes that writing over time on exams and lying to receive extra time on papers are similar offenses. This incongruity in punishment, then, suggests that the punishment for writing over time on exams should be aligned with the punishment for unfairly receiving extra time to complete a paper. Despite the lack of statistical data surrounding these cases, anecdotal evidence suggests that the fraction of instances of working over time actually reported to the Honor Committee is lower than reporting rates for other offenses. This comparatively low reporting rate might reflect prevailing beliefs among the student body that writing over time is more acceptable, the confusion about whether a professor’s statement that “time is up” really means that students must finish working and the comparatively large number of students who work over time even after the professor announces the end of the exam. The low level of reporting of this offense is strong evidence that the student body as a whole does not believe that working over time merits the likely punishment of a one-year suspension. We believe that this reduced standard penalty would maintain an effective level of deterrence: Receiving a zero on an exam and academic probation is a sufficiently serious negative consequence that students will be unlikely to work over time and take the risk of this punishment. Furthermore, this change might actually increase the risk of punishment for working over time because students are more likely to report violations when they believe the likely punishment that the accused will receive is not disproportionate — as the one-year suspension is now. Finally, we would like to remind the student body that the Honor Code is a student-governed institution. Any student can propose changes to the Honor Code, and proposals that pass student referenda constitute binding changes to its structure. While the Honor Committee’s focus groups are an important first step, students who wish to effect substantive change have the power to work beyond the confines of these groups in order to improve the Honor Committee.

the seven classmates you meet in precept

Luc Cohen ’14

editor-in-chief

Grace Riccardi ’14

business manager

managing editor Emily Tseng ’14 news editors Patience Haggin ’14 Anastasya Lloyd-Damnjanovic ’14 opinion editor Sarah Schwartz ’15 sports editor Stephen Wood ’15 street editor Abigail Williams ’14 photography editors Monica Chon ’15 Merrill Fabry ’14 copy editors Andrea Beale ’14 Erica Sollazzo ’14 design editor Helen Yao ’15 multimedia editor Christine Wang ’14 prox editor Daniel Santoro ’14 intersections editor Amy Garland ’14 associate news editor Catherine Ku ’14 associate news editor for enterprise Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 associate opinion editors Chelsea Jones ’15 Rebecca Kreutter ‘15 associate sports editors Damir Golac ‘15 Victoria Majchrzak ’15 associate street editors Urvija Banerji ’15 Catherine Bauman ’15 associate photography editors Conor Dube ’15 Lilia Xie ’14

Willa Chen ’13

associate copy editors Dana Bernstein ’15 Jennifer Cho ’15 associate design editor Allison Metts ’15

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

associate multimedia editor Rishi Kaneriya ’16 editorial board chair Ethan Jamnik ’15

Susannah Sharpless

Un-justifications for Bicker

Columnist

I

f you happened to sit within five feet of me in any public space during the last semester, you probably heard me agonizing about Bicker. I’m the most indecisive person in the entire world, and (similarly hyberbolic) I repeated the same arguments while my friends — used to this kind of behavior from me — told me to calm down, that I was taking everything too seriously. Let me just say right now that I don’t think you can ever take anything too seriously, and I’m certainly not alone in finding Bicker a significant decision. I eventually decided not to bicker, and though I know that it will be impossible to explain this without making people angry, judging people who bicker is not my point. I think eating clubs are a good idea. Sharing every meal in a nice house with your best friends seems great. The problem is the process of Bicker itself. I totally understand why so many of us do it, and I reproach no one for choosing to put themselves through three days of

some social (and gastrointestinal) discomfort for two years filled with friends, food and fancy parties. It’s the price the Street demands of us, and I can understand why so many of us are willing to pay it. I mean, what kind of success would the human race have had were we not adaptable? We come to new places, we see how things are done, and we do them. It’s how we learn to walk and talk, how to be successful, how not to feel lonely all the time. My choice not to bicker was not because I’m holier-than-thou. It was because I didn’t come back for reading period and, as I talked to my family about what eating club I would join, I heard myself saying words I’d never thought twice about before — “Bicker,” “discussions,” “hosed” — words that sounded flat, false and pretty awful when divorced from their context. The more I insisted it wasn’t as bad as it sounded, the more horrified my sister, who has applied to Princeton, looked. It’s hard to deny that, at its core, Bicker is elitist, demeaning and sometimes shockingly cruel. Saying that Bicker is a necessary evil is one thing (though I disagree), but claiming that it’s not problematic is another. Seriously, bicker club members, you can’t honestly tell me Bicker is fun and welcoming,

that you don’t get off on sophomoric desperation for your good favor and, most importantly of all, that you haven’t felt awful seeing that girl your club hosed around campus for the past year. I think almost everyone who bickers recognizes they’re making some compromise for social gain, but frankly, I’m tired of the justifications that surround the whole process. I know them well: Generations of Princetonians have bickered, you say. By following in their hallowed footprints, we walk deeper into the crowds of students who came before. We know we love our traditions here, each of them equally and passionately, and we would never ever leave them behind, which is why we’re still a school of white males who gather every fall to beat freshmen with canes. You’re also going to tell me that Bicker is a microcosm of how the real world works. Stop being naive, you say. People exist for you to climb over, and thank God we’re so used to it that by the time we enter the work force we know what we’re doing. We use people effortlessly and without second thought. This what makes us Princetonians, Titans of Industry, Leaders of the Free World. But if this is how the real world works, my parents should have under-

stood what I was saying. My sister shouldn’t have been so shocked. The process shouldn’t sound so brutal, even to my own desensitized ears. I’m glad the ICC did what it could to make Bicker less stressful this year. The idea that it’s not supposed to be painful was shocking to me; I thought feeling shallow, bewildered, insecure and a little nauseated was part of the process. I congratulate you if Bicker doesn’t make you feel this way: You are stronger than I, your spirits more robust, your insides less like Jell-O. I just can’t stomach it. I can’t handle how it made me feel about myself and about those around me. It’s true that the real world is tough and that we will be rejected more times than we would like, but this is exactly why we have friends — to hug us after a romantic interest turns us down, to eat meals with us after we get fired. Your friends are not your career. Being expected to treat the two the same way is not only deeply flawed, but a little heartbreaking. After all, if the real world is as hard as they say it is, your friend group should be the one thing you don’t have to fight to be a part of. Susannah Sharpless is a religion major from Indianapolis, Ind. She can be reached at ssharple@princeton.edu.


Opinion

page 16

The Freshman Issue summer 2013

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com}

To not being remembered

vol. cxxxvii

Luke Massa Senior Columnist

Luc Cohen ’14

editor-in-chief

T

Grace Riccardi ’14

his year’s Princeton Preview was strange for me, and not just because the second one wasn’t actually a weekend. While it was still up in the air for these wide-eyed be-lanyarded kids whether they would be coming to campus in the fall, it’s not for me — I definitely will not be returning. I spent a good deal of time convincing these impossibly young high-schoolers to come to this place I know and love, but I am sad to say I will not be joining them. I am reminded of those times I talk to an underclassman about a really amazing member of the Class of 2012 or 2011, and they, understandably, have no idea who I’m talking about. When they were here and they were running our groups and activities, we thought, “How will we possibly live without them?” And now underclassmen are saying the same thing about my class. It’s a relentless cycle. So much of this place stays the same, but we only get a snapshot of the people here. Anyone who falls outside the window of 2010–2016, I’m sorry, but I’ll never know the Princeton you know. I won’t ever know your names. Our journeys do not intersect. But is that really true? I often tell the story of how a club I helped found commissioned me to put

business manager

BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 vice presidents John G. Horan ’74 Thomas E. Weber ’89 secretary Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 treasurer Michael E. Seger ’71 Craig Bloom ’88 Gregory L. Diskant ’70 Richard P. Dzina, Jr. ’85 William R. Elfers ’71 John G. Horan ’74 Kathleen Kiely ’77 Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Betsy J. Minkin ’77 Jerry Raymond ’73 Carol Rigolot h ’51 h ’70 Annalyn Swan ’73 Douglas Widmann ’90

together a logo, which I did at 2 a.m. one random morning. That became the official symbol of the group, and it stuck, and now it is on all of our folders and stickers and pencils and posters. I like to say that after hundreds of hours working on my thesis and thousands of hours devoted to theater on campus, the only thing that will outlive me here is an early morning creation with MS Paint. And though I like this story, I don’t think it’s true at all — that’s not all I’ve left here. I’m sure that some of you have seen the following inspirational quote, or some variant of it, somewhere: “You die twice: once when you stop breathing, and once when your name is said for the last time.” I see the point, and I appreciate the sentiment it’s getting at, but I feel like it goes about it in the wrong way. There is too much of an obsession with our own name, making a name for ourselves, really being “somebody.” The truth is — and it’s a hard truth to swallow — most of us won’t be remembered here five or so years hence. But we don’t need to have the next generation of Princetonians telling stories about us, and we don’t need to be able to point to something concrete like an admittedly uninspired logo, to know that we mattered here. I’m not trying to be some fauxinspirational poster and tell you that you should forget what everyone thinks about you and just try to make some small difference in the world. What I’m saying is, like it or not, people will forget what they think

about you. So, if you’ll forgive a senior for a moment of sentimentality, think about the people with whom you made personal connections, think of all you have learned about yourself and others, think about the small ways you steered the campus this way or that. This is not a philosophy to live by; it’s a way to look back and be able to appreciate your role in something without needing your name carved in it. The Class of 2017 won’t know who you are any more than you will know who they are, but they walk on a road you helped pave. Be proud of that. And so with that, I bid you farewell, dear readers. There are those of you (a vocal bunch indeed) who will be glad my byline will never again appear on this page, there are others (at least I few I hope) who found some of what I said interesting and worthy of consideration, and then, of course, there are those who do not really keep track of ‘Prince’ columnists and are simply paging through the campus newspaper on a Wednesday in May. To the first group, I say thank you for making me a more thoughtful and careful writer; to the second, I say thank you for your constant encouragement and support; to the third, I say let this be a lesson not to be afraid that your name and image will not be branded in the minds of every Princetonian. Do your best, smile and exeunt. Luke Massa is a Class of 2013 philosophy major from Ridley Park, Pa. He can be reached at lmassa@princeton.edu.

On salmon-colored shorts

137TH BUSINESS BOARD business manager Grace Riccardi ’14 director of national advertising Nick Hu ’15

caresse yan ’16 ..................................

Columnist

The case for going back

I

f there’s one thing I’m asked more frequently than where I’m from, it’s whether or not I’m going to stay in the United States after I graduate. Granted, my questionably fluctuating accent and ethnically ambiguous looks confuse even the keenest observer. If my limited Korean and even sparser knowledge of K-pop isn’t confusing enough, I’ve even had people on campus ask me if I was from “East or West Korea.” However, despite my seemingly superficial ties to South Korea, never once have I conceived of working in the United States post-graduation. For the past decade, South Korea has been struggling with one of the fastest rates of brain drain in the developed world: The vast majority of South Korea’s youth, at least those who can afford it, has chosen to be educated in the United States and remain there. Cultural biases have favored an American education over a South Korean one, and even those pursuing degrees in the most prestigious of South Korean universities choose to study abroad and only return for graduate school. The South Korean government has been grappling with incentives to keep its educated youth within the country, yet, sadly, it’s been fighting a losing battle. On the flip side, the United States has been doing a fantastic job of bringing in foreign students and keeping them in the country. For many international students like myself, America’s number-one commodity is its education. Prestigious institutions like Princeton value international students because they create diverse student bodies, and these students, in turn, value the opportunity to jump-start their futures. The result is rather symbiotic. So why would I even conceive of returning to a country with backward cultural practices and an aging population?

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: It may be one thing to act in our nation’s service, but it’s equally valuable to do so through the service of other nations.

director of campus/local adversting Harold Li ’15 director of web advertising Matteo Kruijssen ’16 director of recruitment advertising Zoe Zhang ’16 director of operations Elliot Pearl-Sacks ’15

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comptroller Kevin Tang ’16 director of subscriptions Elon Packin ’15

to have a top education without the threat of looming debt. And many of these students would seize the opportunity of a Princeton education to propel themselves as far up the socioeconomic ladder as they could go. So is a low-income student who chooses a less practical major spitting in the face of the American dream? As it stands now, maybe. But that’s because there is too great of a financial emphasis put on the American dream. We’re given examples like Andrew Carnegie when we think of someone who lived out the American dream. Did he make some revolutionary scientific discovery or write a great American novel? No, he made a lot of money. What the American dream and the teachers who present it should really emphasize are the options. An elite education opens doors to financial success, yes, but also to all sorts of other opportunities like careers in nonprofit work, research and other areas that don’t necessarily correlate with outrageously high salaries. While low-income students do have a chance to effectively trade in their diploma for a bag of money, as people back home assume they will do, a Princeton education opens many more doors than just that of financial success. It is important to consider these opportunities as well.

There’s something to say for the fact that South Korea values Ivy League degrees much more than most American companies and would therefore offer higher positions and more prestigious jobs to those returning to the motherland. Confucianism has always valued the educated more than any other philosophical system, placing scholars above all other social classes. To top that off, a sense of national pride, no matter how superficial, makes me feel obligated to contribute something to my own country. The fact that my family and friends all live in South Korea, as well as the sheer familiarity of Seoul, are just a few basic yet critical factors to take into consideration. To be honest, it is difficult to pinpoint which factor influences me most, as it is a combination of all four. South Korea may be known for its advanced technology sometimes bordering on the absurd — like the new Galaxy phone that purportedly allows you to scroll down menus with your eyes — but its social values and culture are ridiculously anachronistic. We’re talking about a country that just elected its first female president, whose first order on the agenda is banning miniskirts in Seoul. Seeing as “pretty boys” are valued to the point of androgyny, I don’t know what the government expects people to wear in the future. In a way, condescending as it may sound, I feel an obligation to my country to modernize and liberalize a staggeringly backward society. This isn’t just applicable to South Korea but to any nation, especially the developing and recently developed. It is also important to note that in order for America to improve its foreign relations, it is first necessary to accurately assess what is happening abroad. No matter how much the United States may want to keep tabs on South Korea for regional and domestic security issues, it is impossible to do so without knowledgeable experts advising the White House on the best course of action. This could have serious policy implications, as the United States cannot make critical decisions based on partial knowledge. By sending those educated in the United States back to their native countries, we not only provide these nations with a chance to see eye-to-eye with the United States, but we also have an invaluable source of information to make better decisions in Washington. It may be one thing to act in our nation’s service, but it’s equally valuable to do so through the service of other nations.

Rich Daker is a psychology major from Evergreen Park, Il. He can be reached at rdaker@princeton.edu

Ye Eun Charlotte Chun is a sophomore from Seoul, South Korea. She can be reached at ychun@princeton.edu.

Is this the American dream? Rich Daker Columnist

M

Ye Eun Charlotte Chun

y elementary school history classes stuck mostly to the facts. George Washington was the first president. Christopher Columbus discovered America. Martin Luther King gave the “I Have a Dream” speech. There was one abstract idea that I remember being presented again and again, though — the concept of the American dream: With enough work, anyone, no matter his or her background, could rise to the top and achieve unbounded financial success. Education was always presented as a way to work toward achieving this American dream. The great equalizer, they called it. Elite universities like Princeton offered a clear path toward the American dream: a world-class education that opens up countless career opportunities and the type of financial aid packages that allows anyone to afford it — an incredible opportunity for lowincome students. For those who get in, that is. One thing my teachers neglected to tell us was that it was impossible for everyone to live out this American dream. I was fortunate enough to get the chance that many other equally capable low-income students did not — a chance to climb the socioeconomic ladder and go after that

American dream that had been presented to me all my life. And when I found out I’d been accepted, everyone around me sensed that. “You’re going to be set for life,” I remember one of my friends saying. A family friend who was originally excited about the possibility of me going elsewhere conceded that Princeton was probably the right decision given the salary prospects that the Ivy League offers after graduation. To most of the people around me, acceptance to Princeton was my golden ticket to a lifestyle of wealth. There was an assumption from people back home that upon graduation, I would trade in my diploma for a nice big pile of money and that would be that. Things didn’t go so smoothly when I revealed I was majoring in psychology, the very definition of uselessness for many of them. It has been my experience that most people from low-income areas have an extremely instrumental view of education. Education is good because it leads to better jobs, and better jobs mean more money. And in most low-income circumstances, this makes a lot of sense. All my friends from home who go to college major in something very practical: engineering, business, pre-law, premed. A lot of this, I think, is because they really don’t have much of a choice. Low-income students who attend universities that lack the type of financial aid that Princeton provides have to justify the high costs of

tuition by choosing a path that will likely lead to a profession in which they will make a decent amount of money. Princeton’s no-loan financial aid program removes this burden from its low-income students, and there is no longer as much of a financial barrier for choosing a path that won’t necessarily make you a millionaire.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Is a low-income student who chooses a less practical major spitting in the face of the American dream? As it stands now, maybe. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: But just because this financial barrier is gone, or at least diminished, does not mean there is no unique pressure for low-income students at Princeton to choose a path that will lead to very well-paying jobs. It’s still very easy to feel like you’re wasting some huge, unique financial opportunity if you choose a major or a future career that is not wildly lucrative. There are many more capable students than there are spots on Princeton’s acceptance list, which means that countless qualified, hardworking low-income students are not getting their shot


Prianka Misra Columnist

O

Prianka Misra is a sophomore from Castro Valley, Calif. She can be reached at pmisra@princeton.edu.

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{ www.dailyprincetonian.com}

Friendships at Princeton

n a frigid Thursday night, I donned my gloves and buried myself in a thickly knit scarf and began my trek up campus to Witherspoon Hall. I was coming down with the flu, but I went anyway. I could practically hear my upperclassman friends chuckling, “Oh, freshman,” as I shivered and power-walked toward my reward for a week of 4 a.m. bedtimes: passes to Cloister’s Two Articles Night. As much as I, a California native, had trouble fathoming why my boots were crunching through the snowy debris in the middle of February ( just a few hours earlier I had a high fever!), I loved it. I knew that my friendships were bolstered by more than colored squares of paper, but I still felt fortunate to have connections with others that enabled me to enjoy these theme nights. This was — in part, of course — what college was about. I had joined several South Asian organizations — the South Asian Students Association, Princeton South Asian Theatrics, Naacho, Princeton Bhangra — that led others to jokingly nickname me “the brown queen.” I wore the crown gladly. These groups didn’t exist to me before, so I chose to become as involved as I could. At my high school, I was just the “brown one”: the single token Indian in my grade, at a place that touted its diversity as an integral part of its motto. At Princeton, I met other people who knew about Shahrukh Khan — every ’90s kid’s favorite Bollywood actor — and the real way to enjoy a samosa (no, not the Girl Scout cookie, and yes, soaked in chutney). I was absolutely thrilled, until I arrived back at my room that night with the passes I had obtained. As I handed one to my friend, she nonchalantly said to me, “I wish I could be ethnic like you so I could get passes to eating clubs.” She wasn’t joking. When I asked her what she meant, she continued, “I just feel like you have so many brown connections that can get you into places. It’s not fair. I wish there were a White Student Association.” With these statements, she made me question all of my South Asian friends at Princeton. I understood her hunger for passes — it’s no secret that passes serve as an epicenter of freshman nightlife at Princeton. But her final comment unleashed a slew of questions in my mind. Did I only have close friends or feel a sense of community on campus because I was Indian? Were all of my connections solely based on the commonality of our ethnicity, not on similar values or personalities? I remembered an excerpt from a book I had read for my freshman seminar: In his collection of essays called “White,” Richard Dyer talks about white people’s perceived lack of shared identity and cultural belonging. I thought about what it was like to be on the other side of this situation. Was it harder to fit in and find a niche as a white student at Princeton? Admittedly, I was angry and bitter about my friend’s comment. I reflected on the reason why I was in these student groups and why they existed in the first place. They were designed to allow students like me — who didn’t necessarily have groups to express their identity, whose names were always accompanied by a pause in roll call, who had to explain in kindergarten that they were not the Native American Indian but the “other” type — to finally belong. The undeniable sense of shared identity in these groups let me know that I was not alone in my experiences and that they add a richness and depth to my story that I should appreciate rather than scorn. But if you — yes, literally any of you, regardless of race, culture or ethnicity — wanted to join our groups and learn about our traditions, you could. Given the number of student organizations we have here that aren’t based on race or cultural identity, I am certain that you do not have to be “ethnic” to find your place here. I don’t just have friends because I am “brown.” I have friends because I have interests: being a cultural leader, volunteering, dancing, acting. Every member of these cultural clubs and organizations has different hobbies and interests. You don’t have to be “ethnic” to fit in with us because we don’t label ourselves that way. Before “Indian,” we are athletes, artists, scholars and more. Getting over the automatic assumption that you don’t belong in certain cultural groups is not a simple feat, but from what I have seen, we appreciate non-South Asian members to an even greater extent for their interest in exploring our movies, music, food and lives. Although I can’t speak from their perspective, non-South Asian members seem to enjoy being in these organizations as well, immersing themselves in new traditions and historical fabrics. We all can learn something from those who already understand that, when it comes to Princeton’s student groups, cultural barriers are simply imagined.

Opinion

The Freshman Issue summer 2013

Vicky Quevedo

Dishabituation

guest columnist

W

hen you are surrounded by the same thing your entire life, you remain unaware of it until you are dishabituated; until you are removed from that environment of sameness and forced to see the differences of those around you. That thing that makes you the same doesn’t define you because there is nothing special about it. When everyone is Latino, no one is. I did not realize that my culture was significantly different than anyone else’s because I was (relatively) unaware of culture. I knew what it was — had heard of it before — but did not understand it. When I was in grade school, my peers were not minority students; we were all just students. I didn’t eat Latino food or dance Latino dances; I just ate and danced. I had nothing to contrast these parts of my culture with; I lived in a state of blissful ignorance. Then, somewhere between the first time I had to check a box on my college application that labeled me Latino/Hispanic, non-white and now, I became fully aware of the way that ethnicity is used to modify the aforementioned nouns — food, dances and people — outside of the primarily Latino neighborhood from which I came to Princeton. In my new world, it seems that everyone can be associated with one culture or another, more specifically, the majority culture and any number of minority cultures. Based on my experiences at Princeton, it feels as though people who are categorized along these lines of separation do not mix, and any effort to mix comes from the person of the minority culture. Life at Princeton has changed the way that I view the world and at times how I view myself. You see, I adopted the label Latina because it made me comfortable to explore a place 3,000 miles from home with a group of people that was somehow connected to me by that label. I willingly took it on and even embraced it. I became more Latina. In my first year, I became the vice president of Accion Latina and the co-coordinator of Latinos Unidos for Networking and Advising. When Danza Kuduro by Don Omar y Lucenzo came on in the Black Box theater, my non-Latino, minority (because let’s face it, you rarely see white people

in the Black Box) friends would look over at me as if that were my song. And I loved it. I love being Latina. I love rolling my “r”s. I love dancing Merengue, Cumbia and Bachata. I wouldn’t trade the traditions that I share with my family and many other Latinos for anything in the world. But before Princeton, being Latina was not my defining characteristic, and it definitely was not an identity that I consciously recognized.

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In my search for assimilation and integration, I found that this idea that we can all become part of one big society with a shared set of beliefs is unattainable and undesirable. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Now, when I am standing in line at El Tapatio, the local supermarket back home, I look around at all the brown faces and I feel jealous; I envy their unawareness. I envy the way that they, the people in my ethnic enclave in southern Los Angeles, live their lives, never truly thinking about their Latino-ness. I envy that they are still able to measure their self-worth by their character, their perseverance in the face of obstacles and their work ethic. I envy that none of these qualities fluctuate because of their differences in culture in the way I feel that mine do. I wish that I were still unaware that I have a Spanish accent, that Latino music is not played at every party and that somehow I am different. Most of all, I wish that my “different” didn’t feel inferior outside of my brown community back home. The realization that the world that I will be working in when I leave undergrad will be more like Princeton than like the community that I grew up in terrifies me; in this world, I will feel Latina first and everything else second. This year, in an effort to explore the majority community that is culturally foreign to me,

I began distancing myself from the Latino community that I have always felt comfortable in. I joined a sorority only to realize that I had to work harder to feel as though I fit in, and this was not only because of an arbitrary label, Latina, that automatically made me different but also because I do not share the same culture as the majority of the girls who make up this sisterhood. In my search for assimilation and integration, I found that this idea that we can all become part of one big society with a shared set of beliefs is unattainable and undesirable. I realized that the reason ethnically segregated groups exist at Princeton is not because minority people only feel comfortable with other minority people, but rather because it feels forced to be part of someone else’s culture. It feels forced to be part of organizations that have always been primarily nonminority, that continue to cater to the majority culture. I am torn between two worlds; in my dad’s words, “[I] come from a neighborhood where the minority is the majority”; I am a proud Latina, and while I love my culture, I am not only Latina. When I am outside of my primarily brown enclave, I really become part of the minority, and as of now, it feels as though there is no amalgamation between these two communities. I could never let go of my culture, but I will not continue being part of a community in which everyone shares the same culture after Princeton. I wonder what this new community, a community with a growing number of members of different cultures, will do to make room for the culture of those of us for whom assimilation and integration has been less than successful. How will our cultures mix so that one does not dominate the other? How will the tables turn so that it is not always the person from the minority who is seeking acceptance into the majority’s culture but those in the majority culture who will seek to understand, partake in, adopt and appreciate traditions of our cultures, which we are more than willing to share? I encourage others to share their story to create a dialogue that will begin to change how we think about culture, race, ethnicity and nationality because while this is my story, this is also the story of countless others.

vol. cxxxvii

Luc Cohen ’14

editor-in-chief

Grace Riccardi ’14

business manager

managing editor Emily Tseng ’14 news editors Patience Haggin ’14 Anastasya Lloyd-Damnjanovic ’14 opinion editor Sarah Schwartz ’15 sports editor Stephen Wood ’15 street editor Abigail Williams ’14 photography editors Monica Chon ’15 Merrill Fabry ’14 copy editors Andrea Beale ’14 Erica Sollazzo ’14 design editor Helen Yao ’15 multimedia editor Christine Wang ’14 prox editor Daniel Santoro ’14 intersections editor Amy Garland ’14 associate news editor Catherine Ku ’14 associate news editor for enterprise Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 associate opinion editors Chelsea Jones ’15 Rebecca Kreutter ‘15 associate sports editors Damir Golac ‘15 Victoria Majchrzak ’15 associate street editors Urvija Banerji ’15 Catherine Bauman ’15 associate photography editors Conor Dube ’15 Lilia Xie ’14 associate copy editors Dana Bernstein ’15 Jennifer Cho ’15 associate design editor Allison Metts ’15 associate multimedia editor Rishi Kaneriya ’16 editorial board chair Ethan Jamnik ’15

Vicky Quevedo is a psychology major from Downey, Calif. She can be reached at vquevedo@princeton.edu.

Student debt and the American decline David Will columnist

S

ince the late ’90s, America moved from the dot-com bubble to the housing bubble, and the market rose and crashed in spectacular fashion along the way. The student loan bubble is next. While Princeton shields its undergraduates from sinking into the red, national student loan debt surpassed credit card debt in 2012 to be the American people’s largest outstanding financial strain. This colossal burden looms not only over students’ heads, but over the economic recovery and future generations’ prosperity as well. Provisions that disadvantage younger, debt-ridden Americans should be modified to put millenials on equal footing with their fellow citizens. As a part of the bankruptcy process, debtors may typically shed financial burdens that they are unable to meet. But the law treats education loans differently based on the lender, and as a result only about 40 percent of student loans are currently dischargeable. However, back in February, Democratic congressmen Steve Cohen of Tennessee and Danny Davis of Illinois introduced a bill that would allow borrowers to drop all types of private

educational debt in bankruptcy. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates that private loans make up $150 billion of the $1 trillion total student debt in the US. The bill doles out no special treatment, nor does it create any new entitlements; rather, the act rectifies an inequity. Why should education loans be viewed differently from credit card debt, home or car loans? Student loan rates are set to double in June, leaving borrowers to face the specter of $5,000 in additional debt. Students won’t absorb the blow in a vacuum — this money is removed from the economy and people’s life savings. Representative Karen Bass, a Democrat from California, offers a comprehensive solution that Congress should, but has yet to, pass. The Student Loan Fairness Act limits federal interest rates at 3.4 percent, forgives a large portion of college debt accumulated by public servants and caps monthly payments to 10 percent of discretionary income. Additionally, the law forgives remaining debt for students who make every payment for 10 years. Critics of Congresswoman Bass’s bill cast the act as yet another government dispensation for a spoiled generation. But this is nothing more than fresh paint slapped on a trite claim: Past measures have overcome

generational condescension to later better the lives of millions. Proposed student loan alterations, like the benefits in the GI Bill, are predicated on demonstrated commitments from citizens, which differentiates the measures from entitlements, like social welfare programs. Each bill would rectify inequalities that students face before the law. That said, concerns still remain about depleting a contract’s symbolic value. Students, though young, are adults; in signing their names, they agree to certain conditions. But institutionalized hurdles deter students from making good on their obligations. Back in October, the CFPB issued a scathing critique of lenders’ behavior toward student borrowers that found parallels to impropriety in the housing market prior to the Great Recession. Borrowers seeking forbearance — which, in the context of mortgages, delays foreclosure — incur monthly charges. Ironically, this forces students to pay extra fees just to go through a process designed for those with depleted funds. Apart from sparse options to refinance, many students also reported that the legal language in their agreements was esoteric and difficult to navigate. The loan and repayment process must fundamentally change in order to restore students’ ability to hold true to their agreements.

According to new research by the Urban Institute, the income inequality that has plagued the country for decades has compounded into a generational wealth gap. Annie Lowrey of The New York Times writes, “The average net worth of someone 29 to 37 has fallen 21 percent since 1983; the average net worth of someone 56 to 64 has more than doubled.” With the average student facing about $26,000 in loans and the interest rate set to rise, millennials will be delayed for decades from saving. All told, the $1 trillion in outstanding student loan debt will accelerate the first American generational decline in wealth in modern history. Student loans are a clear and present danger — any system that contributes to the take-down of the world’s largest economy is due for radical change. None of the proposed measures carve out special exceptions that could be abused by irresponsible parties in the future. Rather, the bills before Congress both correct past injustices and guard against future crises by making the law more transparent and fair. As Princetonians, we are future leaders who must anticipate and diffuse this coming, if not already present, crisis. David Will is a religion major from Chevy Chase, Md. He can be reached at dwill@princeton.edu.


The Daily Princetonian

page 18

The Freshman Issue summer 2013

WELCOME TO PRINCETON

Tips and tricks to take you from terrified high school grad to terrified college freshman.

FOOD & DRINK

Please, sir, may I have some more? A guide to Princeton eats By Katie Bauman associate editor for street

Congratulations, 2017 — you are bright and talented and probably human. (Important note: This entire piece is written with the understanding that you are in fact sentient Homo sapiens. If that is not the case, disregard and resume upgrading your hard drive, robot/NSA overlord.) Being human means you have to eat to be able to do all those things bright and talented people do. Luckily, Princeton is full of eating options because the time you spend eating will be the main, if not only, social interaction of your day-to-day life. (I’m only half kidding.) Dining halls Each residential college has its own dining hall, and each of you has his or her own residential college, but that does not mean you can’t eat in another college’s dining hall. (Unless that college is Whitman on a Tuesday night, when the residents of Forbes, Butler, Wilson, Rocky and Mathey are turned away at the door and Whitmanites revel in their oh-so-special themed college nights as the hoi polloi are forced elsewhere.) While all the dining halls offer a grill, a sandwich station, a salad bar and a selection of cereals, there are certain standouts in certain places. Wu/Wilcox is the dining hall for

Butler and Wilson Colleges, and is thought to be one of the most diverse. The standout at this dining hall is the salad bar. Well-stocked with all kinds of vegan, vegetarian and carnivorous options, the Wu/ Wilcox salad bar is a delight. In terms of atmosphere, Wu/Wilcox is a hub of activity, with long tables and booths often packed at peak hours. Whitman, located just across Elm from Wu/Wilcox, can offer a nice alternative when Wu/Wilcox is filled to capacity. During weekend brunches, Whitman offers custommade breakfast burritos. They also typically have great musical playlists to feed your soul. The Rocky/Mathey dining halls, colloquially known as RoMa, look straight out of Harry Potter. Although there haven’t been any (known) trolls roaming the dungeons of RoMa, there are great curly fries. All you need to know about Forbes: Sunday. Brunch. Some say it isn’t worth the walk, others say they’d walk across the country for it. You won’t know until you go. A little preview: Baked brie, a chocolate fountain, quiche, omelets and more. Eating Clubs Despite their gastronomic moniker, eating is probably not the most apt descriptor of what you will be doing at the clubs this year. But for those jonesing for a taste of upper-

class life, meal exchanges are offered in which a club member can trade a meal at a club in exchange for one of your meals at the dining hall. Club members are also allotted a number of monthly guest meals and, of course, there’s always the odd chance that you could sneak in. The food at the clubs is generally considered superior to dining hall food, although your mileage will vary by club — Cannon is known to offer protein shakes and gummy worms, Terrace is known as the most vegetarian/vegan-friendly and Cap and TI are known to provide all the fried American goodness your arteries could desire. Meals at the clubs also vary greatly by atmosphere. Ask an upperclassman friend what dinner’s like at Ivy. Frist Campus Center Home to jazzy, upmarket Cafe Viv, midmorning-coffee joint Witherspoon, the C-Store and the food gallery, Frist is a food mecca and the hajj happens twice-a-day, Monday through Thursday, at late meal. Arguably more useful than a Princeton degree, late meal gives you additional meal hours after lunch and dinner have ended at the dining hall. From 2-3:45 p.m. and 8:30-10 p.m., head to Frist if you missed a meal or are just a hungry hippo. (That was just a reference to the game, not a comment on your gluttony. Welcome to college — we are all hungry, hungry hippos.)

Late meal offers custom-made salads and sandwiches, a grill, quesadillas, sushi, pizza and so much more. Late meal is a gift unto the underclassmen that vanishes once you attain upperclass-hood and enter into an eating club dining contract. Be grateful. Murray-Dodge Located upcampus and belowground, this hangout satisfies your most hipster of cookie cravings, because even hipsters like free cookies. Open every night, student bakers, who are paid to bake cookies, serve their creations to hungry students. Wash down that warm chocolate-Nutella-banana nut cookie with a mug of tea as you lounge on a squishy couch around a board game or a book. Studio 34 Located below Butler, Studes (stewds) or the Stud (stewd) will save you on those dreadful all-night paper benders. Open from 8 p.m. to 3:30 a.m., the late-night convenience store offers French bread pizzas, hot dogs, quesadillas, sushi, ramen and whatever else you need to get you through those last 500 words. The U-Store Located next to Blair Arch, this convenience store is your one-stop shop for both life needs (laundry detergent, poster hangers, binders)

and food needs, featuring a selection of a la carte items from restaurants in town, snacks on snacks on snacks and large quantities of juices and sodas to mix with your beverages. Chemistry CaFe While I cannot comment on anything served here because I have made it a personal goal to never step foot in the Frick Chemistry Laboratory, I really really appreciate the name. WaWa (or, for your next four years, The Wa) So it’s not technically on campus, but neither is Forbes, so get over it. The Wa is a beacon of hope at even the darkest times. Open basically always, hot sandwiches, caffeinated products and a beautiful Ben and Jerry’s selection have your back even when that girl in your study group doesn’t. The Wa also offers therapeutic camaraderie as you wait for your sandwich with others in a zombie-like stupor in the wee hours of the morning. It’s more fun than it sounds. Dear frosh, I have equipped you to enter this new world in the best way I know how. It will be the best of times and the worst of times, but at least you now know regardless that you can be eating at all times. Freshman 15? You are all over achievers — make it 50.

LIFEHACKING

INSOMNIA

The Princeton Guide for the Sleep-Deprived Freshman year hacks By Ye Eun Charlotte Chun columnist

C

ongratulations, Class of 2017! You’ve made the best decision of your life: joining the Orange Bubble. You’ve traveled the world, made ground-breaking discoveries and are ready to conquer Princeton. Nothing could possibly stop you, except perhaps that fiend and terror to all — sleep. You’ll be sitting in the Rocky common room chatting with your friend until sunrise then casually strolling into the dining halls for pancakes. You’ll be cramming for exams in the Wilson dance studio just because it’s the only place cool enough to keep you awake. And sometimes, you’ll be waking up after having missed an entire day of class and pull an all-nighter trying to catch back up. So from one sleepdeprived expert to another, here’s my Princeton guide to survival. Know your late-night food spots

Get yourself a punch card at Witherspoon’s, located in Frist Campus Center. Every ninth coffee is free, and if you’re lucky enough, you may even get a free chai latte or cappuccino. If you’re up for a brief study break, grab a buddy and go to the Wa. Try mixing their coffee half-half for a blissful 4 a.m. serenity. Murray-Dodge Cafe offers free cookies from 10 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. every day except Saturday, when it’s open until 1:30. The basement hangout offers great music and board games for those desiring a late night pickme-up. The French bread pizzas and nachos at Butler College’s Studio 34 are to die for. If you’re too lazy to head down campus, try the C-Store at Frist, open until 2 a.m. Play some pool and pop by the Frist Food Gallery during exam weeks for daily snacks at the same time. The U-Store is also open until 4 a.m. every day, where you’ll find everything from light meals to tweezers. When else would you pluck your eyebrows if not the night

before your paper’s due? In addition to these food outlets, you’ll find that free food is offered liberally on campus. Student groups, your residential college, your residential college adviser (RCA) and your residential graduate student (RGS) will offer study breaks: Be on the lookout for them, and attend them religiously. Claim your territory Frist classrooms fill up fast and libraries close much too early for a school suffering from grade deflation. Find a place you like and settle down early. Some buildings don’t kick you out as long as you’ve hidden in one of their classrooms before they turn off Prox access for the night, so buckle down, sit in and don’t move. Establish wake-up-call friendships You won’t ever be the only one up late, and you definitely don’t want to miss your 9 a.m. language class or physics precept, so have your friends call you when they get up (and vice versa). Bonus points for the friends who

will break down your door if you’re not picking up.

By Barbara Zhan

Take a break You can’t possibly sit and work through an entire night. Believe it or not, taking breaks will make your life so much easier, even if you do end up sleeping in a bit later. Stargaze on a clear night; Princeton has one of the most beautiful night-views on the east coast, especially behind the golf course. Befriend your fellow squirrels; Asian tourists don’t have to be the only ones fascinated by them. Start an Instagram sunrise series, but only if you’re desperate enough to think that it’s a good idea.

These tips aren’t big-picture suggestions, like “discover new passions” or “experience new things.” The tricks I’m about to tell you are tangible ways to make your freshman year a lot easier — “hacks” that will simplify your life and make your freshman year schedule a lot less hellish than mine was.

Mix and match There are a ton of other tips up our sleeves, but it’s best you discover them yourselves. Princeton’s a place where sleeping is sometimes a waste of time, because let’s face it, where else would you be surrounded by so many amazingly talented and interesting people? Congrats again — it’s going to be a good four years. Now go to bed!

Check us out on YouTube for more glimpses of real campus life:

youtube.com/dailyprincetonian Interested? Hit us up at join@dailyprincetonian.com to learn more about our pretty, pretty videos.

columnist

Don’t go to every class. You will realize from the very beginning that some classes just aren’t worth going to. I’ve had math classes where the teacher basically copied down definitions and examples straight from the textbook and economics precepts where the preceptor didn’t even know which section we were on. I’ve seen people run to class just to make it through the door on time, only to fall asleep five minutes later or play “Candy Crush” the whole time. If the class only includes material from the textbook and you’re short on time, just read the textbook on your own. If you’re too tired or too hungover to fully concentrate in class, you’re not going to get anything out of it, so you might as well sleep in. It’ll save you time and energy, which you can use to learn more efficiently later. Don’t buy bottled water. They give you a water bottle on the first day of freshman orientation — don’t lose track of it. There are filtered water dispensers all over campus, including at late meal. There’s cold water and fancy lemon-flavored water in the dining halls. Spend your late meal dollars on something you can’t get for free. Make sure to stop your door when you’re going to the bathroom. I’ve had the misfortune of locking myself out of my room 17 times. To be fair, I was living in a single, and I’m exceptionally careless, but many of my friends have had this problem as well. Now, every time I leave my room to go to the bathroom or take a shower, I stop the door with a button magnet (included with my dry erase board) or a rubber eraser, so I definitely won’t lock myself out. Only do this for 20 minutes at most —

you don’t want people snooping around in your room. And know that each time you do this, you’re gambling that fire safety won’t choose that 20-minute window to conduct a surprise inspection.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

You will realize from the very beginning that some classes just aren’t worth going to. I’ve seen people run to class just to make it through the door on time, only to fall asleep five minutes later or play “Candy Crush” the whole time. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Make as many friends as you can in the first semester. In the beginning, everyone’s eager to make friends. People introduce themselves, shake hands and exchange phone numbers. They’re willing to sit down with strangers at dinner and just start making conversation. But as soon as friend groups start forming, it becomes a lot harder to meet new people. After winter break, groups are solidified, and people mostly hang out with the friends they’ve already made. It’s no longer common for people to sit with strangers in the dining halls. People start hanging out in flocks, and it becomes increasingly harder to become close friends with new people. So take advantage of your first few weeks to make as many random new connections as you can, before you begin to identify others and yourself by group affiliations. That kind of opportunity won’t come again in your time at Princeton.


The Daily Princetonian

The Freshman Issue summer 2013

page 19

THE FRESHMAN DICTIONARY 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. Ai Weiwei, n. A Chinese dissident artist who sculpted the statues currently in front of the Wilson School fountain. He tried to come to Princeton once, but the Chinese government held onto his passport. Will release a heavy metal album sometime this year. Alcohol Initiative, n. A trustee-sponsored attempt to reduce alcohol consumption by throwing huge sums of money at undergraduates for alternative activities. Hosts the popular dodgeball tournament in April, at which many teams are drunk. Alexander Beach, n. Princeton’s version of a beach. Lacks sand and water but is filled with lots of bodies in bathing suits on sunny spring days. Located in front of Alexander Hall on the northern end of campus. See “Poe Field.” all-nighter, n. Grim, duskto-dawn studying or writing marathon in which sleep is postponed indefinitely. Often procrastination-induced and caffeine-fueled. Usually followed by prolonged periods of hibernation. Your freshman 15 will probably be

C Cafe Vivian, n. Slightly pricier food spot located on the first floor of Frist Campus Center that serves amazing flatbread pizzas, calzones and sandwiches. Styled as a jazz joint, Viv sometimes features live music. Cane Spree, n. Multisport competition between freshmen and sophomores held at the end of the second week of classes. Includes cane wrestling, tug-of-war, unscheduled brawls and a barbecue on Poe Field. Popular for the free T-shirts. Calm down — you’ll get a lot of free T-shirts during your time here. Cannon Club, n. Bicker club known for its three taprooms. Recently resurrected, the club plays host to a large proportion of athletes. See Street’s breakdown of the Street. Cap & Gown Club, n. The most-bickered club last year, Cap also has a reputation for hosting high proportions of athletes, especially from track and field. See Street’s breakdown of the Street. Carl A. Fields Center, n. Properly called the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding. A building located on Prospect Avenue that hosts diversity-themed events and programming. Carnegie, Lake, n. Five minutes from campus, five miles long. Scenic venue

BY DAILY PRINCETONIAN STAFF Come prepared.

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.”

Every Dean’s Date, the Band romps about campus in their trademark blazers and hats disturbing students in the final throes of paper-writing marathons.

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.”

PHOTO BY LILIA XIE :: ASSOCIATE PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

B Baker Rink, n. Ice rink located down-campus where the hockey teams practice. The USG sometimes holds free Skate Nights where you can take dates. 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 (God knows why) or serenade the hapless on Valentine’s Day. Beast, n. What spews forth from taps on Prospect Avenue. It does the trick. 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 Beast. See “Prospect,” “Beast,” “boot.” Beirut, n. 1. A popular drinking game in which players attempt to toss a ping-pong ball into an array of Solo cups. Losers may be “forced” to engage in a naked

for crew but too slimy for swimming. Gift of Andrew Carnegie so that Princeton could have a crew team, after then-University President Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879, asked him for money for University construction. Wilson’s reported comment: “We asked for bread, and he gave us cake.” carrel, n. Like the all-male student body and the old pub in Chancellor Green, carrels are the newest addition to the ghosts of Princeton past. For better or for worse, you will never know the fourby-six-by-eight-foot metal study closets in Firestone Library where seniors locked themselves around February to emerge in April with 30,000-word theses. Don’t worry, you’ll get study spaces that aren’t fire hazards. See “thesis.” 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.” Chapel, n. Site of religious services and opening exercises at the start of every year. Third-largest university chapel in the world. Contrary to Orange Key legend, it wasn’t built by a Yalie. Chancellor Green, n. Gorgeous library attached to East Pyne featuring stainedglass windows and amazingly comfortable couches. Naps happen here.

lap. Does not usually involve paddles, because this isn’t Dartmouth. A mainstay of the eating club taproom. Syn: “pong.” 2. The capital of Lebanon. See “boot.” Bicker, n. Princeton’s multiday equivalent of fraternity or sorority rush for the six selective eating clubs. During Bicker, club members meet sophomores and other upperclassmen 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,” “multiclub 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.” Blair Arch, n. That large, pretty arch across from Richardson Auditorium. Campus landmark and

Charter Club, n. Club with a weighted sign-in system located extremely far down Prospect Avenue, near the E-Quad. Plays host to a high proportion of engineers because they’re the only ones for whom it’s remotely convenient. See Street’s breakdown of the Street. CJL, abbrev. Center for Jewish Life. Self-explanatory building on Washington Road. Popular lunch spot regardless of religious affiliation. clapper, n. Part of the Nassau Hall bell that the incoming class tried to steal each year. The logic behind the age-old tradition is that if the clapper is stolen, the bell signifying the start of classes won’t ring, so classes can’t be held. After Geoffrey MacArthur ’95 fell from the tower in 1992, the administration decided to remove the clapper permanently. Cloister Inn, n. Sign-in club known for hosting a high percentage of waterbased athletes. See Street’s breakdown of the Street. cluster, n. Where a whole bunch of computers congregate. Features printers which are often jammed, toner-less or otherwise malfunctioning, staplers that are often broken or empty and people scowling at the movies they have to watch for class. Scattered throughout campus. Colonial Club, n. Sign-in club that recently claimed Friday nights from Charter. See Street’s breakdown of the Street.

frequent site of a cappella jams. Blair Tower, n. Former home of despised sophomores who lucked out during residential college room draw and got amazing rooms with amazing views. Now used as classrooms and housing for resident graduate students and a few faculty members in residence. bomb, v. To do miserably on an exam. Translates to a range between A-minus to actually failing. See “Orgo,” “grade deflation.” bonfire, n. Tradition of lighting an enormous bonfire on Cannon Green to celebrate the football team’s victories over both Harvard and Yale in a season. Much to universal campus excitement, we got one last year. 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 four years. boot, v. To toss one’s cookies,

Committee on Discipline, n. The University body responsible for investigating academic integrity and other disciplinary offenses. Community Action, abbrev. CA. Week-long pre-orientation activity built around service trips in the Princeton, Trenton and Philadelphia area. Like Outdoor Action, but with showers. Communiversity, n. Allday festival on Nassau and Witherspoon Streets held in April to promote town-gown unity. Features food, bands and student performances. When the festival ends, tensions between the University and town soon return. consulting, n. What many of your classmates will go on to do. See “tool shed,” “Woody Woo.” co-op, n. Upperclassman dining alternative in which members share cooking responsibilities. Vegetarians, try 2 Dickinson St.; omnivores, stick to Brown, Mathey or the International Food Co-ops. Cottage Club, the. Officially called “University Cottage Club.” Bicker club known to be populated by athletes, Southerners and the wealthy. See Street’s guide to the Street. Coursera, n. An online course engine where lots of people around the world can attend the lectures you’re sleeping through. Hailed as the future of higher education, it’s been met with mixed responses from students.

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. Breakout Trips, n. A collection of civic engagement trips planned and led by students and funded by the Pace Center for Civic Engagement. Participants are selected by application (and you thought your application days were over — you’re in for a rude awakening). Trips take place over fall and spring breaks. Past trips have examined arts in Philadelphia, school technology in Boston, immigration in Arizona, farming in Florida and other social issues. Bric-a-Brac, n. Princeton’s all-class yearbook. Make sure you show up on time for picture day and get all your friends to sign HAGS at the end of a school year! Don’t. High school is over. See “Nassau Herald.” Bridges, nickname, CEE 102: Engineering in the Modern

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. Just watch out for the online commenters. Also known as the ‘Prince.’ Davis, Douglas, n. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=q9RGzTrbP5I. D-Bar, abbrev. Debasement Bar. Sole hangout for graduate students, located in the basement of the Graduate College. According to reports, highly awkward. See “Grad College,” “graduate student.” Dead Week, n. Week between end of finals and graduation, when seniors and students employed for Reunions hang out and try to do as little as possible. This can take the form of group vacations to the beach. See “Reunions.” Dean’s Date, n. 1. 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. 2. Dean’s Date Theater. Students congregate in

World. Counts as an HA for science kids and an ST for humanities kids. In past years, the final has involved literally memorizing pictures of bridges. See “P/D/F.” B.S.E., abbrev. Bachelor’s 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. Business Today, n. Glossy campus business affairs magazine with large alumni coffers where ex-Future Business Leaders of America gather to talk Goldman. See “i-banking,” “consulting.” Butler College, n. Residential college with the newest buildings. Located far down-campus; contains Studio 34.

McCosh courtyard before the 5 p.m. deadline to cheer on classmates who have truly left their papers to the last minute, an activity that was more exciting in the days before email. Look out for your friends with merciless history, english or anthropology professors who demand hard copies — the folks sprinting from Firestone to Dickinson, essays in hand, are a sight worth seeing. 3. Dean’s Date Fairies. Cross-dressing men from the Triangle Club who pass out candy on the night before Dean’s Date. See “all-nighter.” Dei Sub Numine Viget, phrase. Latin motto on Princeton’s seal. Translation: “Under God’s Power She Flourishes.” Unofficial version: “God Went to Princeton.” 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. See “Arts & Transit Neighborhood.” Down-campus, adj. 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.”


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Fine Hall, n. The name of that extremely ugly brown building rising high above the earth behind Lewis Library. Contains the math department. fire inspection, n. Twice-asemester unannounced visit to your dorm room, before which you should frantically hide illegal appliances under your bed 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. See “carrel.” 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.

Students chow down on enormous sandwiches from the legendary Hoagie Haven. PHOTO BY LISA FIERSTEIN :: SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

E E-Quad, abbrev. Engineering Quadrangle. A collection of academic buildings where engineers spend all their time. Very, very far east from central campus. East Pyne, n. Pretty building up-campus near Firestone Library that houses language departments, the department of comparative literature and the department of classics. eating clubs, n. Eleven large mansions on Prospect Avenue that serve as the hub of upperclassman life. You probably weren’t allowed to ask questions about them on your tour. Biggest reason that Princeton is still considered elitist by the outside world. See Street’s breakdown of the Street. 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 ascended to the University presidency from the position of provost last year. Seems to have forgotten that this isn’t high school and assigned you summer reading. Wellrespected in academic circles. Some expect he’ll simply maintain the policies of his predecessor. See “Tilghman, Shirley.” EM, abbrev. Ethical Thought and Moral Values. Distributional 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. Emails for Females, problematic nickname for COS 109: Computers in Our World, a computer science class in which you learn little to no programming. See “P/D/F.” entryway, n. Self-contained section of a dorm or classroom building. Most frequently found in older buildings, which were built to be riot-proof. Only way to get from one entry

J

L

Jadwin Gymnasium, n. Gym for varsity athletes and sports located far, far down-campus. Site of varsity basketball games. Not Jadwin Hall.

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

Jadwin Hall, n. An academic building south of Fine Hall that contains the physics department. Not Jadwin Gymnasium. jam, n. An event at which one or more a cappella groups sing, commonly inside of an arch. junior paper, n. Lengthy independent work for juniors meant to prepare them for the senior thesis. Some departments require one; most require two. Often abbrev. “JP.” Tragic reminder of impending mortality. junior slums, n. Upperclass dorms located up-campus; Princeton’s version of slums. Don’t be fooled by the Gothic stone.

K Keller Center, n. Center located near the E-quad that sponsors events, classes and programming related to entrepreneurship and innovation. Stop by before you drop out to work on your start-up full-time. 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.

late meal, n. The only thing that makes upperclassmen jealous of freshmen. In theory, an option for students who miss dining hall meal times. In practice, free noms and mixers. See “Frist.”

to another is to go outside and back in again or go through the basement or up to the top floor. Partly because of this system, you may never meet the person who lives on the other side of your bedroom wall. e-reserves, n. Catalogues of off-centered scans of many required readings. Thank your professors when they offer these in place of Pequod packets. Bow down to professors who are able to photocopy readings not upside down. Curse all professors as you wait for 300 pages of readings to print. See “Pequod.”

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. Now a prime road-trip week. See “Breakout Trips.”

Franzia, n. Brand of boxed (read: dirt cheap and sickeningly sweet) wine. Comes in both rose and white. Goes down easy, comes back up more painfully. See “boot,” “Tower Club.” 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. See “Late meal.” fraternities, n. pl. Groups of males that gather to drink and grunt. Freshmen 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 upperclassmen reacquaint themselves with campus life and “meet” the freshmen. Prime time to drink copious amounts of alcohol amid nighttime mosh pits in the eating clubs’ backyards.

G Garden Theatre, Princeton, n. Community theater. Shows

The Freshman Issue summer 2013 mostly artsy films as well as a few big-budget flicks. Good first date. Free movies for students on weekends. Graduate College, the. Commonly called the “Grad College.” A mythical castle across the golf course behind Forbes rumored to be inhabited by those they call “graduate students.” Undergrads like to climb its tower to take pictures of the view and eat in its dining hall on Thursday nights, when dinner features specialty food stations with made-to-order sesame noodles, quesadillas, etc. See “D-bar.” grade deflation, n. University policy to limit A’s in courses to 35 percent of grades per department. 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 1 mile from central campus. Often characterized as “sketchy.”

H 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 semisignificant feature of the social scene which is the topic of more online comments and debates on the website of the ‘Prince’ than all the political issues of the day combined. hose, v. To render helpless. Most often done to rejected Bicker prospects, who are hosed at their doorstep. Fraternities, a cappella groups and even the ‘Prince’ hose, but don’t worry — a literal hose is typically not involved. See “Bicker.”

I i-banking, nickname, investment banking. What many of your classmates will go on to do. See “tool shed.” ICC, abbrev. Interclub Council. Group made up of the 11 eating club presidents. Coordinates relations between Prospect Avenue, the municipality and the University. ICE, abbrev. Integrated Course Engine. An online tool that visually presents your class schedule for the semester. You can also friend request people on the site and stalk their schedules. independent, n. Upperclass student who joins neither an eating club nor a University dining facility. By graduation, is either a great connoisseur of Princeton’s restaurants, a great cook or a great mooch. Many live in Spelman. Intersession, n. 1. Week off between fall finals and the start of spring semester. The only week of true freedom you will ever have at Princeton. 2. Jolt of fear for seniors who haven’t started their thesis research. IRC, abbrev. International Relations Council. Umbrella group somehow related to Whig-Clio that organizes Model UN conferences. See “tool shed,” “Tower Club,” “Wilson School.” Ivy Club, n. Bicker club with a reputation for elitism and mahogany. See Street’s breakdown of the Street.

Indie-folk group Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros played the headlining act at Lawnparties this past spring. PHOTO BY KATHRYN MOORE :: SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Lawnparties, n. Afternoon drink-a-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 — small animal print and pastels encouraged. 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. Lewis Library, n. Large, modern science library located down-campus across Washington Road. New, nice and quiet. LGBT Center, the, n. Center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students and allies. Provides safe space on the second floor of Frist. Sponsors events and programming throughout the year and provides resources for interested students. Lot 32, n. Parking lot located just outside of campus, far down Elm Road, where your upperclass friends’ cars are located.

M master, n. Faculty member who acts as den mother or father for the freshmen and sophomores in the residential colleges. 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 Hall, n. A large, sprawling series of lecture halls up-campus in which many of your introductorylevel large lecture classes will be held. Also features smaller seminar rooms mainly used by the English and History departments. Desks are small, cramped and wooden;

bathrooms are difficult to find. McCosh Health Center, n. Isabella McCosh Infirmary, 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.

N Nassau Herald, n. Princeton yearbook containing only the senior photos. To get all the other stuff you associate with yearbooks, you have to shell out some extra cash for the Bric-a-Brac. See “Bric-a-Brac.”

McCosh Walk, n. Walkway extending from University Place on the west to Washington Road on the east. If there weren’t hills, you’d be able to see clear from one end of campus to the other. Features many puddles. Stop by around 4:55 p.m. on Dean’s Date to watch your friends sprint.

Nassau Weekly, n. Also “the Nass.” A weekly tabloid distributed far less than weekly. Known for humorous “Verbatim” section, which is filled with random overheard quotes from around campus, and for printing other random gibberish. See “WPRB,” “St.A’s.”

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

netID, n. The part of your email address preceding “@ princeton.edu” and your username for most campus websites.

New York City, n. Just an hour-and-a-half train ride away. A round-trip ticket is around $30. Sometimes art or biology classes take you there for free. Newman’s Day, n. To Paul Newman’s chagrin, students attribute to him the quote “24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not.” Of course, Newman never said that, and there are 30 beers in a case, but that doesn’t stop some University students from attempting to drink 24 beers in 24 hours every April 24. Nude Olympics, n. Sophomore rite of passage banned in 1999 as part of an effort to reduce drunken revelry. Celebrated by running naked through Holder Courtyard at midnight on the night of each year’s first snowfall.


The Freshman Issue summer 2013

O OA, abbrev. Outdoor Action. Week-long pre-orientation program that sends half of the incoming freshman class into the woods to get dirty and make friends. There’s no action on Outdoor Action, but there’s always freshman 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. OIT, abbrev. Office of Information Technology. Controls the University’s computer and Internet systems. Runs a tech clinic in Frist. Old Nassau, 1. phrase. Nickname for Princeton University, derived from Nassau Hall. 2. n. School song. Orange Key, n. Campus tourguiding group. Don’t believe everything they told you on your tour. Orange and Black Ball, n. Campus-wide ball resurrected two years after a decades-long absence. Lots of finger food. Similar to prom. Orgo, abbrev. CHM 303/304: Organic Chemistry. Soul-killer. Separates the kids from the doctors.

P Pace Center, n. Civic engagement powerhouse on campus that encompasses Community House and the Student Volunteers Council. Sponsors Breakout trips during school breaks and distributes large amounts of money for service projects. See “Breakout trips.”

page 21

The Daily Princetonian

Palmer Square, n. Town square located just across Nassau Street from the University. Home to preppy stores, specialty boutiques and townies. Patton, Susan, n. An alumna of the Class of 1977 who wrote an infamous Letter to the Editor to this paper discussing advice she would give to her daughter, namely her belief that Princetonian women should “find a husband on campus before [they] graduate.” Draw your own conclusions. PAW, abbrev. Princeton Alumni Weekly. The nation’s fourth-oldest weekly magazine, published by the Alumni Association far less than weekly. 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. 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. Physics for Future Leaders, actual name of PHY115A. A physics course explicitly designed to introduce nonscientists to just enough science to ostensibly be able to make decisions. Future leaders who are also scientists should seek an actual education elsewhere. See “tool shed,” “P/D/F.” pickups, n. pl. Nights on which Princeton’s many, many selective clubs and organizations greet new members by showering them with champagne, Silly String, etc. in their dorm rooms and then taking them elsewhere for revelry. See “Bicker.” Poe Field, n. Large oval field at the far southern end of campus where club and intramural sports teams hold practices,

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Dillon Gymnasium is transformed and filled with balloons for the annual campus-wide Orange and Black Ball. PHOTO BY TERRY ZHU :: STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

sunbathing frequently occurs and barbecues are sometimes held. See “Alexander Beach.” power hour, n. Ritual in which a shot of beer is downed every minute for an hour. Use of hard alcohol not advised. See “boot.” P-Rade, n. Annual procession of ridiculously spirited, multi-generational alumni sporting black-and-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. See “Woody Woo.” precept, n. Fifty-minute weekly 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.

Q QR, abbrev. Quantitative Reasoning, a distributional requirement. See “Emails for Females.” Quadrangle Club, n. Signin club commonly known as “Quad.” Endangered. See

R Street’s breakdown of the Street. RCA, abbrev. Residential college adviser. An upperclass student who lives on 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.” Rapelye, Janet, n. Dean of Admission. Let you in. Has re-

prefrosh, n. What you are until you arrive on campus. 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.” preppy, 1. n. Person who attended St. Paul’s, Andover, Exeter, Lawrenceville, Groton, etc. Likely wears a lot of polos and is never seen without Sperrys. 2. adj. Princeton is supposedly one of the 10 preppiest schools in the nation, but don’t be fooled: It’s in the top five. See “Lawnparties.” Princeton, 1. n. The University to which you have committed the rest of your life (including your future earnings). 2. n. The affluent suburban town in which your blissful Orange Bubble is located.

vamped Princeton’s admission policies, including accepting the Common App, eliminating small group interviews and abolishing the “YES!” letter. 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. 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. Reported to be the largest single beer order in the United States. See “P-Rade.” Richardson Auditorium, n. Enormous performance hall located up-campus across from Blair Arch.

PrincetonFML, n. Website where Princetonians procrastinate by publicly sharing their frustrations (Summer’s almost over, FML) and their glories (Time for four years at Princeton, MLIG). 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. See Street’s guide to the Street. Prospect 11, n. The ultimate drinking challenge: one beer at every eating club in one night. A favored item on senior bucket lists. Called “Prospect

rival, n. What Princeton lacks. What Penn thinks we are. Robo, n. Drinking game involving bouncing a quarter into a series of beer-filled cups. See “boot.” Rockefeller College, n. Commonly referred to as “Rocky.” Northernmost residential college known for gorgeous Gothic architecture. Rocks for Jocks, nickname. GEO 103: Natural Disasters. See: “P/D/F.” RoMa, nickname. Rockefeller/ Mathey College dining hall. Looks like the Great Hall in Harry 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

10” before Cannon reopened, and possibly once again if Quad goes bankrupt. See “Beast.” 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. Humping the wall in the process is optional. Usage: “Could you prox me in?” 3. n. The Daily Princetonian’s blog. See “PUID.” Public Safety, n. University cops responsible for regulating parking, ignoring room parties and opening doors for lockedout students. Called “P-safe.” Despite years of effort by the police union, the officers don’t carry guns. PUID, n. 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. See “prox.”

addresses may receive better times. room improvement, phrase. 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.” Route 1, n. A large, divided road about a five-minute drive from campus along which realworld institutions like movie theaters, malls, Walmarts, discount liquor stores and chain restaurants can be found. Proof that you are, in fact, in New Jersey. rush, v. To move very quickly toward something. n. 1. An aquatic plant. 2. A process you are forbidden to know anything about. Shhh. rush ban, n. A ban on freshman rush enacted two years ago that prohibits you from engaging in any fraternity or sorority activities for your first year. See “Tilghman, Shirley.”

Graduating seniors run triumphantly through Bloomberg Arch at the conclusion of the P-Rade at Reunions every year. PHOTO BY JOSEPH LASETER :: SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER


The Daily Princetonian

page 22

Last fall, the football team earned us a bonfire. An effigy of John Harvard and a stuffed Yale Bulldog were placed in the inferno. See “bonfire.” PHOTO BY HENRY ROME :: EDITOR-IN-CHIEF EMERITUS

S safety school, 1. n. Yale, Harvard, Penn, etc. 2. phrase. Popular chant at basketball games regardless of opponent. 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. Charter is the only club with a weighted sign-in based on a student’s attendance of club events. See Street’s guide to the Street. 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”). Freshmen are not allowed to rush Greek organizations. May be your ticket into a bicker club, or a way for people to instantly stereotype you. Stars for Stoners, nickname. AST 203: The Universe. Purported to actually be a somewhat difficult class involving actual equations. See “P/D/F.” STL, abbrev. Science and Technology with Lab, a self-explanatory distributional requirement. See “Bridges.” STN, abbrev. Science and Technology, Nonlaboratory, a self-explanatory distributional requirement. See “Physics for Future Leaders.” St. A’s, n. “Secret” literary society with unclear purpose and unknown meaning. See “Ivy Club,” “the Nass.” Street, the, nickname. Prospect Avenue, home of the eating clubs and center of University nightlife. See Street’s guide to the Street. Studio 34, n. Late-night conve-

nience store in the basement of Butler College known for its French bread pizzas. study break, n. Free food. See “RCA.”

T Terrace Club, n. Sign-in club known for artsy types, vegans and hipsters. Popular end-of-night stop for all of campus. See Street’s breakdown of the Street. T.I., abbrev. Tiger Inn. Bicker club known for raucous, beer-soaked parties and heavy preponderance of bros. See Street’s breakdown of the Street. Tiger Admirers, n. Facebook account to which lonely Princetonians can anonymously submit messages of heartbreak and desire that are then posted publicly so others can commiserate. See “PrincetonFML.” Tower Club, n. Bicker club known for freshman-friendly dance floor and taproom, as well as heavy preponderance of theater types, a cappella groups and Woody Woo majors. See Street’s breakdown of the Street.

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.

The Freshman Issue summer 2013 Triangle Club, n. Undergraduate musical theater group that writes and stages an annual extravaganza of song, slapstick and dance. Famous for the drag kickline and alumnus Jimmy Stewart ’32. Twenty-One (21) Club, n. Secret drinking organization founded in 1881, composed of 42 male juniors and seniors who consume 21 beers in 42 minutes at an annual contest. Members are culled from bicker clubs, fraternities and sports teams.

U UMCP, abbrev. University Medical Center at Princeton. Still known by its former abbreviation, PMC, because “getting PMCed” after a night of drinking sounds better than “getting UMCPed.” See “McCosh Health Center,” “boot.” up-campus, adj. Located on the part of campus closer to Nassau Street, up the hill. Synonym: “north.” Usage: “From here, go up-campus to find Brown.”

third-floor Bicker, n. The practice of exchanging sexual favors for admission into a Bicker club. Named for the club officers’ third-floor bedrooms in which such encounters usually occur.

U-Store, n. Officially, the Princeton University Store. Located at 36 University Place, across from Blair Arch. Sells food, dorm items and school supplies. Prostitution allegedly happened there once.

Tiger, n. 1. Princeton student or athlete. 2. Mascot dressed in tigerskin 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.

USG, abbrev. Undergraduate Student Government. Resume-builders who like to hear themselves talk. Plans Lawnparties. Otherwise, of questionable impact. Current president is Shawon Jackson ’15. See “tool shed.”

Tilghman, Shirley, n. Princeton’s 19th president. Just left the Bubble for greener pastures. First woman and first scientist to hold the presidency. Friend of the sciences, enemy of the Greeks. See “rush ban.” tool shed, n. 1. Nickname of the Wilson School because of the heavy preponderance of pre-meds and pre-Wall Street types who major there. 2. The Undergraduate Student Government. See “USG.”

W Wa, the, n. Campus colloquialism for the Wawa convenience store. Located between the Dinky and Forbes. Whig-Clio, abbrev. The American Whig-Cliosophic Society. Centuries-old debate society that hosts such topical events as the Annual Latke versus Hamantaschen Debate. See “tool shed.”

Whitman College, n. Residential college that bears a striking resemblance to the castle in Shrek. Built in 2007 and rumored to have more money than every other college. Wilson College, n. Centrally located residential college named after Woodrow Wilson. An incoherent assortment of buildings that vary in quality but are united in their residents’ loyalty to Wilson. Contains a volleyball court. Women’s Center, the, n. Center for women’s issues. Provides an often-quiet study space on the second floor of Frist. Sponsors events and programming for interested students. Woody Woo, abbrev. Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, or the Wilson School. Formerly selective major 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). See “tool shed.” Woody Woo fountain, n. Idyllic fountain and pool located in Scudder Plaza, north of Robertson Hall. Popular wading spot in the spring, especially after Wilson School theses are submitted. WPRB, n. Student-run, community-supported independent radio station located in the basement of Bloomberg Hall. Owns the Nass. See “Terrace Club.” Wucox, n. Portmanteau for “Wu/ Wilcox dining hall.” Large dining hall that serves Butler and Wilson Colleges. Frequented by athletes and gym rats post-workout.

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


Sports

The Freshman Issue summer 2013

page 23

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } F O O T B A L L | O C T. 2 0

Homecoming comeback stuns Harvard, 39-34 By Stephen Wood sports editor

With less than 30 seconds left to play in Saturday’s football game, the undefeated Harvard Crimson was closing in on sophomore quarterback Quinn Epperly. Princeton was down 34-32, sophomore starting quarterback Connor Michelsen was injured, the homecoming crowd of 10,823 was on its feet, and Epperly was on the wrong foot as he hurled the ball toward the end zone. The ball fell into the arms of junior receiver Roman Wilson. He held on as he hit the ground. The Crimson looked on in disbelief as the Tigers roared. Seconds later, Princeton’s defense prevented Harvard quarterback Colton Chapple from adding to his total of 448 yards on the final play of the game, completing a stunning comeback. Fans stormed Powers Field, waving orange flags as the scoreboard showed the final score: Princeton 39, Harvard 34. The Tigers had scored 29 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to beat the defending league champion. “I don’t know if it’s sunk in yet,” Wilson said about 20 minutes after his historic catch. “It’s just an incredible feeling looking up and seeing all the fans, all the alumni.” His stunned feeling was shared by everyone in atten-

dance. The Crimson came in having won a Division I-best 14 straight games and not having lost to the Tigers since 2006. They led the Ivy League in points per game thanks to the phenomenal talent of Chapple, who had his second career five-touchdown game in the loss. Tight end Kyle Juszczyk defied Tiger defenders and PA announcers alike, hauling in 15 catches — the second most in Crimson history — for 192 yards. Harvard head coach Tim Murphy was stoic as he summed up what happened. “Princeton deserved to win,” he said. “They became a team they’d not been.” Princeton came in with confidence, building momentum with three straight wins. Its defense came in having only allowed six points in its last two games, but the offense, led by two young quarterbacks and a rotation of equally inexperienced running backs, was not expected to do much against a team that seemed on track to dominate the league for a second straight year. The first half played out just like most people expected. Chapple came out firing and picked apart the Tigers’ secondary, scoring three times and racking up 310 yards in the first two quarters. When he was not showing off his uncanny ability to hit a receiver in stride

COLUMN | MAY 13

Remembering the losers Kevin Whitaker Sports Editor emeritus

S

ome of the most fascinating words of advice I’ve heard came from a veteran professional photography editor. He said, “Winners are boring — they all look the same. Losers make the best photos.” This sounded weird to me at first because as a writer and fan, it is easy to focus on the victors. Winning teams are joyous and inspirational; losing teams are gloomy and heartbreaking. Winners get front-page spreads and thousands of page views; losers are bumped below the fold. But as I look back on my four years covering Princeton sports — a period of time that has included 48 Ivy League titles and nine national championships — I’m struck by how many of my most vivid memories involve losing teams. The 2011 Ivy League men’s basketball playoff, in which the Tigers held off an emerging Harvard dynasty and returned to the NCAA tournament for the first time in seven years on a buzzer-beater, will go down as one of the great moments in Princeton history. But for me, the indelible image of that season is not Doug Davis ’12 buried under a pile of fans and teammates; instead, it came five days later, in the bowels of the St. Petersburg Times Forum, after the Tigers were on the other end of a game-winning shot against Kentucky. Then-head coach Sydney Johnson ’97 answered questions with tears in his eyes. To his right, Kareem Maddox ’11 couldn’t take his mind off of one play; the Ivy League’s top defender, who had helped bottle up Kentucky’s slew of NBA-caliber See COLUMN page 31

MERRILL FABRY :: PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Receiver Roman Wilson caught the winning touchdown pass with less than 30 seconds left in October’s homecoming game against Harvard.

from a great distance, he was showing off his legs, rushing for 43 yards in the first half and eluding the defense every time a sack seemed imminent. Running back Treavor Scales ran for 62 yards in the half against one of the nation’s best rushing defenses. After senior Joe Cloud’s punt was blocked late in the first quarter, the Crimson quickly capitalized,

scoring its second of three touchdowns in the half. While the Crimson was having a field day, neither Michelsen nor Epperly could get anything going. Aside from a diving 24-yard catch from senior receiver Shane Wilkinson, the offense had a miserable first 30 minutes. Perhaps the only true bright spot of the half came when se-

nior defensive lineman Caraun Reid, whom Murphy called “an NFL player,” blocked Harvard’s third extra point attempt. Thanks to the block and two turnovers forced by the Tigers’ defense, the score was only 20-0 in Harvard’s favor at halftime. Head coach Bob Surace ’90 said there have been times in his career when he has felt his team was not playing hard, but

Saturday’s first half was not one of them. “I thought we were playing hard, we just weren’t executing,” he said. Michelsen finally got some time in the pocket on the opening drive of the second half, and he used it to hit Wilson, freshman running back Will Powers and Wilkinson for first downs that brought the Tigers See FOOTBALL page 27

F E AT U R E | M AY 8

For athletes, patterns in choices of majors

By Andrew Steele staff writer

In 2011, the Associated Press published a survey examining academic clustering, the tendency of varsity athletes on the same team to major in similar subjects, among football teams at 68 universities in the conferences which receive automatic bids to the Bowl Championship Series. The survey found that at 17 schools, more than 50 percent of football players were distributed among one or two majors. At another 22 schools, more than 50 percent of football players were found in one of three departments. The phenomenon was prevalent at Vanderbilt University, often considered the most academically strong school in the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference, where 35 of 59 non-freshman football players

were majoring in human and organizational development. Of Princeton football players between the Classes of 2011 and 2015, 59 percent majored in economics, history or politics, also some of the largest departments at the University in terms of total student enrollment. The tendency of teammates to major in similar disciplines is prevalent on other Princeton teams as well, though some are more pronounced than others. To examine the extent of this tendency at Princeton, The Daily Princetonian analyzed rosters on GoPrincetonTigers.com for the Classes of 2011 through 2015, cross-referenced with the Residential College Student Facebook for current sophomores, juniors and seniors and TigerNet for members of the Classes of 2011 and 2012. In total, 1,111 current and former student-athletes

were recorded: 669 men and 412 women. The results show that student-athletes do tend to concentrate in a handful of departments across the social sciences, although almost all majors are represented in the end, save for the relatively small German and music departments. Overall, a majority of varsity athletes decide to concentrate in six relatively large departments. Student-athletes make up about 20 percent of the total undergraduate student body. Some of these trends — particularly that of athletes to concentrate in larger departments — have been noticed by University administrators. The Office of the Dean of the College has begun to host discussions with varsity athletes on major choice. The initiative mirrors ODOC’s Major Choices initiative, which is intended to students See MAJORS page 29

FOOTBALL | APRIL 29

Catapano drafted by Kansas City Chiefs By Stephen Wood sports editor

Senior defensive end Mike Catapano, a three-time All-Ivy honoree and last season’s Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year, became the first Princeton player to be selected in the NFL draft since 2001 on Saturday, when the Kansas City Chiefs selected him with the first pick of the seventh round. At 207th overall, he was drafted higher than any Tiger since Jon Schultheis ’83, who was drafted 182nd overall by the Philadelphia Eagles. The pick came near the end of the three-day draft process. Catapano waited in his home in Bayville, N.Y., with friends and family as his agent talked with teams and the draft dragged on. During that time, he said, he focused on remaining calm and controlling what he could. “You kind of get used to the wait-

ing and, honestly, the nervousness, throughout the whole process,” he said. At one point, what could have been a life-changing phone call turned out to be a friend asking for directions. “We were waiting on this — I think it was a Green Bay pick or something like that — my phone rang, and I wanted to kill my friend,” Catapano said. Later on, however, it was the general manager of the Chiefs, John Dorsey, dialing Catapano’s number. “Mr. Dorsey, when he called me, was like ‘I’ve just got one question: Do you want to board the big red train?’ ” Catapano said. “And I said, ‘Hell yeah.’ ” Catapano was considered a long shot to be drafted at first, but a solid EastWest Shrine Game and a subsequent Pro Day at Princeton earned him the interest of several NFL teams, including the Minnesota Vikings and the New York See CATAPANO page 27

MONICA CHON :: FILE PHOTO

Senior defensive end Mike Catapano signed an NFL contract.

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The Freshman Issue summer 2013

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page 25

F I E L D H O C K E Y | N O V. 1 8

Tigers upset Tar Heels to win NCAA championship By Saahil Madge staff writer

The field hockey team staged a furious second-half comeback to upset the nation’s top-ranked team, North Carolina, 3-2 on Sunday afternoon to bring home Princeton’s first-ever field hockey national championship. The Tigers (21-1 overall, 7-0 Ivy League) broke through in their first appearance in the title game since 1998. The Tar Heels, the nation’s third-most successful team with six NCAA championships, settled for second place and saw their championship game record fall to 6-9. “It feels unbelievable to be a national champion. Our team is on top of the world right now,” senior striker Kat Sharkey said in an email. “To be the number one team in the country is amazing ... It feels like a dream.” The opening minutes saw North Carolina (23-2) attack Princeton’s defense with the offensive firepower that

has made it the nation’s topranked squad. After squandering three penalty corners in the first 10 minutes, the Tar Heels broke through on their fourth try, as Charlotte Craddock rocketed a shot past junior goalie Christina Maida for a 1-0 lead. In the following minutes, Princeton’s offense came alive. The Reinprecht sisters, junior midfielder Julia and senior midfielder Katie, set up a penalty corner and Sharkey knocked home her nationleading 38th goal of the season. Princeton continued to dominate possession for the remainder of the half, winning four penalty corners to North Carolina’s one and outshooting the Tar Heels 5-1. However, the Tigers couldn’t add to their goal tally, and the game went into the break tied at 1-1. After the half, both sides again failed to capitalize on numerous penalty corners. The Tar Heels struck again 11 minutes into the half, when

Craddock fed Katie Plyler from the top of the circle. Plyler poked a shot past Maida to give North Carolina a 2-1 edge. Princeton did not equalize until the 57th minute. Sharkey’s shot rebounded off North Carolina goalkeeper Sassi Ammer and rolled to sophomore striker Allison Evans. Evans, alone at the far post, easily scored to tie the game. Just minutes later, the Tigers struck again on what held up as the game-winning goal. Just as they did against Maryland in Friday’s semifinal, the Tigers won on a penalty stroke, this time off the stick of junior defender Amanda Bird. Princeton held off a flurry of shots from North Carolina to secure the win. Though the Tigers were outshot 13-11 and took seven penalty corners to the Tar Heels’ 10, Maida came up with five saves in the second half to preserve the victory. “She had an unbelievable season and really kept us in a lot of games,” Sharkey said

of Maida. “She doesn’t get as much credit as she deserves. She is one of the best goalies in the country, and she played awesome this entire season.” The weekend was truly one of resilience for the Tigers. On Friday, Princeton edged Maryland 3-2 in overtime to reach the final. The overtime victory was only Princeton’s second contest of the season to go to extra time and the first since a thrilling 3-2 win over Penn State in the first week of the season. Against Maryland, Princeton took an early lead in the first four minutes. Sharkey took a long ball in the left corner, weaved her way through the Terrapins’ defense and launched a shot from the center past Maryland goalkeeper Natalie Hunter. But the Tigers surrendered their lead just minutes later, when Maryland’s Jill Witmer corralled a rebound off Maida and tapped it in from the left post. Princeton reclaimed the lead before halftime on anoth-

er Sharkey goal, when she put away her own rebound. Maryland equalized in the 58th minute on a penalty stroke by Ali McEvoy, which tied the score at 2-2 and proved to be the final goal in regulation. The Tigers launched an unrelenting offensive attack in the final few minutes but failed to break through, sending the game to overtime. Less than six minutes into overtime, junior striker Michelle Cesan was fouled while shooting, earning a penalty stroke. Freshman midfielder Teresa Benevuti calmly scored to punch Princeton’s ticket to the championship game. Both Reinprechts, Sharkey, Maida and Cesan earned AllTournament honors, comprising nearly half of the 11-player team. Their efforts led Princeton to the first NCAA field hockey championship for an Ivy League school. “Within the Ivy League, we don’t give scholarships and don’t get to practice as much as other teams, and for us to

come out on top of all these big schools is just a testament to our amazing coaching staff and our talented studentathletes and all the hard work we have put into this season,” Maida said in an email. For Sharkey and Katie Reinprecht — two of the most decorated players in program history — as well as the other seniors, Sunday’s championship was a storybook ending to stellar careers. “I’m very sad to end my career at Princeton, but I feel very lucky to say that I ended my career with a smile on my face as a national champion,” Sharkey said. “My teammates and coaches are my best friends, and it just feels amazing that we all worked so hard and we won this together.” The Tigers’ first national championship in field hockey continued a remarkable streak for the University as a whole. At least one Princeton athlete or team has won a national championship in each of the last 42 school years.

FENCING | MARCH 25

Fencers top Notre Dame for NCAA win

By Stephen Wood sports editor

With strong showings by the entire team, Princeton separated itself from Notre Dame to win the NCAA Division I Fencing Championships in San Antonio on Sunday. It was Princeton’s first win at the NCAAs since the men’s and women’s tournaments were combined in 1990 — the men’s team won in 1964, and the Tigers came in second behind Ohio State last year. The men came into the tournament ranked third overall, behind Notre Dame and Penn State, and the women were ranked second behind Notre Dame. The competition is organized so that the men’s teams fenced on Thursday and Friday and the women’s teams fenced on Saturday and Sunday. “The NCAA format kind of helps us, plays more to our strengths than the Ivy League [tournament],” said senior epeeist Jonathan Yergler. At the end of Thursday, Penn State was in the lead ahead of Princeton, and the action on Friday ended the same way. The Nittany Lions’ men’s team demonstrated why it was ranked first,

but Princeton’s young squad surprised the competition with exceptional performances from members of all classes, finishing second overall and putting distance between itself and Notre Dame. “Being ahead of Notre Dame by six just on the men’s team, we knew we had a real shot to pull this through,” Yergler said. “And that’s when it started to get real exciting.” In the men’s saber, junior Robert Stone finished seventh overall, and fellow junior Phil Dershwitz finished 14th. Michael Mills of Penn, brother of foilist and former Princeton captain Alexander Mills ’12, came first in that weapon, while Penn State had two finishers in the top four. The men’s foil looked to be one of the Tigers’ weaker areas coming into the year because starters Mill and Marcus Howard ’12 had graduated, but freshmen Michael Dudey and Rodney Chen stepped up to the challenge. Dudey won 18 out of 23 bouts in round-robin play to finish fifth, and Chen finished 15th. Their success kept the Tigers near the top of the scoreboard.

As expected, the men’s epee squad posted impressive performances throughout the tournament. Yergler, who won the tournament last year, came second, and classmate Ed Kelley tied for third. Yergler defeated Kelley, his former roommate, in the semifinal round. “I even told Ed going into this that the only one who could beat him in the whole tournament was me,” Yergler said. “Between me and him, it’s always back and forth, and on any given day either one of us could have won.” Thanks to Princeton’s strength in all three weapons, Princeton had 83 points, just behind Penn State’s 94, after the end of the men’s competition. “We put a lot of pressure on the women,” Yergler said. On the women’s side, Princeton performed even better, taking the lead after the first day of competition and keeping it. The Stone sisters — siblings of Robert Stone — dominated the saber, with senior Eliza Stone taking first overall and freshman Gracie Stone tying for third. Eliza Stone placed third last year and second the year before that. “We’re looking at history in

the making, the start of a pretty great dynasty, as it were,” Yergler said of the women’s team. “It’s amazing,” Gracie Stone said. “We could not be happier.” In the foil, sophomore Ambika Singh finished ninth and junior Eve Levin finished 10th, improving over last year’s finishes of 10th and 12th, respectively. Junior Susie Scanlan, an Olympian who returned to college competition this season after having taken two years off to fence internationally, was first in the epee after the round-robin competition and came in second overall, while sophomore Katharine Holmes came in fifth. Holmes placed third last year. Overall, as of press time, Princeton had 25 points from men’s saber, 27 from men’s foil, 31 from men’s epee, 38 from women’s saber, 26 from women’s foil and 35 from women’s epee to give the Tigers 182 points overall, just ahead of Notre Dame’s 175. All six Tiger women earned All-American honors. “I’m so proud to be a part of this team,” Gracie Stone said. “We all worked and trained and helped each other all year ... We’re NCAA champions!”

MEREDITH WRIGHT:: ASSOCIATE PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR EMERITUS


The Daily Princetonian

page 26 MEN’S BASKETBALL | MARCH 4

Princeton downs Harvard, 58-53 By Shayan Rakhit associate sports editor emeritus

It’s the ultimate basketball cliche — to win the game, you have to win the loose ball plays, the bodies on the floor plays, the hustle plays. But cliches are grounded in reality, and the men’s basketball team lived that reality Friday night. Princeton (15-9 overall, 8-2 Ivy League) took down Harvard (17-8, 9-2) with a string of those hustle plays in a 58-53 win that was far closer than the score indicates. “We have, at times this season when we have been down, we haven’t been able to find that moment where we can push through something,” head coach Mitch Henderson ’98 said. “I thought that tonight was just a huge thing for our program.” With the Tigers up 54-53, 17 seconds left and the Crimson with possession, Harvard guard Siyani Chambers had an open lane to the basket. But Princeton’s help-side defense, as it had been doing all game, slid over and forced Chambers’s layup to fall short. In the ensuing scrum, junior forward Will Barrett and Crimson forward Steve Moundou-Missi fell to the ground, and the ball was kicked out of bounds. While all the bodies on the floor made it difficult to determine who had gained possession, senior forward Ian Hummer’s reaction made it very clear whose ball it was as he charged toward the student section in celebration. “The excitement got the best of me,” Hummer said. “I went the opposite direction, and no one had an idea what I was doing. But it is what it is. I just got caught up in the moment.” And what a moment it was, as Hummer had recently become the second all-time leading scorer in Princeton history after Bill Bradley ’67, scoring his 1564th point with a little over a minute left in the game. Meanwhile, he led the Tigers to their 24th straight home win over Harvard with 23 points and 14 rebounds. But Hummer’s role in the game was not yet complete, as the following sequence would demonstrate. Senior center Mack Darrow was immediately fouled after the inbound pass. Darrow missed the first of a one-andone, and Hummer swatted the ball outside the lane. Junior point guard T.J. Bray then made an impressive dive to keep the ball in bounds, keeping the clock running and Princeton

in possession when sophomore wing Denton Koon came up with the ball. “I knew I couldn’t get to it — Moundou-Missi’s a handful,” Hummer said. “The miss was so perfect. It came off the back iron, and it just popped right back out. I tried to just hit it out. I was afraid I hit it too hard, but T.J. was right there to make a diving play.” “I knew Denton was behind me,” Bray said. “I tried to turn it a little more, but I wasn’t able to. I just slapped it, and Denton made a good play to go get the ball. Ian getting his hand on that tip was huge.” Koon and Bray would make their free throws after being fouled in the waning minutes, icing the game and delivering the Tigers the 58-53 win. Princeton built a substantial lead through the first minutes of the second half after entering the frame with a 30-24 lead. Hummer was nearly unstoppable in the lane early on, making a string of strong post-up layups. Darrow would cap that run with the only three made from any player in the game, and the Tigers led 46-36 with just under 10 minutes left in the game. The Crimson was not about to roll over, however. Chambers began to heat up, slashing to the basket and setting up the pick-and-roll for Moundou-Missi. Moundou-Missi would make several key layups and was productive from the free throw line late. That freshman-sophomore combination fueled the Crimson comeback, and with just under three minutes to go, Harvard led 51-48. “I thought he was a little better tonight getting to the lane,” Henderson said when comparing Chambers’s game to his performance in the previous Princeton-Harvard matchup this season. “I’m not sure we did a very good job on him. He’s quick, got a nice first step. He bothered us coast-to-coast at the end of the second half.” After two free throws from Barrett, Chambers turned the ball over on the following possession. Bray, showing quickness of his own, drove to the basket, but his layup did not go down. Luckily for him and for Princeton, Hummer was right there for the putback. Two free throws from Hummer and a Chambers layup later, the stage was set at 54-53 for the loose-ball chaos that defined the end of the game.

The Freshman Issue summer 2013

THE ANCIENT EIGHT

DEF.

DEF.

69 - 65

Princeton

DEF.

Yale

MEN’S BASKETBALL PARITY WHEEL

67 - 64 72 - 66

Cornell

The men’s basketball Ivy League race has proven to have many twists and turns this season, as every team has suffered losses to multiple opponents. This wheel shows any team can lose on any given weekend.

Harvard 78 - 63

76 - 52 72 - 53

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Columbia

71 - 69

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Penn DEF.

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62 - 50 59 - 50

Brown

Dartmouth

KELLY RAFEY AND EMILY TSENG :: DESIGN STAFF AND MANAGING EDITOR

“What else can you say about the kid?” Harvard head coach Tommy Amaker said of Hummer. “I think he made every big play down the stretch for their team, whether it’s a basket, tip-in, free throws, getting fouled, slapping the ball out on a free-throw miss, intercepting the last pass on the inbound. He was a monster; there’s no other way of saying that.” The Tigers opened up the game pounding the paint, as Bray and Hummer set the tone early down low. Bray made a layup off a nice move to the basket, drawing the foul and making the subsequent free throw right before the first TV timeout. Princeton went on a 12-4

run to start out the game, and forward Wesley Saunders provided the only scoring for the Crimson until forward Jonah Travis found the basket with 13:11 left in the first. Six minutes later, however, Harvard had whittled the deficit to just 18-17 off trips to the charity stripe by guard Laurent Rivard and Moundou-Missi. Both teams were unable to make their outside shots fall, with each going 0-5 beyond the arc in the first half. The second half was much of the same, with the Crimson going 0-3 and the Tigers 1-5. This would prove especially detrimental to Harvard, whose long-range shooting is an instrumental part of their offense.

“All week in practice, we focused on closing out hard on the guys,” Bray said. “We fouled Rivard twice on threes, but we did a good job in not letting anyone get a clean look at it. Any shots they did get off, we contested pretty well.” Princeton, unfazed by Harvard’s late first-half run, built a lead off free-throw attempts of its own. The Tigers were a force inside and on the glass, which was reflected in a 37-24 rebounding margin that included only two offensive rebounds by Harvard the whole game and no second-chance points. The next day, Princeton took care of business against Dartmouth. The Tigers let the Big Green get ahead early and, de-

spite a 9-2 run late in the first half, went into halftime trailing by one. They eventually topped Dartmouth 68-63, thanks largely to Barrett, who had a careerhigh 24 points, and Bray, who scored 21. As the Tigers completed their weekend sweep, the Crimson got swept, losing to Penn in Philadelphia. The loss put Princeton above Harvard in the Ivy League, meaning that the Tigers need only to win out in order to claim a bid to the NCAA tournament. Their final three games, especially next Friday’s visit to Yale, are by no means guaranteed wins, but thanks to this weekend’s close victories the Tigers now control their own destiny.


The Daily Princetonian

The Freshman Issue july 2013

page 27

Captain headed to NFL Eleventh-hour catch cinches comeback victory CATAPANO Continued from page 23

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Giants. Kansas City was not one of those teams. After three seasons of outstanding individual effort but subpar performances by Princeton teams, Catapano, a two-year co-captain, helped lead the Tigers’ resurgence last season. He led the team and the Ivy League with 12 sacks, and his 1.2 sacks per game mark was second-best in the FCS. Like Princeton at the start of Catapano’s collegiate career, Kansas City finished last season at the bottom of the

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“I have a job now that I have to honor.” Mike Catapano drafted to nfl

::::::::::::::::::::: league. The Chiefs went 2-14 last season, earning the number-one pick of this year’s draft with the worst record in the NFL. They are now in rebuilding mode, guided by new head coach Andy Reid, who comes to Kansas City after holding the Philadelphia Eagles’ head coaching job since 1999. Catapano says he sees a connection between his old Princeton team and his new NFL team. “I just see a clean slate, a chance for me to make my impression on the league. We had to really work hard to change the attitude and belief and really the whole mindset at Princeton so we could start winning some games,” he said. “I can’t wait to bring the lessons that I learned to Kansas City.” The star defensive end has said he has no problem with

moving to linebacker in the NFL, as Reid is likely to want him to do. Catapano says he is versatile and that his new role as a “rush-type linebacker” will not be all that different from what he did in college. “That’s such a fun position. What I do well is I pass-rush,” he said. Catapano was the third Ivy Leaguer to be drafted this weekend, as Cornell’s J.C. Tretter and Harvard’s Kyle Juszczyk both went in the fourth round to the Green Bay Packers and the Baltimore Ravens, respectively. 2013 is the first year since 2004 that multiple Ivy Leaguers have been selected in the same draft. Additionally, three other players from the Ancient Eight were signed after the draft ended on Saturday evening. Cornell wide receiver Luke Tasker was picked up by the San Diego Chargers, Penn defensive end Brandon Copeland signed with Baltimore and Columbia’s Josh Martin, also a defensive end, will join Catapano in Kansas City. Joe Bonadies, an offensive lineman from Penn, was not signed but has been invited to a rookie mini-camp by the Minnesota Vikings. Just before 11:30 a.m. Monday morning, the official Princeton Football Twitter account tweeted that senior linebacker Andrew Starks had signed with the Chicago Bears. Later Monday evening, Starks told The Daily Princetonian that he had not, in fact, been signed, noting that he had been invited to attend camp with the Bears. As of 11 p.m. Monday evening, the tweet remained published on the @ PUTigerFootball account and had been retweeted 100 times. Catapano will report to camp in Kansas City on May 9 but will be in Princeton to enjoy his graduation. He is not sure, however, if he will be able to stick around for Reunions. “I have a job now that I have to honor,” he said.

FOOTBALL Continued from page 23

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into Crimson territory for the first time. With the ball inside the Crimson 5-yard line, Epperly took several Tim Tebow-style quarterback dives that resulted in a quick touchdown for the home team. Kick returner Paul Stanton fumbled the ensuing kickoff, and sophomore Jakobi Johnson recovered the ball at the Crimson 5-yard line. Despite a defensive holding penalty that wiped away a third-down incompletion, Epperly and the Tigers could not break the plane of the goal line, and the Tigers settled for a chip shot from freshman kicker Nolan Bieck to make the score 20-10. Still, Chapple remained a force to be reckoned with. Defying the Tigers’ momentum, he made another drive look easy, capping it off with an 8-yard touchdown pass to Juszczyk to keep the hosts at arm’s length. On the next drive, Chapple found tight end Cameron Brate, who had 109 receiving yards on the day, for his fifth and final touchdown, making the score 34-10 with 12 minutes, 45 seconds left in the game. Cue one of the biggest comebacks in Princeton history. Freshman Anthony Gaffney made Harvard regret a penalty that forced it to re-do the kickoff, returning the second kick to the Harvard 34-yard line. Moments later, a short screen pass led to freshman running back Dre Nelson’s first career score, and a well-designed two-point conversion pass from Michelsen to senior wide receiver Tom Moak made it a 16-point game. The Tigers’ defense finally dug in. Sophomore linebacker Mike Zeuli and junior linebacker Alex Polofsky halted Harvard’s next drive by stopping Chapple in his tracks on third down. After blocking the punt, Princeton took over at the Harvard 48. The Tigers, not usually a quick-strike offense, scored in

just 55 seconds — after moving the chains with a bullet to Wilson, Michelsen found sophomore receiver Matt Costello for a 29-yard touchdown down the right sideline. Epperly capped off the drive with a short pass to Wilkinson for the conversion. The Tigers had cut the lead to 34-26. Looking heroic, Chapple led his team down the field in short order. The Crimson marched to the Tigers’ 5-yard line but could not move further. After freshman defensive back Matt Arends pushed Scales out of bounds on third down, junior defensive lineman Greg Sotoreanos broke up what would have been an easy field-goal attempt, and the Tigers, down 34-26, took over at their own 21-yard line. On third down from his own 36-yard line, Michelsen connected with Wilson, who broke free and brought the Tigers to the Crimson’s 38. Michelsen zipped the ball to senior tight end Mark Hayes, found Costello along the sideline and then rushed for 5 yards to the 20-yard line. On the next pass, sophomore wide receiver Seth DeValve got wide open in the end zone and planted himself under a lob from Michelsen for a touchdown. The Tigers could have tied the game with a successful two-point conversion, but Michelsen’s pass was broken up by Harvard’s Alexander Norman, and Princeton kicked off with a two-point deficit and 2:27 to play. Harvard tried to run out the clock but failed to get a first down on the next drive, thanks to Zeuli’s tackle of Juszczyk 1 yard shy of the mark. After bluffing a play but failing to draw the hosts offsides, the Crimson punted. “Other games we’ve lost because that fourth-and-1 ended up being a first down at the end,” Surace said. “This time, we were able to keep them 1 yard shy.” Starting from his own 10-yard line, Michelsen moved the ball out of his own red zone with a

pass to Wilkinson. After taking a hard hit on an incomplete pass, Costello left the field with an injury. Michelsen completed a short pass to Powers and ran for another first down, but with seconds ticking away, Michelsen took a sack on the next play, injuring his hand on the play.

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“Princeton deserved to win. They became a team they’d not been.” Tim Murphy

head football coach harvard university

::::::::::::::::::::: Harvard was called for unsportsmanlike conduct for a celebration of the sack, however, costing the Crimson 15 yards and stopping the clock. Epperly came in as Michelsen was assisted off the field. “[I] just had to have the confidence that I can step in and pull it off, too,” Epperly said. After picking up one first down, Epperly nearly threw a game-ending interception, but it was dropped by Chris Splinter. With the clock running, Epperly chucked his fateful pass to Roman Wilson, who caught the ball despite being closely defended with 13 seconds remaining. “Roman’s a great matchup, and we needed to get the ball down the field, so I took a shot and Roman made an excellent play for me,” Epperly said. The Tigers had used the same play earlier in the season against Lafayette and Columbia. “Quinn threw a great ball, I had the leverage on the safety, and I just had to go up there and make a play,” Wilson said. As Bieck’s extra point sailed through the uprights, Princeton Stadium was louder than

it has been in recent memory. Moments later, the biggest win of Surace’s career became official. After two one-win seasons, the Tigers are now 4-2 and alone in first place in the league. Perhaps because everyone knew how much the win meant to the program, Surace stressed that at the end of the day it was just one more win. “It doesn’t mean we’re back,” he said. “It means we’re good enough today.” Surace repeatedly gave credit to the Crimson, which had 634 offensive yards. He stressed that the defense had a lot of problems to fix — though this was certainly its biggest test of the season — and that the Tigers had to catch a lot of breaks in order to pull off the upset. He also mentioned the impressive work of his two quarterbacks, who combined for 287 passing yards and four touchdowns. “Nobody wants to play two or three quarterbacks, but they really have significant areas where they’re really good, and they’re getting better at the other areas,” he said. “The thing I’m so proud of is that they’re handling it so maturely. I see them now watching video together and talking, communicating and helping each other out.” Saturday’s victory shook up the standings in the Ivy League considerably, putting last year’s last-place finisher on top and giving them an excellent shot at the championship. After knocking off their toughest Ivy League opponent, the Tigers have Cornell, Penn, Yale and Dartmouth left on their schedule. Winning three of those games would assure them a share of the title — a possibility Surace doesn’t want his team to consider just yet. “If our guys are looking at the standings, they’re doing the wrong thing,” he said. “They’re looking at the Cornell video.”


The Issue july 2013 pageFreshman 6

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The Freshman Issue summer 2013

The Daily Princetonian

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Administration has been discussing athletic grouping, academic advising MAJORS

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to be open-minded about their choice of concentration. It was launched in 2004, in part to encourage students to look beyond the University’s larger academic departments. Many of the trends prevalent at the University-wide level — such as the popularity of the social sciences and the overrepresentation of males in engineering disciplines — are noticed to slightly greater extents in analyses of athletes’ major choices. The numbers In addition to German and music, two similarly small departments — astrophysics and Slavic languages and literatures — which typically draw 10 concentrators or fewer per class, saw just a single student-athlete each over the past five years. Comparative literature and classics are also underrepresented among the student-athlete population. Their concentrators make up about 2 percent of the undergraduate population, yet less than .5 percent of studentathletes. Additionally, the math department churned out about 3 percent of the Classes of 2011 and 2012. However, in the last five years, only three studentathletes have declared as math majors, or about .3 percent of the population. The disparity between men and women in engineering is larger among athletes than in the overall undergraduate population. Recent years have yielded an approximately 2:1 ratio for undergraduate men and women engineers. The ratio jumps to about 3:1 when only athletes are considered. Clayton Marsh ’85, Deputy Dean of the College and faculty athletics representative to the NCAA — a position charged with ensuring compliance with eligibility requirements — said that the administration has discussed the spread of athletes across departments.

“This year, [Associate Dean for Campus Life] Tara Kinsey [’97] joined our team in West College. She and I sat down together to think about what kind of data might be useful so we can think about the more strategic ways to better support the academic lives of student-athletes,” he said. “And we did take a look at distribution of student-athletes across the concentrations. We noticed they were represented heavily in departments that were also very large.” Forty-seven percent of male student-athletes concentrate in economics, politics or history, some of the school’s largest departments. Economics leads the pack with roughly 22 percent, a rate approximately double that of the overall undergraduate population. In the combined population of men and women student-athletes, 61 percent join those three departments or sociology, psychology or ecology and evolutionary biology. Those six departments awarded 41 percent of all degrees in the graduating years 2012 and 2011. The smaller sample sizes of some specific teams demonstrate a degree of similarity. Over the last five years the men’s golf team has had 10 concentrators. Seven of them joined the politics department. Over the past five years, 18 students on the baseball team — 49 percent — have joined the economics department. Eighty percent of men’s lacrosse players have majored in economics, history or politics with an approximately even split between the three. Fifty-six percent of field hockey players joined the politics or sociology departments. Twenty percent of women’s swimming and diving majored in ecology and evolutionary biology. A notable exception can be found in the men’s and women’s fencing teams, for which very little overlap of majors among teammates can be found. On the men’s team, there have been no overlaps of concentration within a given year in the last five years. The women’s team dem-

onstrates similar heterogeneity. Director of Athletics Gary Walters ’67 submitted a letter to the editor in response to an interview request. He argued that any group of students with similar interests would demonstrate some degree similarity in choice concentration. “If one would study all of the diverse co-curricular and extracurricular ‘affinity groups’ on campus, I expect that one would find a different pattern of concentrations in the majors declared among those respective groups,” Walters wrote. “If every affinity group’s academic interests were the same, a direct replication of the total mean, Princeton would be a very dull place to go to college.” The process of choosing classes and eventual concentration can prove difficult for students in general, even those without the time constraints varsity athletes have, Marsh explained. “Part of the challenge — and it’s not specific to student-athletes — is discovering what lies in store for them in so many different places,” Marsh said, adding that the extraordinary demands on a varsity athlete’s time, “might limit their capacity for exploration. But that’s a might — I don’t know for sure.” The schedule of a studentathlete includes practice, team meetings, workouts, travel and competition that he or she must reconcile with a complete academic program. The number of extra classes required for B.S.E concentrators — including the lab-focus within the disciplines — could dissuade an already time-pressed varsity athlete. Discussions with teammates Jack Strabo, a math-track economics major and a captain and junior midfielder on the men’s lacrosse team, expressed concerns he believes are shared by teammates and fellow athletes. “Engineering was something I considered a little bit when I came here,” he said. “But it seemed like a bit too much of a time commitment. I felt like

it might be too hard to balance that.” Marsh further discussed the possibility of certain majors offering less favorable scheduling, mentioning engineering and other STEM disciplines. “There are certain departments where you would see lower enrollments relatively on the part of student-athletes. That is not surprising,” he said. “It probably has much to do with the pacing, frequency and scheduling of assessments.” Sophomore midfielder on the field hockey team and recently declared psychology concentrator Sydney Kirby also noted that time constraints could make concentrating in engineering disciplines difficult for some athletes. “I know that there are people who can do it — we’ve had people on our team do it,” Kirby said. “But it’s definitely harder to do it as an athlete simply because we don’t have time.” Informal advising by older players might provide a complementary explanation for the tendencies among teams toward certain departments. Strabo discussed how the tight-knit nature of a team can lead some students to pursue similar academic paths. “When I’ve gone through picking my classes and picking my major, I’ve definitely talked to the older people on the team,” he said. “I know we had a couple econ majors last year I would talk to a good amount.” Whenever course selection comes around, Strabo said he asks around the team for suggestion of classes to take in a given department or distribution requirement. “There’s definitely a lot of communication in our team about what classes to take or what majors have interesting classes,” he added. Teammate and fellow junior midfielder Hunter deButts said he decided to concentrate in history because of his general interest in the subject, and added that the scheduling of assignments tends to be compatible with an athlete’s schedule. “I honestly really love history, and the history department here is fantastic,” he said in an email. “The professors are very down-to-earth and approachable — a lot like my high school teachers. As far as why other athletes choose history, I’d say it helps that there usually isn’t a lot of graded weekly assignments, which makes it easier to manage your time if you have a mid-week game.” Similarly, Kirby noted that she and her teammates reached their decisions independently. “Three or four of us [in my class] are planning to do the same thing, but we all decided it on our own and we didn’t really take classes together,” Kirby said, discussing her teammates’ decisions to declare psychology. “I think we made pretty individual decisions.” Strabo noted that the breadth and flexibility of economics, history and politics were another potential explanation in regards for their popularity amongst his teammates. “A lot of people choose one of those majors because they give you a pretty good general skill set,” he said. “They don’t necessarily pigeonhole you into any

specific thing. A lot of people on the team think it’s an interesting major. But if you don’t know exactly what you want to do, it leaves a lot of doors open.” Gene Grossman, chair of the economics department, an academic adviser for freshmen and sophomores in Wilson College and an Academic-Athletic Fellow for the men’s basketball and football teams, similarly noted that team members may influence each others’ choices. “I think there’s a tight bonding among team members which is very supportive not only on an academic level but an emotional level and all levels,” he said. “For basketball, the numbers just aren’t big enough for me to think that it’s a firstorder effect. But they definitely clue each other in on what classes are interesting.” Regarding the overall process of choosing a major, however, he observed few tangible distinctions among student-athletes and the general population. “Some people know from the day they arrive in Princeton what they want to major in, and some people figure it out,” he said. “Some struggle more and less. I see that among the athletes, and I see that among the non-athletes. I wouldn’t say there’s much of a difference.” Pizza parties and roundtable discussions Princeton’s Academic-Athletic Fellows are professors or otherwise members of the staff, each assigned to a varsity team, “who are committed to strengthening and advancing the student-athlete ideal whilst reinforcing the educational mission of the university” according to the program’s front page on GoPrincetonTigers. com. John McPhee ’53, celebrated writer and professor of journalism as well as a fellow for the men’s lacrosse team, described the program as “very idiosyncratic,” with each fellow connecting with his or her team in a different way. As McPhee recalled, the program is the brainchild of Walters, a former point guard for the Tigers, who witnessed the relationship the late sociology professor emeritus Marvin Bressler developed with the men’s basketball team through his friendship with former coach Pete Carril. Bressler would come to practices and games, relating to the players and getting to know them on an informal level. “Gary was fond of this situation,” McPhee explained. “And as a result, years later, when he became director of athletics, he created the program to sort of recapitulate it and apply it to all the varsity sports.” Over 100 faculty members are involved in the program. The football team even has fellows assigned by positional group. Grossman outlined some of the fairly loose goals for fellows, including “being available and being a friendly face in the faculty crowd; being supportive in any way possible.” That can mean a pizza party for the team hosted at a fellow’s house — as Grossman has made his custom — or attending practices and away games as McPhee often does. However, Marsh, himself an Academic-Athletic Fellow for

the wrestling and field hockey teams, noted that the fellow program is not meant to substitute for or replace other academic advising programs. “It’s just a supplemental program that gives student-athletes another chance to connect with faculty and staff who can be mentors to them in some way,” Marsh said. Another more formal means of communication has recently emerged out of Marsh’s office. Marsh said he and Kinsey are planning to convene what he called “roundtable discussions” between members of varsity teams and faculty fellows. Marsh hopes that these colloquia will shed light on misconceptions — which he believes are somewhat prolific — about what accompanies different academic pursuits. “Tara and I have worked together to think of a number of ways in which we might bring student-athletes together to have candid discussion about choice of major, choice of course and a number of other things that might affect their academic success,” Marsh said. “We will use them to emphasize the value of getting outside of your comfort zone … which may mean a direction that departs from where some of your other teammates are going.” Marsh said he hopes that these discussions could address issues such as the tendency of athletes to major in similar topics, should the administration deem them problematic. “These are early days in our effort to look in a precise way at the data and what it suggests about how student-athletes are going about choosing concentration and the contours of their courses of study,” he said. “But I’m not saying there is a problem. I’m saying this to emphasize that we are very much putting in place standing opportunities to engage in order to promote this message about choice of major and how you need to make one that is wellinformed.” Princeton considers itself well-positioned and pioneering in its mission to bridge athletics and academics. “We truly do see student-athletes as students,” Marsh said. “They are part and parcel of the greater educational enterprise here. They are students who are also pursuing athletic goals, but we see them as being fabric of every class: seamless.” Walters noted in his letter that the education that takes place on the field is hugely beneficial to athletes and an essential part of the student-athlete experience. “Princeton athletes greatly benefit from the pedagogical excellence of our coaches and the practical experience of working together toward common goals within a publicly competitive environment,” Walters said in his letter to the editor. “They engage in and experience the spontaneity of the creative and performing arts, the practical implementation of teamwork, the social psychology of organizational behavior, the development of cognitive bandwidth to analyze and adapt to changing competitive situations, the construct for honest effort and ethical decision-making — and much more.”

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The Daily Princetonian

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The Freshman Issue summer 2013

F O O T B A L L | N O V. 1 0

With victory at Yale, Tigers earn bonfire By Hillary Dodyk staff writer

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — For the first time in six years, the football team has brought a bonfire to Princeton. As per tradition, after the Tigers’ 29-7 victory over Yale on Saturday — which followed a 39-34 win over Harvard last month — the school will celebrate with a bonfire, which will be held on Saturday at 7 p.m. on Cannon Green. The Tigers (5-4 overall, 4-2 Ivy League) went three-and-out on their first two possessions of the game, finding little success on the ground and getting little time from their offensive line to establish an effective passing game. The Princeton defense did not look much better, seemingly confused by Yale’s injury-ridden offense, which forced the Bulldogs to start Henry Furman — listed as a wide receiver — under center. The Tigers’ defense started out on the same flat note as the offense, missing tackles and allowing Yale the first score of the game with a touchdown on its second possession. “We’ve had our struggles in the first quarter,” head coach Bob Surace ’90 admitted. “They threw the ball better than I would ever have anticipated. We struggled with our footing ... We were having such a hard time catching up with the speed of what they were doing, and they really put one on us.” As the pace picked up, so too did Princeton’s offensive productivity. A pass from sophomore quarterback Connor Michelsen to senior receiver Tom Moak finally gave the Tigers a first down on their third drive, and they drew energy from the gradually filling crowd of orange T-shirts behind their sideline. Princeton’s running backs, led by senior Akil Sharp and sophomore Will Powers, began to click as well after gaining only one net yard for the entire first quarter. But they were unable to put points on the board after sophomore Quinn Epperly’s touchdown pass to junior

Roman Wilson was called back for offensive pass interference, and the next play resulted in an interception. The visitors’ defense stepped up to hold Yale within in its own territory, giving Princeton another opportunity to even up the score, which it did on the next drive. Sophomore receiver Seth DeValve had his first of four receptions to take the Tigers across midfield and then teamed with Epperly again for a 23-yard completion to the Yale four-yard line, where four defensive backs were required to take him down. A one-yard touchdown run from Wilson evened the score at 7-7. From there, Princeton caught some breaks that hadn’t seemed to be there in recent losses to Cornell and Penn. After a Yale fumble was recovered by freshman cornerback Anthony Gaffney, his first of two recoveries on the day, the tide looked to be turning the Tigers’ way. Princeton’s offense squandered that opportunity when Epperly threw an interception, but the Tigers caught another break when a Yale touchdown was negated by a holding penalty. Then came the big turning point of the game, as on the next play, junior cornerback Trocon Davis intercepted a trick halfback pass in the end zone and returned it all the way back for a touchdown, giving the Tigers a 14-7 lead going into halftime. “That’s the biggest play of my entire life, so it means a lot to me,” Davis said. “People were giving me a lot of stuff for pulling up a little bit [on the return], looking a little slow ... but I wasn’t trying to get caught.” Davis’s return, recorded at 100 yards, is the longest in Princeton football history and the secondlongest in the Ivy League record book. “That really got our momentum going, and then we kind of just took it from there,” Epperly added. The Tigers started the second

JACK GREISMAN :: SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

An effigy of John Harvard and a stuffed Yale Bulldog were incinerated in the celebratory bonfire held in honor of the football team’s wins.

half strong with an Epperly touchdown run on the opening drive, followed by a two-point conversion when freshman kicker Nolan Bieck ran to the goal line after a bad snap on the kick attempt. “That was actually the first time in my career the ball has ever been in my hands,” Bieck said, eliciting laughter in the postgame press conference. “So I just picked the ball up, and I started running to one side and I saw that he was open, but I figured No. 55 [sophomore lineman Tom Yetter] probably wasn’t eligible. So I just tucked it and kept running with it, and luckily I got in.” The breaks kept coming for the Tigers. After allowing Yale to get

great field position on a long punt return, senior defensive back Mandela Sheaffer forced Yale’s Mordecai Cargill, who had dominated the Tigers’ defense for much of the game, to fumble at the one-yard line. The ball was recovered in the end zone by Gaffney, giving the Tigers possession with a comfortable 22-7 lead. The Bulldogs attempted one last attempt at a comeback, electing to fake a punt from the Princeton 38yard line, but they failed to connect on the pass, giving Princeton the ball and good field position. Two possessions later, the Tigers scored their last touchdown of the day on a great catch by sophomore wide receiver Matt Costello in the back

corner of the end zone, making the final score 29-7. As Epperly took a knee to end the game, clinching the Tigers’ first winning season in Ivy play since 2006, Princeton fans began to rush the field and celebrate. “We’ve struggled finishing some games, and we finished this game really well,” Surace said. After a slow start, Princeton rose to the occasion and its fans’ expectations of a bonfire, battling back to overcome another deficit in a Big Three game. After finding no success early, Powers and Epperly combined for 145 yards rushing, while DeValve had the most productive day for the receiving core, catching four passes for 70 yards.

The Tiger defense also came together as the game progressed, welcoming back senior defensive lineman Caraun Reid, who had five tackles. Freshman cornerback Matt Arends led the team with eight takedowns, and senior linebacker Tim Kingsbury added seven more, including two for loss. “We made the adjustment ... and we were able to hang in there,” Surace said. With Penn beating Harvard, the Tigers still have a realistic chance to tie for first place in the Ivy League, which will be possible with a Penn loss to Cornell next week. Princeton will try to keep that hope alive with a win in its final game of the season at home against Dartmouth.


The Freshman Issue summer 2013

The Daily Princetonian

page 31

Whitaker: Losers leave powerful images Want more powerful images, like, say, of a bonfire? Visit the photo store at photo.dailyprincetonian.com to relive the magic.

COLUMN Continued from page 23

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perimeter players throughout the game, thought about what he could have done differently to stop Brandon Knight on the final shot. For months and months, Johnson, Maddox and the rest of that team had spent every day looking ahead to the next game, checking off a series of goals throughout the season. One moment, the Tigers were one possession away from upsetting Kentucky on a national stage; the next, their season was over, and there were no more goals in sight. Maddox’s Princeton career was over, and as we soon learned, Johnson’s was as well. That is why I think losers can leave more powerful images, especially in college sports, where careers are shorter and teams change more every year. Winners’ reactions are an expression of pure joy, the same moment we all imagined (or still imagine) when shooting hoops or swinging Wiff le bats in our backyards. No kids grow up thinking of the moment when their seasons or careers will abruptly end, and when it happens, I don’t think anyone really knows what to expect. So while winning teams get to live out their childhood fantasies and then, more often than not, focus on the next game, losing teams have to deal with more complicated emotions — especially when there are no second chances. The following season included several milestones and a court-storming at Jadwin Gymnasium, and yet my memory sticks on one moment that didn’t even involve

Princeton directly. After a brilliant four-year career in which he stuck with the team through its darkest season ever, Penn guard Zack Rosen had improbably led the Quakers to within one game of the Ivy League title — but those hopes were dashed by Princeton in the final game of the season. Rosen was practically lifeless in the postgame press conference; when asked questions, his responses were brief and spoken softly, and the rest of the time, he stared straight down through the table below him, until ordered to pick his head up by coach Jerome Allen. Even as a Princeton student with the proper allegiances, I could only feel terrible for the unanimous Player of the Year, who had just seen his best — and last — shot at a championship slip away. I’ve seen women’s basketball head coach Courtney Banghart after many of her 96 wins in the last four seasons, but the losses stick out even more. In 2010, she sat at the podium after Princeton’s first NCAA tournament game, perplexed at how one of the nation’s top shooting teams made just 28 percent on the biggest stage; in 2011, she comforted a tearful Addie Micir ’11 after her college finale while disappointed in the Tigers’ play; and in 2012, she showed a mixture of pride and sadness after losing a toss-up game to Kansas State, 67-64. I wasn’t able to make it to Waco this year, but with two programchanging seniors by her side after another season-ending defeat, I’m sure the scene was even more powerful. Even when the stakes are lower, losers’ reactions can be illuminating. After the football team’s miraculous

victory over Harvard last fall, I was extremely curious how Crimson head coach Tim Murphy would react. Would he be irate? Disappointed? Calling out his players? Instead, he seemed just as confused as the rest of us in the media room, still wondering how a Princeton team that had been dominated for 48 minutes pulled off a fourtouchdown comeback. While losing teams are often memorable in their own right, sometimes they make the winners’ stories even better. That was certainly the case for my most unforgettable Princeton sports moment, which doesn’t fit the same pattern as the others. I was lucky enough to have a good view of the deciding match of the 2012 College Squash Association team championships, watching Kelly Shannon ’12 take a 2-0 lead and go ahead in the third game. Still, the Jadwin crowd held its breath, thinking of Trinity’s 13-year championship streak and the seven times Princeton came in second — including 2009, when Princeton lost a 2-0 lead in the final match. Shannon, who had been a part of that heartbreaking loss, finally struck the deciding blow and turned to the crowd. He didn’t yet realize that his victory was Princeton’s fifth, but the hundreds of fans that had squeezed into the Jadwin viewing area quickly let him know. As his teammates spilled over the railing and onto the court, they were celebrating not just for themselves, but also for the generations of Princeton teams that had suffered heartbreak before them. In that moment, the winners were pretty interesting, too.


Thursday page 10 May 30, 2013

The Daily Princetonian

Friday may 10, 2013


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