Friday November 8, 2019 vol. CXLIII no. 100
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U. professor emeritus, World War II veteran Samuel Hynes dies at 95 By Allan Shen staff writer
Samuel Hynes, a World War II veteran, as well as the University’s Emeritus Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature and emeritus professor of English, passed away at his home in Princeton on Oct. 10 at the age of 95. Hynes died of congestive heart failure, according to his daughter, Joanna Starr Hynes. Born in Chicago on Aug. 29, 1924, Samuel Lynn Hynes, Jr., was one of two sons born to his father, Samuel Hynes, Sr., and mother, Barbara Hynes. Hynes, who lost his mother at the age of five, grew up in a working-class family in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and developed a love for aviation early in his life, imitating World War I aces at playgrounds and observing early planes at the local airport. After earning his high school diploma at the age of 16 in 1942, Hynes began studying at the University of Minnesota, where he learned under the famed novelist Robert Penn Warren. He signed up for the Navy flight program and enlisted in the Marine Air Corps at the age of 18. “I left Minneapolis for service on a dank, wet, cold, March Minneapolis evening,” said Hynes in an interview in Ken Burns’ 2007 documentary, “The War.” “... and at the far end [of the railroad station platform] there was a navy yeoman with a clipboard and the gathering of young men and boys around him … My
father shook my hand … Then he turned around and walked back toward the entrance … and out to the street and was gone. I turned to the yeoman and went up and said, ‘Present,’ when my name came up, and I was in the Navy.” As a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, Hynes served as part of a torpedo bombing squadron at the Caroline Islands and Okinawa Island. Hynes received a Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in the Pacific theater. After being discharged at the rank of major, Hynes returned to the United States, turning 21 just two weeks after the end of the war. Hynes completed his bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Minnesota under the G.I. Bill in 1947 and then received his master’s and doctoral degrees from Columbia University in 1956, after flying in the Korean War. Hynes would celebrate his birthdays by doing loops and rolls in a biplane until his advanced age prevented him from doing so. In 1944, Hynes married Elizabeth Ann Igleheart, the sister of a fellow pilot; the two were married for over 60 years, until Elizabeth passed away in 2008. Hynes taught British literature at Swarthmore College until he moved to Northwestern University in 1968, where he remained until joining the faculty at the University in 1976. Hynes was named the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Lit-
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erature in addition to his appointment in the Department of English; he transferred to emeritus status in 1990. Among Hynes’s many honors were the University’s Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities in 1990 and the Arts and Letters award for literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Supervising Committee of the English Institute. He is the author of many works of history, literary criticism, and memoirs, including “The Edwardian Turn of Mind” (1962), “The Auden Generation” (1977), “Flights of Passage” (1988), and “The Growing Seasons” (2003), among numerous others. As a literary critic, Hynes wrote frequently for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The London Review of Books, and several other publications. “[Hynes] had a remarkable ability to research his subjects exhaustively, but not be the prisoner of his own research,” said Alex Star, an editor at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux who edited Hynes’s “The Unsubstantial Air.” “He fundamentally knew what kind of book he wanted to write, what the message of it was, what the feeling and ambience he was trying to achieve was,” Star said. “He used the skills not just of a scholar but really also of a memoirist and a prose stylist to evoke forgotten but really important realities.”
Alan Thomas ’81, editorial director at the University of Chicago Press who completed a junior paper and senior thesis under Hynes, published Hynes’s final work, “On War and Writing” in 2018. The publication is a collection of Hynes’s previously unpublished personal essays and criticisms of other works on war. “He grew up in Minnesota and had something of that rural Minnesotan economy to his expression and his emotional make-up,” Thomas said.
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Hynes taught literature at Swarthmore College and Northwestern Universty before coming to Princeton in 1976.
“It came across on his page, and I’m sure it came across in his teachings.” Thomas also highlighted the fact that despite being known for his study of British prose literature, Hynes wrote a great deal of criticism of poetry, especially on the works of Thomas Hardy and W. B. Yeats. Hynes is survived by his two daughters, Miranda and Joanna; three grandchildren, Alex, Sam and Lucy Preston; and three great-grandchildren, Alastair and Aurelia Preston, and Elias Preston Hassan.
Bezos ’86 Q&A with Workers Lab loses, regains CEO Carmen Rojas status as richest man in the world senior staff writer
COURTESY OF JEOPARDY PRODUCTIONS
Gilbert Collins GS ’99 poses with Jeopardy host Alex Trebek.
U. alumni find success in Jeopardy Tournament of Champions By Sam Kagan Contributor
Emma Boettcher ’14 and Gilbert Collins GS ’99 achieved success in this week’s Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, winning their initial matches and qualifying for next week’s semifinal games. The Tournament of Champions is a staple of the long-running television trivia quiz show, in which Jeopardy! invites back 15 of its strongest recent competitors, pitting the champions against one another in a series of 10 matches. The tournament episodes airing from Nov. 4 through Nov. 15 were shot at Jeopardy!’s studio in Culver City, Calif., on Sept. 17 and 18. Clad in an orange and black tie, Collins — the University’s Direc-
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tor of Global Health Programs and Associate Director at the Center for Health and Wellbeing — punched his ticket on Monday’s program. The Wilson School graduate finished with $16,801, beating out an instructional design consultant from Utah and a music teacher from Colorado for the automatic berth. “There were so many questions there that I knew, and I was trying to ring in, but [my opponents] might have been a millisecond faster than me so I couldn’t ring in,” Collins said. “One dark secret is that most of the people know most of the answers on the show. It’s just a question of who gets in first.” A former youth tennis player, See JEOPARDY page 2
Contributing columnist Anna Mcgee criticizes news coverage that misconstrues protests against police brutality as “anti-cop,” and columnist Shannon Chaffers argues that Facebook’s civil rights abuses are being under-scrutinized.
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By Omar Farah Contributor
On Oct. 24, after a sharp drop in Amazon’s stock price, Jeff Bezos ’86 momentarily lost his title as the world’s richest man, only to regain the distinction after markets closed the next day. This incident interrupted Bezos’s almost-two-year reign as the world’s wealthiest man. Bezos first gained the title, surpassing Bill Gates, in October 2017. Last month’s market shift saw Gates regain his former title, albeit for a few hours, with a net worth at the time of 105.7 billion dollars, to Bezos’s 103.9 billion. Gates had previously held the title for a total of 24 years. The brief loss resulted from a 7 percent drop in Amazon’s share price following the release of the company’s thirdquarter earnings. With the company moving into a high expenditure season, looking to make the shift from twoto one-day shipping for all Amazon Prime customers, See BEZOS page 2
Carmen Rojas is the cofounder and CEO of The Workers Lab, an organization that invests in innovation that empowers workers in the United States. This month, she will leave her position as CEO of the organization to become the CEO and president of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, which supports lowincome families in achieving justice and equality. During her recent visit to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, The Daily Princetonian spoke with Rojas about her work at The Workers Lab and her thoughts on the most pressing issues facing American workers. The Daily Princetonian: As a child of immigrants, how has your background inf luenced your work? Carmen Rojas: I feel like it has deeply inf luenced my work. My mom is from Nicaragua, and she immigrated to the United States at a time when 3 percent of workers were in a labor union. She immigrated at the peak of the civil rights movement. And so she came here really at a time when social movements
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had created infrastructure and opening[s] for people to live really amazing lives. For a good number of people, not everybody, but a good number of people, to live really amazing lives. And I always had this feeling of being in between. My mom is from Nicaragua. My dad is from Venezuela. I grew up in the Bay Area. And so I feel like, as a Latina in particular, I always felt like I was moving between the United States, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and, especially in 2008, when Obama ran for office the first year, I was living in Venezuela and imagined going back and having a prodigal daughter moment where people would be, like, “Oh, she’s back!” And it wasn’t the case. I was clearly an American person. My relationship with race was different. My relationship with them was different. And so I feel like, being the kid of immigrants, you learn to sort of hold so many histories at one time from a very young age, that you learn about choices, choices that my parents made that were really powerful and indicative of them wanting a better life and See ROJAS page 3
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Both contestants lost a cash prize trivia tournament at O’Brien’s Irish Pub days before competing JEOPARDY Continued from page 1
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Collins compared competing on the show to playing a sport. “It takes poise to compete on Jeopardy!, which is similar to a lot of the athletic stuff I’ve done,” he said. “When I’m on the stage, the audience ceases to matter. The whole time [host] Alex [Trebek] is talking, I’m just waiting for him to get to that last word he’s going to say and trying to time my ring at that moment.” Despite seeing success in the competition’s first half, Collins lost his lead as the match progressed, entering “Final Jeopardy!”, the game’s last question, $2,400 out of first place. A $7,801 wager and Collins’s correct answer on the subject of “Ancient History” was enough to capture first place. Boettcher, the User Experience Resident Librarian at the University of Chicago, took home her victory on Thursday’s show. An English concentrator with a certificate in theater during her time at the University, Boettcher walked away with a score of $23,800. Her winnings were more than double those of her opponents: an attorney and government relations professional from Florida and a network engineer from Arkansas. After capturing an early lead during the first round of the game, Boettcher rarely relented, losing her top position for only two of the show’s 61 questions. Entering Final Jeopardy! on the subject of 20thCentury Art, the Rocky and Mathey alumna had earned herself a cushion of $10,800. Despite answering the question correctly, Boettcher did not advance her score, as she made the unusual choice to not wager any money. “I did zero because the goal of getting out of the quarterfinal is to
either win or to have a high enough score to be in one of the wild card slots,” Boettcher said. “I was sequestered. I didn’t know what the other high scores had been ... among the second and third place winners for the previous quarterfinal games, but … I finished the Double Jeopardy! round with $23,800, and I knew historically that that was pretty much guaranteed to qualify [for the semifinals].” After this week’s quarterfinal matches, the five quarterfinal winners and the four non-winners with the highest point totals will advance to the semifinals. The semifinals consist of three matches and the winners of each of those matches will advance to the finals. The finals will take place on Nov. 14 and 15, with Jeopardy! totaling contestants’ scores from the two days to determine the winner. “It’s a ‘two-day total-point affair,’ as Alex [Trebek] will say over and over again,” Boettcher said. Both Collins and Boettcher performed strongly in their quarterfinal matches but, as a consequence of concentration, according to Collins, neither seem to remember much about their time in the spotlight. “You’re not really making new memories, you’re not really recording this,” Collins said. “That is to say, when I watched the show [on Monday], I honestly didn’t remember that this is what happened because my mind was so focused on recall and achieving lots — total recall. On that level my mind was so focused that you’re only locked into ‘do I know this or not?’” “I barely remember how I felt when I was playing,” Boettcher said. “I was watching it today and I totally forgot ‘Bugle Calls’ was a category … I don’t really recall either feeling, ‘this is great, this is going well, this is going poorly.’ I don’t remember hardly any of my
emotions during the game.” The matches last a little longer than twenty minutes on television, but they both had been preparing far in advance. Collins, the first champion to qualify for this year’s tournament, prepped for almost two years, while Boettcher, the final qualifier, was granted three months. “There is a saying in Jeopardy! circles that ‘you can’t study for Jeopardy! but, you have to,’” Collins said. “Jeopardy! can ask you questions on literally any topic. There is no guidebook … they can go anywhere.” Difficulty of preparation is a further consideration for Collins. “You can prepare … the problem is that any one thing that you study is exceptionally unlikely to actually be on the show,” he said. “I’ve been studying for this for a long time and I don’t think a single thing that was on that [quarterfinal] show was anything that I studied,” he said. For Boettcher, studying was an experience in learning both about the world and herself. “When they invited me to be in the Tournament of Champions, and this is going to make me sound like a dork, but I was thinking, ‘Gosh, I wonder how much I can learn over three months. I can’t wait to find out,’” she said. Boettcher grants special consideration to former Jeopardy! Champion Roger Craig who reached out to Boettcher regarding his experiments. “[Craig] had done a lot with Jeopardy! data and text mining, and he had reached out to me after I talked about my master’s paper on the show, which was on a similar topic. He said, ‘if you want any advice, let me know.’” Beyond competition, the Tournament of Champions includes a social element for many of the com-
petitors. “The Tournament of Champions is just so much fun … it really is just the loveliest atmosphere,” Boettcher said. “I think some people have described it as … like summer camp … like a Jeopardy! family reunion.” Collins echoed Boettcher’s sentiments, citing his own experiences with other contestants. “What’s striking about the Tournament of Champions is the camaraderie that there is among contestants,” he said. “One might imagine that there would be a lot of gamesmanship and competitive spirit … but in fact there is a lot of collegiality, a lot of mutual respect … it’s just a great environment of very supportive people.” Boettcher recalled contestants conversing and attempting to play “an off-brand form of Jenga” while waiting to compete, and he mentioned visiting a bar trivia night in the evening. “A lot of us knew about this local pub quiz at a place called O’Brien’s, which is frequented by a lot of former Jeopardy! champions,” she said. “We decided it would be fun to check that out and see if all of our studying would pay off for the real stakes of, ‘Can we win whatever the cash prize was?’, and it turns out that we could not.” According to Boettcher, other contestants at O’Brien’s Irish Pub that night included Brad Rutter, the highest earning game show contestant in both American and Jeopardy! history, 13-show champion Austin Rogers, and former College Champion Pam Mueller GS ’15. “It’s a great place,” Boettcher said. Through casual and serious, the Jeopardy! community offers a measure of support to its members — especially in dire times. 2018 Teacher’s Tournament Champion Larry Martin passed
away before he had the opportunity to compete in the 2019 Tournament of Champions. The Kansas City teacher died as a consequence of pancreatic cancer, the very same illness that longtime Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek is publicly battling. When he heard about Martin, Collins felt compelled to act. “Out of respect and honor of [Martin], I reached out to the Jeopardy! producers and asked if it would be okay if I organized with the other contestants to wear purple ribbons,” Collins said. Purple is the color most commonly associated with pancreatic cancer awareness. “My wife and I went to the store, bought the ribbons, assembled them all, and once we were there, handed them out to everybody. It was an honor to be able to celebrate [Martin and Trebek] in that way and to show solidarity … by wearing those ribbons.” Collins and Boettcher both expressed happiness with their performance in the tournament, emphasizing repeatedly how much they enjoyed the experience. “A lot of Jeopardy! really rewards … being curious and being open to learning new things just over the course of your entire life,” Boettcher said. “I can say that I studied for the tournament for three months, and that’s true, but I can also say that I had prepared for it for 27 years, and that would also be true.” “For me, the idea of actually getting on the TV show Jeopardy! has always been a dream, but a very, very difficult to attain dream,” Collins said. “It sounds cliché, but don’t be afraid to follow your dreams and try something that you’ve always hoped to do, even if the odds look very long. You never know, you might succeed.” Princeton residents can catch Jeopardy! at 7 p.m. Monday through Friday on WPVI ABC Philadelphia.
Bezos’s value dip was caused by drop in Amazon shares
GRANT MILLER / GWBPC FORUM ON LEADERSHIP, THE GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENTIAL CENTER
Jeff Bezos glows in the spotlight.
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investor uncertainty is likely to persist. Bezos’s wealth has also been impacted by his public divorce this January, during which his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, gained sole ownership over 25 percent of the couple’s stake in Amazon. The divorce decreased his personal stake in the company from 16 percent to 12 percent. Pursuant to their settlement, Jeff Bezos retains all the voting rights associated with his initial 16 percent share in the E-commerce giant.
Despite long-term skepticism over Bezos’s ability to stay atop a growing list of competitive billionaires, he regained his title early Friday morning. With a stronger showing during Thursday’s after hours trading, Bezos’s net worth stabilized at 109.9 billion dollars. As Amazon makes its way through an expenditure-intensive period, it is possible that this may not be the last story of its kind. However, with the Christmas season around the corner, the volume of Amazon’s sales will likely keep Bezos propped in the number-one spot, at least until the new year.
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Rojas: No minimum wage worker can afford a two bedroom apartment in the city they work in, in the U.S.
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Carmen Rojas sat down with The Daily Princetonian.
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them wanting me to have a better life. And that this is actually possible. I feel like being bilingual and bicultural has really expanded the way that I see opportunity as being something that should be available to every person regardless of where they’re from. DP: And what do you see as the biggest challenges facing workers in 21st-century America? CR: So many! Half of working people in the United States earn 15 dollars or less an hour. No minimum wage worker can afford a two bedroom apartment in the city they work in, in this country. Seventy percent of Americans can’t afford a 1,000 dollar unexpected expense. Those are all of the day-to-day challenges or the day-to-day indignities of being a poor working person in this country. And the other side of that is sort of this consolidation of economic power and political power by a small number of people. I feel like that consolidation and concentration of power and wealth is a threat to the promise of America, it is a threat to our democracy, and it is a threat to our economy. If people are willingly leaving the labor market, because who wants to work 80 hours and be poor? I would rather just not work. If people are making those choices, I feel like they are making those very rational choices because our system is irrational. So I think there are a whole host of issues that are sort of the laundry list of dayto-day indignities, and the biggest one for me is the concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of a few. DP: Much of the rhetoric around immigrant workers accuses them of stealing jobs. How does The Workers Lab respond to these accusations? CR: One — they aren’t. Every national data set that is actually significant has demonstrated that they aren’t … because they are working in industries and sectors that most U.S.-born workers aren’t interested in working in: agricultural work, home care work. They are often working in low-wage, low-benefit, low-
protection industries and sectors. Again, a good number of U.S. workers aren’t interested in those jobs. I would actually ask a different question. This idea that there is a zero-sum, or a finite number of jobs in this country, seems like an absurd idea. The U.S. goes to other countries almost on a daily basis to extract economic resources and wellbeing, to lower wages, and, for U.S. corporations in particular, to disentangle and disrupt any sort of safety net that exists. So, if U.S. corporations can do that in other countries, why can’t the people impacted by those decisions come to the United States to find jobs? It seems like an unbalanced proposition where the wealthiest and most powerful amongst us can go and exploit whenever they want to, but those who have been impacted by that exploitation can’t move freely, with the same amount of freedom, to try to find economic opportunity and well-being for themselves and their families. Yeah, it’s not true. And I think there is another question to be asked. Which is this question about who and what gets to move freely on this planet and why. DP: Do you feel that this rhetoric has changed under the current administration? Has it increased? Decreased? CR: We had a Latino U.S. citizen have acid thrown in his face in Wisconsin this week. Everything from that to what happened in the shooting in El Paso, this is specific to the Latinx community. There is a concerted effort to make us believe that we are not from here. And we are a core part of building this country. We are a part of the fabric. We have always been here. Always! If you’re from the West Coast, like I am, literally I have friends who are 15th generation who have been here. If you’re from Texas. And, even if you’re not, even if you’re a firstgeneration Latino in this country, chances are that you have contributed to the economic well-being of this country in ways that have shaped our future, that have shaped our economy, that have shaped our culture, that have shaped us. And so the danger for me of this administration is the depth of belief that
we don’t belong here and, frankly, how transferable that is. How young Latinx people and old Latinx people … my mom! My mom immigrated here. She lived here for 50 years. She moved back to Nicaragua because she was like, “This is crazy. I don’t want to live here.” Nicaragua is having political unrest right now, and she would rather be there than here because here, somebody can come with a gun and shoot her because she’s speaking Spanish in a supermarket. That level of vitriol, the consequences of that are so great. I think I have never — even under Pete Wilson in California, who was our most reactionary governor in the state, who tried to pass English-only laws and anti-affirmative action laws when I was growing up, even under that, there wasn’t the same amount of white rage against Latinos and Latino immigrants. DP: Four months ago, our president tweeted that a group of congresswomen from immigrant backgrounds who are advocating for change should “go back” to where they came from. As a child of immigrants who also advocates for change, how do you perceive this statement? CR: They are from here! Again, I don’t think it’s accidental … Some people are calling this the last gasp of white supremacy: a desire and commitment by this administration to make those of us from here ‘other’ — and not only through tweets and through words, but through actual policies. Creating a set of policies and creating a cultural environment where we don’t believe that we are from here is not an accident. It’s not an accident, and it’s not new. This is like a vestige of white supremacy in this country, this belief that white people are from here more than any of us are from here. I love “The Squad.” I feel so motivated by a set of political leaders that are really not only representative of the communities that we work in and the communities that I move in, but also representative of the kind of America that I want to be in, and that I want to contribute to making better. And so I think he’s dangerous, and I hope it’s shortlived. DP: What do you view as The Workers Lab’s greatest achievements? CR: You know, our work is to create room for people to imagine a different reality for the working people of this country. And so we’ve had a good number of successes and a good number of failures. For me, the greatest achievement is to demonstrate that when people have resources and the room to try something new, only great things can happen. So everything from: in South Dakota, we helped fund the Native American construction cooperative to solve a housing shortage on the Pine Ridge Reservation, to our last innovation finalist [which] included this group, from Vermont, of dairy workers who were trying to put pressure on the dairy industry to improve standards for, mostly, undocumented immigrant workers in the industry. We run the gamut in terms of how change can happen in the lives of working people
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and how power can be built for working people. I feel like we’ve created exposure and lifted up primarily Dreamers, imaginers of color, immigrant imaginers, and said that these people who have this great proximity to the issues facing poor working people should be at the forefront of solving those problems and have provided them resources. So for me, it’s just creating evidence that when you give people resources, time, and space to try something new, great things can happen. DP: How has the Workers’ Lab addressed the gender pay gap generally and also for women of color? CR: That is a great question. Two or three years ago, we helped to launch a platform called We Work Together that essentially has a bunch of tools. One in particular is called Fairy Godmother. It helps you see what your salary is compared to your male counterpart in the workplace. I think information is just … We know there’s a gender pay gap, but it feels really different when you’re like, ‘When you put in my place of employment, this is what the average man makes and this is what I make.’ When you actually see that, I think it’s super powerful. For us as an organization, creating pay transparency across the organization has been really important. So you will never get one of those job descriptions, like here’s a job without knowing how much money you’re going to be paid or with needing to negotiate for your salary. You know, as a Latina, as a leader of this organization and as part of the staff, we have been working on exposing people to the gender pay gap. I think Nov. 21 is when Latinas make as much as a white man made in 12 months, so it’s almost 23 months. It takes us 22 months and a little bit to make what a white man makes in 12 months. I think the gender pay gap is often framed as the gap between a white man and a white woman. We as an organization are really pushing to expose the pay gap by race, which is really important. DP: On Nov. 1, the Marguerite Casey Foundation issued a press release stating that you would be leaving The Workers Lab and joining the foundation. Can you tell me more about this transition and your decision to join the foundation? CR: So, Marguerite Casey Foundation is one of the very few foundations in this country that primarily offers multi-year general operating support so it’s not like, ‘here’s a program or here’s a project or here’s a product, I just want to fund this thing.’ They are really invested in leaders [who] are helping low-income families increase not only their voice but their political participation and their economic well-being in this country. So, I was really motivated by the opportunity to provide resources to those people who have the greatest proximity to the issues, not only working people but black people, queer people, Latinx people, immigrants. We have an opportunity to actually connect and tether the fates beyond the one specific issue and actually think more holistically on
a human level about how to build power for people who have historically been marginalized in this country. I’m also really excited about how, to be honest with you, when I take this job I will be the youngest and only Latina president of a nationally-endowed foundation in this country. That’s depressing! And I think it’s really important. In considering the opportunity, I think representation does matter. And to really be able to harness a set of resources in ways that lift up our community, I think is so powerful. Yeah, I’m really excited about it. And also, I built The Workers Lab, and our team is amazing. I built an organization and it exists, and Adrian Haro, who is stepping in to run Workers Lab … I can’t imagine a better person, and I can’t imagine a better team to help advance the agenda of building power for working people. It’s just my time, also. I think leadership isn’t about staying in your job forever and always trying to prove the same point. I think leadership is about creating more room for others to lead. And knowing that The Workers Lab is not only going to continue to exist but probably do more amazing things than I could have ever imagined feels like I’m delivering on the promise of the space that was created for me. DP: That press release also mentioned that you built a team that is majority-queer first-generation people of color. Why do you feel that this diversity is important at The Workers Lab? CR: I feel like it’s important that we say who we are, because there’s no organization that looks like we do and does what we do. We are often the only organization that, when we walk into a room, looks like we do. We are in a field and in a sector in which the vast majority of leaders are white men — straight white men. And I think it’s important to actually, not only for counting purposes, say that there’s a different way. This can look different. For very practical reasons say, the four leaders of The Workers Lab, the top four people — our parents didn’t graduate from high school, we grew up in low to medium-income households, we all identify as queer. I don’t think people believed that an organization like this was possible, and I think that in a context where diversity, equity, and inclusion are such a buzz, very few organizations are changing or demonstrating what it looks like. And it was really easy to build a team that looks like ours because I was a leader of that team. I was committed to building a team that could have space in their heart and room in their imagination to want something more for the people in their communities, and that made all the difference in the world. I think it’s important that we are, and I think it’s important that we say who we are. If we left that off of the table, the assumption would be that we are a majority-straight, white organization. That that is the assumption creates an assumption about who is positioned and poised to solve the problems facing our country.
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editor-in-chief
Chris Murphy ’20 business manager
Taylor Jean-Jacques’20 BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88 secretary Betsy L. Minkin ’77 treasurer Douglas J. Widmann ’90 trustees Francesca Barber David Baumgarten ’06 Kathleen Crown Gabriel Debenedetti ’12 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 Michael Grabell ’03 John Horan ’74 Joshua Katz Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 Kavita Saini ’09 Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 Abigail Williams ’14 trustees emeriti Gregory L. Diskant ’70 William R. Elfers ’71 Kathleen Kiely ’77 Jerry Raymond ’73 Michael E. Seger ’71 Annalyn Swan ’73 trustees ex officio Chris Murphy ’20 Taylor Jean-Jacques’20
143RD MANAGING BOARD managing editors Samuel Aftel ’20 Ariel Chen ’20 Jon Ort ’21 head news editors Benjamin Ball ’21 Ivy Truong ’21 associate news editors Linh Nguyen ’21 Claire Silberman ’22 Katja Stroke-Adolphe ’20 head opinion editor Cy Watsky ’21 associate opinion editors Rachel Kennedy ’21 Ethan Li ’22 head sports editor Jack Graham ’20 associate sports editors Tom Salotti ’21 Alissa Selover ’21 features editors Samantha Shapiro ’21 Jo de la Bruyere ’22 head prospect editor Dora Zhao ’21 associate prospect editor Noa Wollstein ’21 chief copy editors Lydia Choi ’21 Elizabeth Parker ’21 associate copy editors Anna McGee ’22 Sydney Peng ’22 head design editor Charlotte Adamo ’21 associate design editor Harsimran Makkad ’22 head video editor Sarah Warman Hirschfield ’20 associate video editor Mark Dodici ’22 digital operations manager Sarah Bowen ’20
NIGHT STAFF
Standing with protestors doesn’t mean standing against all cops Anna Mcgee
Contributing Columnist
Unbeknownst to me last Friday, as I went to take the train back from New York, I almost crossed paths with nearly 1,000 people protesting against recent instances of police brutality related to fare evasion on Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) subway lines across the city. Framed by conservative news outlets as “anti-cop,” individuals within the protests led with chants of “No NYPD on the MTA” and “How do you spell racist? N-Y-P-D” as they marched near the Barclays Center arena and jumped turnstiles en-mass. The important distinction to be made here is this: rather than targeting individual cops, the protestors spoke out against the larger system, which allows for individual instances of police brutality against marginalized groups. These protests took place
after a fare increase on subway systems this past summer, along with the creation of a team of 500 cops, known as the Fare Enforcement Task Force, to patrol the 50 MTA stops where fare evasion occurs with the highest frequency. The MTA’s most recent Subway Fare Evasion Arrest Report, released for the second quarter of 2019, identified 88.7 percent of those arrested for fare evasion as people of color. Of that group, 68.4 percent were identified as black. It seems that whenever protests like these come up, the backlash against the protesters never disagrees with the basic facts of the matter. Dissenters rarely say, “Hey, you know what? It’s totally fair that we have a public transit system only a few can afford. It’s totally fair that raising prices in this specific manner and policing these specific boroughs disproportionately affects only a certain portion of the population. You guys totally have nothing to
be angry about.” Instead, much like the sentiments expressed by Eve Hyman, a New York commuter, people are more likely to disagree because not all cops are bad, and protests can inadvertently appear vitriolic against good individuals. Even to the protesters’ critics, it’s not that people who are protesting have the wrong idea. Rather, protesters are discredited on the basis that there are some individual police officers within the larger system who are educated and attempt to act within a less objectionable moral framework. What these people get wrong is the purpose of these kinds of protests, and the purpose of “anti-cop” slogans within them. Systems can be racist without every individual within the system being racist. Saying, “Hey, the police aren’t racist. Some cops are actually really great people,” is analogous to saying, “I have gay friends, so I’m not ho-
mophobic,” or “Christianity as a whole isn’t problematic, because I have friends who are Christians who aren’t problematic.” This is a basic logical fallacy. The police system’s interactions with racial and socioeconomic dynamics is not problematic because all individual officers are problematic. The system is wrong because it allows for the possibility that some officers act in corrupt ways. Standing with the Brooklyn MTA protests does not mean standing against individual cops or being “anti-cop.” It means being opposed to systems that allow for individual corruption, being opposed to systems that allow for the propagation of violence, and being opposed to systems that allow the dissemination of racism. Anna McGee is a sophomore from Paducah, Ky. She can be reached at amcgee@princeton. edu.
Why Facebook’s civil rights abuses deserve more attention Shannon Chaffers Columnist
Ever since the 2016 election, Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, have come under fire for numerous reasons, ranging from privacy violations and their refusal to ban political ads to their inability to manage fake news on the platform. Each of these issues carries very important consequences and has rightly garnered public attention, both in everyday conversations and the political realm. Indeed, Zuckerberg has testified in Congress multiple times since 2016 and faced questions on these topics. The most recent hearing was on Oct. 23, but it was questioning on a separate topic that led to one of the most viral moments of the day. Ohio Congresswoman Joyce Beatty grilled Zuckerberg on his knowledge of Facebook’s civil rights policies. Zuckerberg could not produce a single satisfactory answer. Not only was the scene embarrassing for Zuckerberg, who clearly hadn’t prepared for this line of questioning, but also it should serve as a wake-up call. Facebook has pressing racial discrimination issues, which should be seen and treated by politicians, the general public, and the company itself as seriously as all of its other issues. In March, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
sued Facebook for allowing companies to target ads towards certain racial groups. The fact that a Ben Carsonled HUD, which has shown reluctance to tackle housing discrimination, filed this lawsuit highlights the f lagrance of this problem. HUD argued that Facebook’s policies essentially allow landlords to determine who is able to view their housing ad based on race, ethnicity, or religion, among other characteristics protected by the 1968 Fair Housing Act. If Facebook’s policy seems reminiscent of 20th-century race-based policies such as redlining, which led to the passage of the Fair Housing Act, one point in the lawsuit makes the resonance even more explicit. Facebook gave advertisers a map tool that allowed them to literally draw a red line around an area they wanted to exclude from seeing the ad. For anyone who has learned about the history of housing discrimination in this country, this should have sent alarm bells ringing. Yet no one at Facebook involved with designing this policy deemed this a problem. Either they were simply ignorant of the problem, or they did it on purpose. Neither option is acceptable. Representative Beatty suggested that a lack of diversity at Facebook could be a cause. According to its diversity report, only 9 percent of Facebook employees are black or Hispanic. Ad-
dressing this problem now may seem like a necessity to ensure these policies don’t keep cropping up. However, lack of diversity should not be seen as a valid excuse. Every company, especially those who have as much impact as Facebook, must assume responsibility for the impact of their policies. Zuckerberg’s apathy towards this issue, demonstrated by his inability to answer Beatty’s questions, shows he has not accepted that responsibility. One could argue that Mark Zuckerberg is the CEO of Facebook and shouldn’t be responsible for having knowledge on the intricacies of every aspect of his company. Fair, but he also couldn’t name who at the company was in charge of addressing the civil rights issue and couldn’t name the civil rights firm Facebook had hired to help them. There’s no excuse for that. Additionally, his attitude sets the tone for his company. His deprioritization of these issues sends a message to those in charge of these policies that they need not consider the harmful and discriminatory consequences of whatever it is they are designing. Facebook’s policies have not only harmed minorities and vulnerable people in America, but also people across the world. In March of last year, UN investigators said t he spread of hate speech on Facebook played a “determining role” in the violence against Rohing-
ya Muslims in Myanmar, which the U.S. government has called an instance of ethnic cleansing. Like many people, I use Facebook as part of my daily routine — I often find myself scrolling through my feed when I wake up, between classes, and before I go to bed. While the revelations about Facebook’s discriminatory practices leave me feeling unsettled every time I open the app, I recognize the importance it plays in my life and the lives of other students. It is a means to communicate with friends both here and from home, to learn about events on campus, and to fulfill various other uses. The fact that Facebook is a necessary feature in so many of our lives, however, means that we have a responsibility as users to challenge Facebook on these policies. While we often place the emphasis on Facebook’s role in political advertisements and the like, we also need to focus on the effects on vulnerable people and people of color. Facebook should not get away with its abysmal track record on discrimination and indifference towards fixing its failures. As Representative Beatty said to Zuckerberg, “it’s almost like you think this is a joke.” It’s time for Facebook to realize it’s not. Shannon Chaffers is a sophomore from Wellesley, Mass. She can be reached at sec3@ princeton.edu.
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Football prepares to take on Dartmouth at Yankee Stadium in clash of unbeaten teams By Jack Graham
Head Sports Editor
When Princeton football began preparing for its 150th birthday, the initial plan was to schedule a game against Rutgers, Princeton’s opponent in the first-ever college football game in 1869. The two programs made progress in negotiations, but after Rutgers replaced its football head coach and athletic director in late 2015, the talks stalled. In the meantime, officials from the New York Yankees began to show interest in an alternative proposal: playing a game at Yankee Stadium to commemorate the anniversary. After coming to an agreement, Princeton chose to play the game on Nov. 9, 2019, because it was the Saturday after Nov. 6, the day in 1869 when Princeton and Rutgers faced off for the first time. In retrospect, that decision worked out well. The opponent for this weekend will be No. 13 Dartmouth (7–0, 4–0 Ivy), who, along with No. 9 Princeton (7– 0, 4–0 Ivy), will enter the game undefeated. Saturday’s game will thus not only represent a celebration of the team’s sesquicentennial anniversary in a special venue, but also a matchup between two of the best teams in the FCS, with significant Ivy League title implications. If the Tigers are to extend their 17-game win-
ning streak and put themselves in a strong position for a second consecutive Ivy championship, they’ll have their work cut out for them. The Big Green rank near the top of the country both offensively and defensively and have outscored their opponents by an average of 27 points per game. Prior to last week’s win over Harvard on a Hail Mary as time expired, they had won every game by double digits. Last year, Princeton narrowly beat Dartmouth in another matchup of unbeaten teams, and many of the Big Green players from that game are back. “Of their 22 starting offensive and defensive players, 17 of them are seniors,” said Princeton head coach Bob Surace ’90. “They’ve always been efficient, but [this year] it’s not just their efficient plays. They’re hitting more big plays, and you see it every game.” On defense, Dartmouth is led by Isiah Swann, a senior defensive back who was named the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year last year after leading all Division I with nine interceptions. At 5.42 this year, the Big Green have allowed the fewest yards per passing attempt in the FCS. “[Swann] is elite, but they have a secondary and group of linebackers in coverage that have done a great job,” Surace said. “Where their play offensive tape is really long, they don’t give up a lot of big plays.
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Princeton football will take on Dartmouth at Yankee Stadium on Saturday.
They force teams to have to drive the field, which is challenging against a team that’s that good.” Luckily for Princeton, the Tigers have a quarterback who’s playing pretty well, himself. Senior Kevin Davidson is second in the FCS in completion percentage at 70.3 percent and has thrown for 291 yards per game. Princeton’s deep receiving corps, with three players averaging more than 50 yards receiving per game, may allow them to avoid throwing the ball Swann’s way as much as possible. There is uncertainty around the status of Dart-
mouth starting quarterback Jared Gerbino, who left Dartmouth’s game against Harvard with an injury and didn’t return. Dartmouth’s second quarterback, Derek Kyler, has received playing time throughout the season and threw the Hail Mary pass to lift Dartmouth over Harvard with seconds remaining. Whoever gets the snaps at quarterback for the Big Green will have the benefit of throwing to two stellar receivers in Hunter Hagdorn and Drew Estrada, whom Surace compared to Princeton’s star duo last season: Jesper Horsted ’19
and Stephen Carlson ’19. Despite the big stage and the tough opponent, Princeton will look to stick to the same principles that have gotten them to this point undefeated. “I meet with the captains early in the week, and one of the things we talked about was just keeping the same routine, and that really came from them,” Surace said. “Dartmouth is awesome. They have a great team, so what we have to do is focus on putting out our best.” The game is scheduled to begin at 3:30 p.m. and will be broadcast on ESPNU and WPRB 103.3 FM.
M E N ’ S W AT E R P O L O
No. 18 Princeton men’s water polo to play final two games before NWPC tournament By Rachel Posner Contributor
The Princeton men’s water polo team is preparing for two games in its home DeNunzio Pool this Saturday, Nov. 9, a day dedicated to celebrating its seniors. These games are the last before the NWPC Tournament from Nov. 22–24 and could be the Tigers’ last home game of the season. Princeton is currently No. 20. Coming off of a sevengoal win against MIT and two losses against Brown (8–10) and Harvard (6–10) last weekend, Coach Dustin Litvak said the team has “learned a lot about how we can be successful and what is keeping us from being successful” from last weekend’s games. Aware of the risks of flu season, the Tigers are also trying to stay healthy. According to Litvak, the team is at a “pretty similar spot to where we were last year.” That being said, the team is looking to further improve. The Tigers’ main concern is consistency. On offense, Litvak stressed the importance of “live
entry pass,” or passing the ball to the center without foul. In terms of defense, the focus turns to body position. The Tigers’ “opponents are moving a lot,” which “changes the whole dynamic of how we play our defense,” Litvak said. With this movement on the opposing offense, the Tigers hope to maintain more advantageous body positioning on defense. This Saturday, the Tigers will be playing Iona and No.16 St. FrancisBrooklyn. The Tigers feel optimistic about their home-field advantage this weekend, but Litvak also recognizes that these are two “really strong opponents.” Both teams practice in pools that are mechanically different from the rest of the conference’s. Iona’s pool is narrower and shallower, and St. Francis-Brooklyn also has a comparatively narrow pool. Playing in bigger water is a potential challenge for these opponents. Iona played a strong game last week against Ottowa. Litvak recognizes that Iona’s movementstyle offense will be a
Tweet of the Day “Four national watch lists in less than a month ...@bella_ alarie is something special.” Women’s Basketball (@PrincetonWBB)
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First-year Ryan Neapole in action.
“good test for body position” in the Tigers’ defense. The Tigers secured a significant 13–5 win against St. Francis-Brooklyn on Oct. 13, but they should not be overlooked. “St. Francis has some incredibly talented individual players,” Litvak said. The Tigers are also looking forward to Senior Day this Saturday. This will
be a big moment for the seniors, as it may be their last game in DeNunzio. This senior class is filled with “phenomenal leaders” who “always put the team ahead of themselves and have made a lot of sacrifices along the way,” Litvak said. He noted that “playing in a competitive environment in a team sport is
a unique experience” and expressed his hope that the seniors enjoy the rest of their season. The whole team, he said, is working to ensure that the seniors “make the most of it in this last month or so.” Watch the Tigers play against Iona at noon and St. Francis-Brooklyn at 6 p.m. this Saturday at DeNunzio Pool.
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