Thursday November 7, 2019 vol. CXLIII no. 99
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NCAA to allow compensation for college athletes By Sam Kagan Contributor
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Palmer Stadium, where the University’s football team plays. BEYOND THE BUBBLE
Empire State Building lights recognize college football’s 150th anniversary By Zack Shevin
Assistant News Editor
The Empire State Building lit up orange and red on Nov. 6 in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the first-ever college football game, played between the University and Rutgers University. Beginning at sunset, the structure was illuminated to honor the game, in which Rutgers defeated Princeton football 6–4 on Nov. 6, 1869. This display, expected to remain lit until 2 a.m. on Nov. 7, comes in the middle of a week of events commemorating the match, which began with a photo op in MetLife Stadium on Monday and
will end on Saturday when the University football team takes on the alsoundefeated Dartmouth in Yankee Stadium. Associate Director of Athletics, Advancement, and Princeton Varsity Club Brendan Van Ackeren said that the Department of Athletics got official confirmation from the Empire State Building Lighting Partner in the afternoon of Nov. 5. He said the department would make efforts to let members of the University community know, “so when they leave their offices and their homes, they can look up … and know that that’s See LIGHTS page 3
U . A F FA I R S
Mathematics Professor Aleksandr Logunov wins Packard Fellowship By James Anderson Contributor
Assistant mathematics professor Aleksandr Logunov has been awarded the Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering for his work in nodal geometry. Along with the other 21 early-career scientists chosen, he will receive $875,000 over five years to support his research. The fellowship comes after Logunov won several accolades for proving the Yau and Nadirashvili conjectures, which first interested him as a student in Russia. According to the Department of Mathematics, the Packard Fellowship supports the “blue-sky thinking of scientists and engineers with the belief that their research over time will lead to new discoveries that improve people’s lives and enhance our understanding of the universe.” “In the middle school, I
In Opinion
accidentally by sheer luck ended up in a mathematical circle in Russia … You have academics who teach middle school kids,” Logunov said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. “It’s a very well-developed system that’s coming from the Soviet times.” He described his secondary education as “more like Olympiad-level problem solving.” Logunov entered St. Petersburg State University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2015 under Viktor Havin. “I got permission to study both economics and mathematics, but after I think two weeks, it was a clear and obvious choice,” he said. Logunov then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Tel Aviv University, where he published three papers on Laplace eigenfunctions with Mikhail Sodin and taught a class on harmonic analysis for one See LOGUNOV page 4
Columnist Jae-Kyung Sim wrestles with the outcome of the Harvard affirmative action lawsuit, and contributing columnist Katie Bushman explains why rejection functioned as a goal this year.
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On Tuesday, Oct. 29, the NCAA announced that its Board of Governors voted unanimously to grant college athletes the opportunity to receive compensation from the third parties for “use of their name, image, and likeness.” Though lacking specific policies, the statement represents the first time in the NCAA’s history that it has indicated willingness to allow athletes to earn money off their status. The revised guidelines, slated for implementation in January 2021, would affect over 460,000 college athletes — including over 1,000 Princetonians. The issue of monetary com-
pensation has proven a polarizing debate among studentathletes at Princeton and around the country. “I can really see both sides of the argument,” wrestler Patrick Brucki ’21 said. “You go to college to get your education, … [a]nd so it’s your end of the bargain to … live the lifestyle of a student, not of a professional. On the other hand the NCAA … has been profiting for a long time on the work of college athletes ...That can be frustrating too, I understand that.” The approved shift will enable student-athletes to accept sponsored endorsements and profit from any number of miscellaneous marketing opportunities. The NCAA already permits universities to provide students with sti-
pends to cover miscellaneous costs associated with athletics, such as transportation and nutrition. The new regulations aim to further open the doors, permitting college athletes to independently earn money from outside organizations. “For example, [presently], you can’t model as a student athlete,” women’s basketball captain and two-time Ivy League Player of the Year Bella Alarie ’20 said. “I don’t know why there should be a block on a student who’s an athlete. You work so hard to achieve in your sport and if you … can kinda profit off of that in different ways, I don’t see why that would be a negative thing.” See NCAA page 2
ON CAMPUS
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Jeffrey Miller focuses on the works of Milton.
Q&A with MacArthur Genius Fellow Jeffrey Miller ’06 By Zoya Gauhar Contributor
Literary scholar Jeffrey Miller ’06 was named a MacArthur Fellow on Sept. 25. Miller graduated from the University with an A.B. in English and went on to receive an M.St. in 2007 and D.Phil. in 2012 from the University of Oxford. Now, Miller is an associate professor of English at Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J. His research focuses on the writing processes of the Renaissance and Reformation. His forthcoming analysis of a historic notebook, which he identified as the earliest version of the King James Bible (sometimes referred to as the “KJB”), is much anticipated by the literary world. Miller phoned The Daily Princetonian to discuss his research, his future plans in his career, and his time at the University. This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. The Daily Princetonian: Once again, congratulations on your receiving the MacArthur Genius Grant. To start off, it’s been about a month since you were recognized as a fellow — has the feeling you expressed in
our previous conversation worn off yet? Dr. Jeffrey Miller: By the way, thanks so much for still wanting to talk to me about it. I’m so sorry that in the immediate week after, things were sort of a mess. It’s kind of nice to be doing [the interview] now, to sort of have some chance to reflect back on it. You know, I would think, the surprise of it, the excitement of it, the gratitude for it, has certainly not worn off yet. I’m not sure that the combination of surprise, shock, and just extreme gratitude for it — I don’t think that will ever wear off. In other ways though, yeah, kind of happily, things are starting to kind of revert back to normal, which is nice, actually. In the weeks afterward, it was kind of sort of a flurry of activity and different media outlets wanting to talk to you, and … I received a call from the governor of New Jersey, so different people are reaching out to you … So definitely, the first month was kind of a gauntlet in terms of things that one has to do or feels obliged to do. But also, I have a huge long list of emails from people who were incredibly influential to me that I real-
Today on Campus 6:30 p.m.: Hamilton Colloquium Series: “The Event Horizon Telescope: Imaging a Black Hole”Wallace Dance and Theater Jadwin Hall / A-10
ly want to reach out to and say thank you … It’s a nice problem to have right now, thinking about writing a bunch of thank-you emails to people who either wrote to you to offer congratulations or were sort of instrumental and inf luential in bringing you to this point. I think that at this point it is sort of old news for a lot of people — old news for my students, things like that, but it’s certainly not old news to me, and I am looking forward to having the chance now that things are a little bit less bewildering to sort of sit down in front of a computer and devote some days to sending a whole bunch of emails to people — so it’s a good problem to have. DP: If you could describe your research in a way that a general audience could understand it, how would you explain it? JM: In general, I study early modern or Renaissance literature, history, and theology, with a particular focus on the writings of John Milton, who is the author of “Paradise Lost,” and his contemporaries, and I suppose that I am especially interested in recovering a more dynamic conception See GENIUS page 5
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Tiger athletes divided on support of legislation NCAA
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Alarie views sponsorships as a worthy extension of the toil that athletes are required to invest in their respective sports. “We’re so busy at school and have so many hours of basketball,” she said. “If you could spend a few making money off of doing a photo shoot or having a sponsorship … and being able to post them on your Instagram and make money on the side … I think that’s just kind of like an easy side hustle … If the option was there, I’d totally think about it.” Women’s water polo players Maisie McPherson ’23 and CiCi Stewart ’23 disagree. “I feel very strongly against athletes being paid,” McPherson said. “You’re a student-athlete, not
an athlete-student. You have to put your academics first.” “It defeats the purpose of playing college sports,” Stewart added. “You’re there to go to college and play for your university, you’re not there to use your college experience to promote yourself. It’s your education.” McPherson and Stewart doubt the extent to which the change would materially impact athletes competing at smaller universities, such as Princeton — especially for those who play “unpopular” sports. “In my opinion, the payment doesn’t benefit that many players,” Stewart said. “It benefits basically the 1 percent of athletes, and those 1 percent are probably going to be making money [later] ... [by] going professional.” “How much more money is
men’s football going to make than men’s soccer?” McPherson asked. “How much are women’s sports going to be paid at all?” Conversely, Brucki, a nationally ranked wrestler, believes that Princeton athletes may see material benefits. “We’ve got programs and people in our programs who are ranked … We get a lot of attention for our name,” he said. “Their name and their image is worth a lot.” Alarie agrees. “There are some really high-profile athletes on this campus [who] could achieve sponsorship deals, and I think that companies would want them representing their products,” she said. “That’s definitely a possibility in the future.” All four athletes voiced concerns about how access to financial gain will be organized
within the Ivy League, a conference with unique athletic principles. “I’m not really sure how it would change the Ivy League just because they’ve gone by a different set of standards for so long,” Alarie said. “There’s so many examples of ways we do things differently from every other league.” The organization has a long history of bucking athletic norms, taking unconventional, academic-oriented stances on matters from summer athletic training to game scheduling. Unlike the majority of Division I schools, the Ivies do not offer athletic scholarships to students. Scholarships or not, Brucki perceives the strong motivation that drives his teammates and opponents. “College athletes are some of the most hungry and driven
people in the world,” Brucki said. “They haven’t made that contract yet, they haven’t signed with a professional team yet, they’re still trying to prove themselves. Amateurism … is one of the beauties of college athletics.” McPherson shares Brucki’s appraisal of the beauty in collegiate sports. “When you’re playing for your university, you’re playing because you love your university,” she said. “That’s why college sports are so much better … than professional sports.” “College sports are different because you’re playing for a reason bigger than money,” Stewart said. “You’re playing because you love the sport. College athletes play for something bigger than themselves — they play for the entire team.”
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Princeton football will take on Dartmouth this weekend in Yankee Stadium LIGHTS
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representing the tradition and legacy of Princeton football.” With the “Battle of the Unbeatens” just three days away, Van Ackeren said the Empire State Building Lighting would not hurt efforts to sell tickets “by any stretch.” However, he noted that profit was not the Department’s primary intention. “We really viewed this as an almost pinnacle celebration of that true anniversary date,” he said. “We certainly did not approach this as purely a marketing tool for driving ticket sales around the game, but a great way to highlight really everything under that umbrella of the 150th season of Princeton football and college football.” In a message to people who purchased tickets for the Dartmouth game, Princeton Association of New York City (PANYC) President Rob Wolk ’91 wrote that PANYC was “excited for this highly visible opportunity to showcase Princeton and our part in college football history,” going on to encourage alumni to “capture and share the moment on social media to display their Tiger pride!” The lighting of the Empire State Building was not the only high-profile public recognition of the anniversary that occurred this week. At MetLife Stadium on Monday night, prior to a game between the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants, representatives from the National Football League, Rutgers, and the Univer-
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The Empire State Building lit up in orange and red on Nov. 6.
sity exchanged game balls commemorating the 150th anniversary of college football and the 100th anniversary of the NFL. ESPN’s Monday Night Football commentators also hyped up the upcoming game against Dartmouth, mentioning it while cameras pointed toward the Cowboys’ head coach and former Princeton football quarterback Jason Garrett ’89. “I was talking to Jason yesterday. You know, Coach Bob Surace and the Tigers have a big showdown with Dartmouth coming up. The unbeaten Ivies going at it at Yankee’s Stadium this weekend,” one commentator noted. “That game’s on ESPNU, and Coach Garrett is all in every week on Princeton football.” Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan ’91, Executive Associate Director of Athlet-
T H E DA I LY
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ics Anthony Archbald, and former Princeton and Giants football player Keith Elias ’94 were present at MetLife Stadium, and the Rutgers Marching Band also performed at halftime of that game. “That was kind of a great way to kick off the anniversary week and, again, celebrate that 150-year legacy and the partnership between Princeton and Rutgers,” Van Ackeren said. In his message, Wolk also laid out the other University events occurring in New York City prior to the Dartmouth game, mentioning a “Tiger Entrepreneurs Conference” on Friday and an optimistically-titled “‘Tigers Crush Dartmouth’ Party” on Friday night. The game on Saturday will begin at 3:30 p.m., with stadium gates opening to the general public 90 minutes prior.
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Sodin: He’s a very clever mathematcian LOGUNOV Continued from page 1
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semester. “I had a very remarkable time there,” he recalled, “It was a revelation.” Logunov’s most famous work, for which he won the 2018 Salem Prize, was his proving of the conjectures of Shing-Tung Yau and Nikolai Nadirashvili on the zero sets of Laplacian eigenfunctions. “They were equations which many mathematicians tried,” Sodin said, adding that Logunov began working on them at St. Petersburg with Eugenia Malinnikova, whom Havin also advised. In Tel Aviv, Logunov met every week with Sodin and another colleague, Lev Buhovsky, to relate his progress with the Yau and Nadirashvili conjectures. Sodin recalled the moment in February 2016, during a school break, when he got a call from Logunov. “He called and said, ‘Misha, I think I have some progress I want to tell you,’” Sodin said. He invited Logunov to meet with him and “he said, ‘why not?,’ and he came to my apartment.” “He needed several details at the time, but it was clear he could solve the equations,” Sodin said. In the next year, Logunov frequently visited Malinnikova at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where his technique was used to prove the lower bound in the Yau conjecture. Malinnikova called his discovery “a simple but unexpected solution.” In January 2017, scholars at the University worked with Nadirashvili to find a way to approach the upper bound. Malinnikova did not want recognition as a coauthor because, as she told the ‘Prince,’ “it was after he solved the conjecture.”
“He was very much distressed by this,” Sodin recalled, “but, unfortunately, she didn’t want to cosign the paper.” Eventually, she agreed to cosign one of the three papers, and, according to Sodin, “they noted very clearly in the introduction that this paper should be regarded as their joint work.” In 2017, Logunov and Malinnikova were jointly awarded the Clay Research Award. In March 2017, Logunov and Malinnikova presented their work at a conference at the Institute for Advanced Study, whose report noted that “Logunov was bombarded by many questions about clarifications of ideas used in his approach to Yau’s conjecture.” “He was hesitating between coming to Princeton and other places like MIT or Berkeley,” Sodin said, “but it was clear that he would have the opportunity to talk to several very great mathematicians in that area [in Princeton], and I think that was the decisive factor.” He spent one year at the Institute for Advanced Study before joining the University in fall 2018, where he has taught MAT 202: Linear Algebra with Applications and MAT 425: Analysis III: Integration Theory and Hilbert Spaces. With the funding from his Packard Fellowship, Logunov said he hopes to help graduate students with postdoctoral research at the University. “Probably I will be able to organize a workshop conference,” he said, noting it would be held about five years from now. “He’s a very, very clever young mathematician with some brilliant ideas and very original ideas,” Sodin said. “It’s not so easy to read his papers, they’re very deep and very concise.”
COURTESY OF THE PRINCETON MATH DEPARTMENT
Aleksandr Logunov
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MacArthur: You’re in a really wonderful place; you have a really wonderful opportunity; take advantage of it GENIUS
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of the role that the writing process itself could play in the shaping of the authors’ works, thoughts, or beliefs, and shaping broader developments in the period at large. So, I am interested in the way that the writing process itself, for example, could serve as a vehicle for expressing a thought or decision or a belief that a writer or translator had already had for themselves, but also that the writing process can be a vehicle for generating that thought, transforming that thought in a way that doesn’t always have to be preceded by some lockedin authorial intention or translator intention. So that’s what I am really interested in — just more of a dynamic conception of the way that the role of the writing process itself played and why things turned out the way that they did. DP: What exactly sparked your interest in the Renaissance writing processes? What drew you specifically to the works of John Milton? JM: So in some ways, it’s hard to think my way back too much, to a time when I wasn’t interested in Milton. Certainly, I arrived on campus at Princeton already, if not fully in love yet, certainly quite smitten with Milton and his works. You know, I think the first time I read any portion of “Paradise Lost” was at some point in high school … I thought it was the most powerful piece of literature that I had ever read before… I was always interested in the way that literature could intersect with theological or religious questions … I always found religious literature, religious questions interesting on an intellectual level and certainly grew up in a household that considered them important things to think about… For me, at least, my own writing process has always sort of been something where I think through the process of writing. Writing to me never is a vehicle for off loading a thought that I’ve already had … I am interested in, I think, the way that most people had that
[same] recognition … I’ve always been interested in how that was definitely happening in the case of the early modern period and prior earlier works of literature as well, and the fact that has been going on, I think as researchers and as students we tend to lose sight of that … I became extremely interested in exploring the way that the writing process could be a vehicle for discovery in the early modern period and not just expression. DP: Where do you see your work headed? Are there any new, interesting facets you would like to explore? JM: I think in some ways, part of what I’m going to be trying to do and use the MacArthur Fellowship — and I also received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for completing a work devoted to this early part of the King James Bible that I identified — immediately what I’m planning to do is bring some of the projects that I’ve had on the go for quite some time to completion. So, I’d like to finish this book about Milton and the sort of idiosyncratic theological belief that was sort of shared by Milton and many of his contemporaries … Then I’d like to finish this edition, a kind of full critical edition or study of this draft of the King James Bible. And then after that, maybe take a sort of deep breath, and I think in terms of moving forward, I’m really interested in finding different ways to continue exploring the writing process, both in the early modern period and potentially in other periods as well. And I’m also interested in the archival implications of that. One of the things I’m becoming increasingly interested in is if we take a more dynamic, a broader, a sort of revitalized conception of the writing process during the early modern period, will it potentially turn out to be the case that there are more drafts, things that actually deserve to be recognized as drafts of various works currently surviving in archives or elsewhere, there are more of those drafts than we tended
to think did survive? … I think it’s possible that actually more drafts from the early modern period survived than we’ve often assumed. And I think that sort of rethinking certain aspects of the early modern period might lead to future archival discoveries on that end. DP: Speaking of your books, MacArthur describes your analysis of the Samuel Ward notebook, currently known as the earliest identified draft of the King James Bible, as a promise “to yield new insights into the translation practices and struggles over the meaning of revelation, history, and faith that informed the creation of the KJB.” What can we expect from this analysis, and what do you most hope to accomplish with it? JM: What I most hope to accomplish with it is to give people a deepened, more nuanced understanding of the way that the King James Bible, the most widely read work of English writing in the history of the language, came to be … It’s a really important work of literature in English history, religion. It’s exerted a huge inf luence across the Anglophone world and beyond for centuries, so learning more about how exactly it came to be, the way it is, and how the composition of it is approached by the translators, what went into it, what they expected to come out of it — in the largest sense, that’s what the project is meant to do. It definitely will challenge a certain way that the King James Bible’s composition has tended to be assumed to have been conducted … There’s a lot going into Ward’s translation that helps to recover it in a visceral way because you can sort of see him doing it on the page, working through these issues on the page, and that’s an exciting thing — at least it’s exciting to me! DP: What is an element of your time at Princeton, academic or otherwise, that you think has particularly been impactful on your life today — something that comes to mind right away? JM: Unquestionably, the most impactful thing on my life today was the fact
that I met my wife at Princeton. I think I first laid eyes on her, first spoke with her before even the first week of classes — I think it was around when everyone gets back from OA … I had an enormous crush on her, and she sort of wisely thought better of it for two years, and we then started dating our junior year, and have been together ever since. And now, we have a oneand-a-half-year-old daughter together and another daughter coming early next year — so it’s hard to top that in terms of impact on my life. It’s also the case that a lot of my closest friends to this day were friends of mine at Princeton and have shaped the kind of way I think about things and have proved endlessly inspiring, encouraging. It’s hard to overstate how much I think I have been shaped, intellectually and otherwise, by my wife first and foremost, and then by my other close friends that I made at Princeton. DP: Do you have any advice for University students who are currently learning to navigate through and make their own place in the scholarly world? JM: This sounds disingenuous, or something, but when you asked me that question, the first thing that comes to my mind is actually just to take a deep breath and relax. I remember when I was an undergrad … just tying myself and sewing knots about what the next phase in my life would look like and what I was going to do … One of the things I have found to be true of life is that it’s long, in the best of ways — I mean, it goes too quickly … but on the other hand, there are all sorts of things, directions, in which my life has turned, that I never would have anticipated, when I was at Princeton … You know, what can even feel like your failures can play a part in your successes, because they’ll end up playing a part in the person you end up becoming, and what you end up doing in the future… Some things [including the MacArthur Fellowship] that I ended up winning grew out of things that, for
a period of time, felt like failures to me. I remember I discovered, identified, Ward’s early draft of the King James Bible, after having spent — I think at the time I had already spent three, at the time it would become four years — in a single academic essay as a chapter in a scholarly volume of essays …The reason I would’ve told you that my academic work was going poorly, was in fact itself paving the way for probably the most important — it’s hard to imagine doing something, I mean I’ll try — it’s easily going to be the most important thing that I ever do in my scholarship. So, for students — throw yourself into opportunities, take the light in your peers, faculty or teachers, take joy as much as possible, in what you’re working on when it’s stressful. But also take some of the pressure off yourself… I know it’s easier said than done, but I think that anytime you’re sort of tempted to tell yourself or to feel that the whole rest of your life is hinging on something that you do at age 20, it’s probably not! Don’t worry about it. And even actually if you try and fail at something … that is itself not necessarily not even a failure — you don’t know to which extent something that feels like a failure is paving the way forward for what will be your greatest achievement … Have some patience, and take heart … Things that feel like failures now may not turn out to be. DP: Is there anything else you would like to add, or say to the students at the University? JM: One thing — the main thing I have to say is soak it up — it goes quickly! … You’re in a really wonderful place. You have a really wonderful opportunity. Take advantage of it to the extent that you can when you’re there — no one takes advantage of every opportunity Princeton has to offer while being a student — it’s not possible … Make friends. Have relationships. Fall in love. Fall out of love. All these things! If you spend a lot of your time doing that [having fun] — you’re also spending your time well at Princeton.
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When rejection isn’t failure Katie Bushman
Contributing Columnist
This year, I had only one New Year’s resolution: to receive a rejection letter from a literary agent. This wasn’t because I didn’t want to succeed. It was because rejection isn’t the opposite of success, but a necessary step on the road to accomplishment. Rejection sucks. It’s inevitable, but still — it sucks. This problem is especially prevalent here at Princeton, where students who were their high school’s star athlete or lead actor or first chair find themselves suddenly surrounded by people who are, let’s face it, more talented than them. So often, Princeton students will go through audition after interview after application and face rejection after rejection after rejection. I’ve certainly had my fair share here, and I won’t pretend that it didn’t shatter my selfesteem a little. Most of these auditions were for music or theater, but my true passion is writing. Through elementary school and middle school, I read every book I could get my
hands on, obsessively researched the craft and the publishing industry, and wrote hundreds of pages of unfinished drafts of fantasy novels. In seventh grade, I finished my first novel. Reader, it was awful. The next one was just as awful, and while the following two were marginally better, they still weren’t quite ready to be released into the lion’s den of the querying process. Then came novel number five. This one, cowritten with my best friend, hit me in a way nothing ever had before. I love it fiercely. After two years spent writing and editing and working in coffee shops past closing time, we finally had a novel that could be sent to literary agents in the hopes of being traditionally published. And my goal was to get rejected. Why rejected? Why on earth would I want to be told that the novel of my heart is “not a good fit for us at the moment”? Because it would mean I tried. It would mean that at last, I was brave enough to start taking actual, concrete steps towards my dream. I harbored no fantasies that
I would be the one-in-amillion writer who gets accepted on her very first query. For me, the form rejection was less of a “your work wasn’t good enough” and more of a “congratulations for putting yourself out there.” I think we should all try to frame things that way. Rejection isn’t necessarily a failure, but a sort of victory. That email reading “I’m sorry, but we are unable to offer you a spot at this time” isn’t a badge of shame, but one of honor. Because there’s only one kind of person who’s never received a rejection letter, and it isn’t the people we think of as wildly, preternaturally successful. You will never see a performance or read a book or attend a gallery show by someone who has never been rejected. You probably will never even work with them. The only people who have never been rejected are those who have never opened themselves up to failure and thus have never opened themselves up to success. So audition for that music or theater or dance group. Try out for that sports team. Submit to that literary magazine.
Apply to that job. No matter how long of a shot it is, no matter how the odds are stacked against you, you — at the risk of sounding like every search result for “inspirational quotes” on Pinterest — will never know until you try. In August, we sent our query letter and sample pages to six agents. Within two days, my New Year’s resolution was achieved. Within a month, it was achieved five times over. But in the midst of the rejection letters that I wore with pride, there was one more response: “Dear Katie and Lydia, I’m certainly intrigued by your novel and would like to read more. Could you send me the full manuscript?” It’s not an acceptance, not yet. But it was further than I’d ever thought we’d get on our first round of querying. And while we wait for that agent to get back to us, we’re going to send out another wave of letters. I look forward to receiving more rejections. Katie Bushman is a sophomore from Northern Virginia. She can be reached at kbushman@princeton.edu.
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Beyond the Harvard lawsuit
Jae-Kyung Sim Columnist
The infamous Harvard lawsuit is over. Judge Burroughs decided in favor of Harvard on all four counts, upholding a race-conscious model of admissions that not only Harvard, but many prestigious private universities — including Princeton — openly support and implement. But when you read closely into her 130-page opinion, it’s obvious that the ruling was not an unconditional support for Harvard’s admissions processes. Judge Burroughs herself concedes that the current admissions practices are “imperfect.” She recommends that admissions officers should receive “implicit bias training,” in order to carefully and delicately tread the line between race-conscious and discriminatory in the admissions process. Judge Burroughs’ message is incredibly important for future discussions of affirmative action and the surrounding issues. Unilaterally supporting affirmative action is insufficient. Striving to actively reject implicit biases is something everyone should work on — not just Harvard
admissions officers. While I fully believe in the necessity of affirmative action for the sake of diversity, these biases and racial stereotypes tend to manifest in strange ways, especially for Asians. Sociologists commonly refer to it as the “model minority myth”: the belief that Asians are always diligent, hard-working, quiet, and submissive. They are considered to be the model minority simply because they are perceptually well-assimilated into mainstream American society, an example for other minorities to follow. Unfortunately, this bias is something that pervades every aspect of our lives. Asians allegedly being ranked consistently lower in “personality scores” does not necessarily indicate that Harvard admissions officers are racist. Instead, I believe that this pattern is underpinned by a wider sociological phenomenon that views Asians as unilaterally “quiet,” “robotic,” and thus “uninteresting” — an internalized view that is based on a rather incomplete view of history. It’s true that Asian Americans are the highestincome-earning, highesteducated racial group in the United States. But this
is not because of some exotic, cultural, or inherently hard-working characteristic that only Asians possess. Rather, it’s driven by different histories of immigration. Sociologist Jennifer Lee explains it best in her book The Asian American Achievement Paradox: 51 percent of Chinese-Americans are college graduates, in comparison to just 4 percent of adults in China. This contrast is fueled by selective immigration policies targeted at more highly educated Chinese immigrants. On the other hand, the frequently racist conceptions towards Mexicans — including the tirades thrown by the Trump administration highlighting their “lack of education” — are also historically fueled by a less-restrained model of immigration from Mexico. The 1942 Bracero program is a good example of this; it brought an influx of unskilled labor from Mexico into the United States, as opposed to the more selective policy regarding immigration from China, which emphasized the need for skilled Chinese workers at a different period in history. It’s clear that racial biases often end up being inaccurate. It’s not that any race
has certain innate characteristics such as “conscientiousness” — our perceptions are simply skewed by the immigration patterns from different countries into the United States. This complex history of immigration has gone unnoticed and caused us to unconsciously internalize the model minority myth. Believing in the model minority myth is harmful to everyone. This myth kills potential coalitions between different minority groups and fosters harmful divisions. Specifically, it allows white conservatives to def lect the blame and wedge minorities against each other, as demonstrated by some of the Harvard lawsuit’s white leaders. Edward Blum, a conservative who has historically fought against most race-conscious systems and has also taken charge of the Harvard lawsuit, explicitly stated in his Harvard lawsuit court filing that he “needed Asian plaintiffs,” so that they could serve the instrumental value of ensuring more white admissions. The idea that white supremacists proudly consider Asians to be quiet bystanders in their agendas is troubling. We should be deeply ashamed that Dylann
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Roof, the Charleston church shooter, referred to Asians as “potential allies.” Playing into the perceived role of Asians being quiet and submissive only perpetuates white supremacy. The model minority myth fabricates an overly positive perception of Asians as a whole, glossing over the diversity of issues that exist within our larger communities. For instance, the Southeast Asian poverty rate in the United States, is much higher than the average, but no one ever talks about it. It gets muddled by the model minority myth. The Harvard lawsuit, and Judge Burroughs’ rather comprehensive opinion released on the subject, gives us an opportunity to reexamine what it means to be an Asian person residing in America. It pushes the question of where exactly Asians stand in conversations about race. There are important biases that exist outside of college admissions, and we should think more about and ultimately reject such biases, such as the model minority myth. Jae-Kyung Sim is a sophomore from Sejong City, South Korea. He can be reached at j.sim@princeton.edu.
Sports
Thursday November 7, 2019
page 8
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Preview: With new coach at helm, Princeton women’s basketball sets sights high By Jack Graham Head Sports Editor
In her first three years at Princeton, senior forward Bella Alarie has pretty much done it all. She’s won the Ivy League Rookie of the Year award and two Ivy League Player of the Year awards. She’s broken the program’s single season record for points per game and led Princeton to two consecutive Ivy League regular season and tournament titles. The final item on her bucket list? A win in the NCAA tournament, something that’s eluded the Tigers over the past two seasons. The Tigers came close last year, leading Kentucky at halftime before ultimately falling by five points. “Knowing that’s a game we could have won gives us a lot of confidence as a group, and we want to go further than that this year,” Alarie said. “We have high expectations for ourselves, but we know we can reach them.” Before they can make it to that point, the Tigers must adjust to a new coaching staff — head coach Carla Berube has taken over from Courtney Banghart, who departed for the head coaching job at the University of North Carolina in the off-season. Berube comes to Princeton from Division III Tufts Uni-
versity, where she coached for 17 years and built a successful program. She faces the unenviable task of continuing the success that Banghart, who won seven Ivy League titles in her 12 years at Princeton, sustained. “It’s a pretty great machine that I’ve walked in to,” Berube said. “It’s a very talented group, and they know how to work. So it’s just my staff and [me] putting in what we think can work well with the personnel that we have.” But every coaching transition involves growing pains, as Princeton’s returners learn the new system. Berube and her players both pointed to changes on the defensive end as the most important shift from last season. “One of the big differences this year is the emphasis on defense,” Alarie said. “It’s different rotations than what we’re used to, so in a lot of ways, I feel like a freshman on the floor again, learning Coach Berube’s style of defense. But it’s been really awesome, I think we’re a really cohesive unit when we’re locked in.” With that defensive mindset in place, Princeton will be looking to play with pace and convert defensive stops into offensive opportunities. “Coach Berube has been big on defense and using that to fuel our offense,” ju-
JACK GRAHAM / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
Bella Alarie battles for position in the season opening win over Rider.
nior guard Carlie Littlefield said. “She doesn’t want me to jog it up, ever, so I’m going to be sprinting that ball up the court, so we can have as much time as we can on the shot clock to get a good shot.” Berube will have the benefit of a talented roster in her first year at the helm. Besides Alarie, Littlefield returns after averaging 13.4 PPG and making the All-Ivy first team as a sophomore. Also returning are sophomore guard Grace Stone, who started 29 of 31 games as a first-year, and sophomore guard Abby Meyers, who av-
eraged 9.4 points per game as a first-year before missing all of last season. Princeton will have to replace Gabrielle Rush ’19 and Sydney Jordan ’19, both of whom started in all 32 games last year. The Tigers will begin Ivy League play with a target on their backs as the two-time defending champions. But with the unquestioned best player in the Ivy League on their team, they have good reason to be glad with their chances. Alarie will likely be a high WNBA draft pick next season, and she played for Team USA in the Pan American
Games over the summer. And she’s still looking to get better, citing strength and communication as two areas she’d like to improve. “I think communication comes with leadership,” Alarie said. “And this year, I’ve had to really step into that role, especially with the transition in the coaching staff.” Prior to Ivy play, Princeton will play a tough non-conference schedule, featuring road games against powerhouse conference teams Iowa and Missouri and a home game against Penn State.
MEN’S BASKETBALL
Preview: Princeton’s men’s basketball begins the long road to success in 2019-20 season
JACK GRAHAM / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
The ball is Jaelin Llewellyn’s, according to head coach Mitch Henderson.
By Tom Salotti Associate Sports Editor
After a disappointing end to last season, the Princeton men’s basketball team is looking for a return to glory. Last season, with a conference record of 8–6, the team qualified for the Ivy League tournament and was seeded third out of the four teams that qualified. The Tigers lost in the semifinals against Yale, who went on to win against No. 1 seed Harvard and qualify for the NCAA tournament. The 2019-20 Tigers squad will look to rec-
reate the success of the 2016-17 season, which saw an Ivy League victory and the infamous ever-soclose loss to Notre Dame in the round of 64 in the NCAA tournament. To qualify for the Ivy League tournament, win it, and succeed in March Madness, the team needs to step up to the plate. Pundits are pointing to a strong showing again by Harvard, as well as tournament winner Yale and perpetual foe Penn. Princeton head coach Mitch Henderson ’98, however, doesn’t give much weight to preseason projections, such as the
Tweet of the Day “Tongiht, we’re celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first college football game played by @Princeton & @RutgersU with lights split between Princeton’s orange (east/ west) and Rutger’s red (north/south)!” Empire State Building (@ EmpireStateBldg),
Ivy League preseason poll in which Princeton was voted to finish fourth. “It’s a guess, after all,” he said. “It has very little bearing to do on what the end result is.” The team is looking to upperclassmen such as senior center Richmond Aririguzoh, junior guard Ryan Schwieger, junior forward Jerome Desrosiers, and sophomore guard Jaelin Llewellyn to lead the team in storming the Ivy League — and potentially March Madness. Schwieger, despite scoring relatively few points per game at the beginning of last season, began to
drop buckets toward the end of conference play. His top three games in terms of points were all in a row: 23 against Cornell, 20 against Columbia, and 26 against Dartmouth. A concussion ended his season before the Ivy League tournament. “We missed him at the end of last season,” Henderson said. “He’s way more vocal and taking a larger role on both ends of the floor.” Llewellyn, a former four-star recruit, will look to continue to improve after carrying a heavy load for the team in his rookie season despite struggling with injuries. “We’re really going to rely on Jaelin on both ends of the floor,” Henderson said. “The ball is his. There’s great responsibility in that, but there’s also freedom in that.” This season’s first-year cadre includes guard Ryan Langborg from San Diego, Calif., guard Konrad Kiszka from Newton, Pa., forward Tosan Evbuomwan from Newcastle, England, forward Jacob O’Connell — who at six feet and eleven inches takes the crown of tallest on the team from senior forward Will Gladson — from Voorhees, N.J., and forward Keeshawn Kellman, from Allentown, Pa. Henderson acknowledged that while the
Stat of the Day
150 years
Princeton Football turned 150 years old Wednesday; the first college football game was played between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869.
rookies show promise, they still have a long way to go. “Right now, it’s a good sign that they’re struggling,” he said. “Not in all ways, but to learn how they’re going to make us win, and how to compete.” Princeton was handily defeated by Duquesne University on Tuesday night in their first game of the season. This likely won’t be their only touch matchup of the non-conference slate: the Tigers are scheduled to play big dogs such as Arizona State and Indiana University. Henderson acknowledged the tough nonconference schedule this year but justified it as the best thing to do for the program. “My aim every year is to prepare these guys to beat the best teams on our schedule and win the league, and I think you do that by challenging yourself in the non-conference,” he said. “It’s brutal … but we’re doing that for a specific reason. Here, I want to recruit nationally and play a nationally-recognized schedule.” Llewellyn added that he sees “playing a schedule like that as an opportunity to show the work we’ve been putting in and that we can compete with the best in the country.”
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