Founded 1876 daily since 1892 online since 1998
Friday September 13, 2019 vol. cxliii no. 67
Twitter: @princetonian Facebook: The Daily Princetonian YouTube: The Daily Princetonian Instagram: @dailyprincetonian
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }
STUDENT LIFE
Tigerbook removes information on students’ campus residence, hometown By Naomi Hess Staff Writer
The days of using Tigerbook to find a friend’s dorm room to drop off a surprise gift or to find out what city a fellow student in precept is from are over. University privacy restrictions now prohibit the display of dorm building, room number, roommates, hometown, state, and country on Tigerbook. The website removed this information on Sept. 6, 2019. In the past, Tigerbook showed every student’s name, picture, email, residential college, dorm building, room number, hometown, state, country, roommates, and major. Tigerbook is an online directory of Princeton undergraduates originally created by Hansen Qian ’16, Ivo Crnkovic-Rubsamen ’15, and Rohan Sharma ’14 for their capstone project for COS 333: Advanced Programming Techniques. Adam Libresco ’19 and Nick Schmeller ’21 have also contributed to the website in recent years. Students must log in with the University’s CAS authentication system in order to view the infor-
JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
In the past, Tigerbook showed every student’s name, picture, email, residential college, dorm building, room number, hometown, state, country, roommates, and major.
mation on Tigerbook. “We continually review how information is managed and shared at the University. To protect the privacy and security of our students, we have further restricted directory information about students that may have been available to University community
BEYOND THE BUBBLE
members,” Deputy University Spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss wrote in an email. Students interviewed by The Daily Princetonian seemed to be in agreement about the recent changes to information available on Tigerbook. They acknowledged reasons for the removal of information, but
still did not completely agree with the decision. “I understand why they did it for privacy and security reasons, but I also think [Tigerbook] kind of led to a sense of community and a way to contact people in different ways, especially friends who you might not know where they
U . A F FA I R S
live, not necessarily random people,” Sarah Yashar-Gershman ’22 said. Some interviewed students believe that only part of the restricted information should have been deleted from Tigerbook. “Part of me wonders why some of the information was removed from the website,” Mayowa Oke ’22 said. “I can understand some of the privacy concerns surrounding giving away your dorm location for any given student, but when it comes to something such as your hometown, the city you’re from, or the country you’re from, I think those are pieces of information that, when shared with the greater Princeton community, aren’t necessarily harmful and needed to be shielded away,” Oke continued. Students suggested alternatives to the change to Tigerbook. “I think it’ll help because there were cases of stalking, but I feel like maybe they could make it where someone is, like, ‘Oh, I accept that my location can be put up there,’” explained Vedrana Ivezic ’22. “I also don’t like it that I can’t see where people are from.”
U . A F FA I R S
U. appoints CBE professor U. names Rodney Priestley to new vice nine new dean of innovation position trustees Assistant News Editor
SAMEER A. KHAN / FOTOBUDDY
Nobel laureate, author, and professor Toni Morrison died on August 5, 2019.
Postscript: remembering Toni Morrison (1931–2019) By Katie Tam Senior Writer
Toni Morrison, Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities, Emerita, renowned author, and Nobel laureate, died on the evening of Aug. 5, 2019. She was 88 years old. “It is with profound sadness we share that, following a short illness, our adored mother and grandmother, Toni Morrison, passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends,” the Morrison family wrote in a statement released by her publisher. “She was an extremely devoted mother, grandmother, and aunt who reveled in being with her family and friends. The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing. Although her passing represents a tremendous loss,
In Opinion
we are grateful she had a long, well lived life.” Morrison was the author of 11 novels, including “Song of Solomon,” which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977, and “Beloved,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She became the first African American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Her fiction told stories of African-American history, life, and culture in a way that blended personal journeys with the toils of centuries past. She combined magical, dreamlike scenes with real, vivid emotion to create her own form of myth, often exploring black female identity and black communities. The Swedish Academy cited her “novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import,” in which she “gives life to an essential aspect of American reality,” in awarding her the Nobel. See MORRISON page 2
Columnist Braden Flax considers why we listen to public speakers, and managing editor Samuel Aftel condemns the collective political inaction of Princetonians in this moment of national crisis.
PAGE 4
The Office of the Dean for Research has named professor of chemical and biological engineering (CBE) Rodney Priestley to the newly created position of Vice Dean for Innovation, effective Feb. 3. CBE professor and Dean for Research Pablo Debenedetti said that, among the several candidates he interviewed for the position, Priestley’s status as a well-renowned researcher, combined with his past entrepreneurship experience, made him stand out. The University statement on Priestley’s appointment stated that the vice dean of innovation will help build on the “momentum” established by increased corporate funding for research, as well as by recent Universityindustry research collaborations, such as the Princeton Innovation Center BioLabs on the James Forrestal Campus, the Google artificial intelligence lab in Palmer Square, and the University’s microbiology research partnership with Microsoft. Debenedetti said that while Priestley will not be working directly with these ongoing projects, he will work closely with the Office of Corporate Engagement and Foundation Relations to expand ties with industry, external entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, alumni, and other potential partners. Another key aspect of the Vice Dean for Innovation’s role, Debenedetti explained, is to work closely with the Office of Technology Licensing to enable on-campus research-
ers to translate their work into commercial or non-profit endeavors. These roles play into Priestley’s past experiences, as he is a co-inventor of four patent-pending technologies, according to the University statement. “He is a very well-known and well-respected researcher in the area of material science, and he has started companies based on his research at Princeton, so he has direct experience in this arena,” Debenedetti said. The Vice Dean for Innovation will also be responsible for “fostering a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship,” said Debenedetti, through workshops, training, networking opportunities, and providing access to business and legal expertise. Debenedetti said that while the University already had a successful ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship, it previously lacked a single, visible point of entry for faculty and students to both engage with external industries and put their research into action. In his new role, Debenedetti said, Priestley will “serve faculty and other members of the Princeton research community by becoming the natural point of entry for innovation and entrepreneurship across campus.” “[Priestley is] very excited about the place we are but also has a very compelling vision about the place where he wants to take us,” Debenedetti added. Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science Emily Carter noted in an email
Today on Campus 12:00 p.m.: Student Activities Fair Dillon Gym
See PRIESTLY page 3
By Rebecca Han Staff Writer
The University has named nine new members to the Board of Trustees, effective July 1, according to a statement on June 18. According to the statement, the new trustees are Heather Gerken ’91, Anthony H.P. Lee ’79, Brad Smith ’81, Sumir Chadha ’93, Bob Peck ’88, Anthony Yoseloff ’96, Amy Alving GS ’88, Terri Sewell ’86, and Sarah Varghese ’19. The trustees whose terms will be ending on June 30 are Tumi Akinlawon ’15, Lori Fouche ’91, Arminio Fraga GS ’85, Kathryn Hall ’80, Paul Maeder ’75, Anne Sherrerd GS ’87, and Doris Sohmen-Pao ’93. Charter trustees Gerken, Lee, and Smith will serve for eight years, and term trustees Chadha, Peck, and Yoseloff will serve for four years. Charter and term trustees are elected by the board. Alumni trustees Alving and Sewell were elected by alumni to serve four-year terms. Varghese, who graduated in June with a degree in computer science, was elected to the Young Alumni Trustee (YAT) position this spring. Each year, the junior, senior, and two youngest alumni classes elect one member of the senior class to serve as an alumni trustee. Varghese believes the position is important in many ways for representing student opinions. “I was happy, I was humbled, and excited to be able to bring student voices into these discussions,” Varghese said. Alving, a director at mortgage loan company Fannie See TRUSTEES page 3
WEATHER
By Zack Shevin
HIGH
70˚
LOW
57˚
Partly Cloudy chance of rain:
10 percent
The Daily Princetonian
page 2
Friday September 13, 2019
Morrison was first African American to win a Nobel Prize in Literature MORRISON Continued from page 1
.............
Morrison also authored several children’s books, essays, and works of nonfiction, including “Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination,” a critical volume in the field of whiteness studies. Morrison joined the University faculty in 1989 and taught courses in creative writing and African American studies until 2006, when she transferred to emeritus status. She played a key role in attracting and supporting faculty and students from underrepresented backgrounds, and was also interested in interdisciplinary collaborations, founding the Princeton Atelier in 1994. “Morrison was a writer who was not simply interested in writing. She was interested in collaborative ventures, be it writers working with musi-
cians or writers working with dancers,” Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor of the Humanities and current Director of the Princeton Atelier Paul Muldoon, who served alongside Morrison as co-director of the Atelier program from 2004 to 2006, wrote in an email to The Daily Princetonian. Morrison wanted students to feel empowered and encouraged to make impactful work. “I think it was very important for Toni Morrison that students feel they’re involved in ‘real’ artistic projects,“ Muldoon wrote. “She felt that students were no less likely than ‘professionals’ to make art of consequence.” Toni Morrison was born Chloe A. Wofford on Feb. 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, a small town west of Cleveland. Her father George Wofford was a shipyard welder, and she grew up listening to the stories her family told — including those about her grandparents, who left the South for the North as
part of the Great Migration. Morrison attended Howard University in Washington, D.C. (where she acquired the nickname “Toni” from her baptismal saint, Anthony), graduating with a B.S. in English in 1953. She then went on to earn her Master’s in American literature at Cornell University in 1955 and taught English at Texas Southern University before joining the faculty at Howard. There, she attended a fiction workshop and brought along samples of a story about a black girl who desperately wanted blue eyes — the basis for her first novel, “The Bluest Eye,” published in 1970. For more than two decades, Morrison worked for Random House publishing, first as a textbook editor and later as senior editor in trade books. In the late 1960s and 70s, she edited the work of black writers like Angela Davis, Gayl Jones, and Muhammad Ali, supporting the type of literary efforts
that had long been ignored by a white-dominated industry. “I made it my business to collect African Americans who were vocal, either politically, or just writing wonderful fiction,” she once said. One of her editorial projects was “The Black Book,” a nonfiction compilation of AfricanAmerican history spanning three centuries. While searching for material, she came across an article about Margaret Garner, a fugitive slave after the Civil War. Discovered by a slave catcher, Garner chose to kill her two-year-old daughter rather than have her face a life of bondage. This became the inspiration for “Beloved, widely considered her masterwork and later made into a 1998 feature starring Oprah Winfrey. Morrison served as the 2005 Baccalaureate speaker and was a central figure at the 2017 Princeton and Slavery Symposium. She was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from the Uni-
versity in 2013, and her papers are part of the library’s permanent collection. In 2017, West Hall was dedicated as Morrison Hall in honor of her contributions. Even after the Nobel brought her greater recognition, Morrison remained committed to her students and to teaching. “On the day she won the Nobel Prize she could easily have skipped her class and met the world’s media,” Muldoon wrote. “She didn’t. She met her class.” Morrison’s other accolades include the National Humanities Medal in 2000, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, and a gold medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May of this year. The Toni Morrison Society, dedicated to the study and celebration of Morrison’s life and work, was founded in 1993. Morrison is survived by her son, Harold Ford Morrison, and three grandchildren.
Revealing the truth, one story at a time.
News. Opinions. Sports. Every day.
The Daily Princetonian
Friday September 13, 2019
page 3
Priestly to foster new interactions between Princeton, innovation PRIESTLY Continued from page 1
.............
to The Daily Princetonian that Priestley will work closely with the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education and will “catalyze new interaction between Princeton faculty, students, postdocs, and research scholars with the outside innovation ecosystem that includes entities from startups to large corporations.” More generally, she wrote, the engineering school “is devoted to science in the service of society and thus will be an enthusiastic supporter and partner of [Priestley’s] work.” The University statement listed a multitude of honors and awards Priestley has received for both his research
and his teaching, including the World Economic Forum Young Scientist award in 2018, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2013, The Root 100 list of most influential African Americans in 2014, and the American Society for Engineering Education’s list of 20 Under 40 Inspiring Young Faculty in 2014. “His wide-ranging experiences and successes as [a] scholar, entrepreneur, and partner with industry are exactly what this leadership role needs,” Carter added. In addition to teaching, researching, and fulfilling the new role of Vice Dean for Innovation, Priestley serves as the associate director of the Princeton Center for Complex Materials, the director of graduate
studies for the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, the faculty co-director of the newly created Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellows Program, a faculty adviser to the National Society of Black Engineers student chapter, and has served as a faculty advisor to Wilson College engineering students. “I am extremely honored to have the opportunity to work with colleagues across campus and to help define and implement the next phase in Princeton’s emergence as a leader in innovation and entrepreneurship,” Priestley said in a statement to the University. The Office of the Dean for Research posted the announcement on July 31.
COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS
Priestley will help foster a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship and enable on-campus researchers to translate their work into commercial and non-profit endeavors.
New trustees to define, implement new phase in Princeton TRUSTEES Continued from page 1
.............
Mae, a board member for IT company DXC Technology, and a board member for advanced materials corporation Arconic, earned her Ph.D in mechanical and aerospace engineering from the University. She served as a White House Fellow at the U.S. Department of Commerce and worked at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for seven years. She served for eight years on the University’s advisory council for mechanical and aerospace engineering. Chadha is the co-founder and managing director of WestBridge Capital as well as the co-founder and former managing director of Sequoia Capital India. In 2018, he helped establish the M.S. Chadha Center for Global India, a part of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), to bring scholars of various disciplines together to study contemporary India. Chadha is a member of the PIIRS advisory council. He earned a B.S.E. in computer science from the University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Gerken is the Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a leading expert on constitutional law and election law. She earned a degree in history from the University and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. Last year, she interviewed Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor ’76 and Elena Kagan ’81 for the “She Roars: Celebrating Women at Princeton” conference. She was also an alumni trustee at the University from 2014–18. In an email statement to The Daily Princetonian, Gerken said that she is “honored and grateful to have a chance to serve.” Lee, a private investor and director of Aberon Pty Ltd., graduated from the University with a degree in mathematics and earned an MBA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was a term trustee from 2014–18 and has served on various University committees. In 2008, he established the Anthony H.P. Lee ’79 Fund for the Study of Jazz. Peck is a managing director at San Francisco-based investment firm FPR Partners, which he founded in 2003. He earned a degree in history from the University and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.
The first person in his family to attend college, he established the Bob Peck ’88 Family Fund for the Freshman Scholars Institute in 2014, which allows incoming first-year students to gain lab-based training in the sciences and engineering. Sewell, who earned a degree from the Wilson School, a master’s degree from Oxford University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, has served as a U.S. Representative for Alabama’s 7th congressional district since 2011. At the 2018 “She Roars” conference, she spoke of being Selma High School’s first black valedictorian and the first student from her school to attend an Ivy League Institution. Smith has been the president of Microsoft since 2015 and served as a term trustee for the University from 2014–2018. He earned his degree from the Wilson School and a J.D. from Columbia University. Smith has served on multiple committees at the University. Last fall, the University partnered with Microsoft on a microbiology and computer modeling research collaboration. Varghese participated in the Novogratz Bridge Year program in Kunming, China, working with an anti-human trafficking NGO. Some of her activities at the University include serving as an Orientation leader, an Outdoor Action leader, a peer tutor and learning consultant at the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, and a fellow with the Fields Center. She will join Digital McKinsey’s New York location as a business analyst while applying to master’s programs. Yoseloff graduated from the University with a degree from the Wilson School, earning a J.D. from Columbia Law School and an MBA from the Columbia Graduate School of Business Administration. He is the co-executive managing member of global institutional investment management firm Davidson Kempner Capital Management LP and has volunteered in the Princeton community for over 20 years. Recently, Yoseloff served on the Executive Committee of the University’s five-year Aspire campaign, which raised funds to strengthen the University’s teaching and research programs. Alving, Chadha, Lee, Peck, Sewell, and Smith had not responded to request for comment at the time of publication. Yoseloff declined to comment due to Davidson Kempner Capital Management LP’s general media policy.
Done reading your ‘Prince’? Recycle
JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
The University has named nine new members to the Board of Trustees, effective July 1, according to a statement on June 18.
Friday September 13, 2019
Opinion
page 4
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }
Concentration camps - and numbness in Donald Trump’s America Samuel Aftel
Managing Editor
D
onald Trump’s presidency can
often feel like an inevitable catastrophe that gets easier and easier to become desensitized to and disengaged from. Trump has successfully deconstructed and rendered irrelevant the traditional neoliberal niceties that have conveniently shielded this country from confronting its history, and continued practice, of structural violence: Trump is an indecent man who has lived an indecent life, and runs the country in accordance with this indecency — yet, unlike his predecessors, he makes no attempt to hide his amorality, and we make no attempt to remain shocked and horrified by his cruelty. The ongoing detention of innumerable migrant children, women, and men has been perhaps the most concrete manifestation of the president’s ruthless disregard of basic human empathy, due process, and the rule of law. Nonetheless, most Americans go about their daily lives, enjoying the fruits of a relatively healthy economy, while our government cages children in harrowingly overcrowded concentration camps and de-
nies them basic nutrition and legal rights. Similarly, at Princeton, as this atrocity has endured, we have gone about our quotidian business with insular, self-satisfied ease, only occasionally stopping to notionally condemn the abuse of migrants. I have tried to consciously break out of this everyday routine of political complacency through writing. Last summer, for example, I wrote two articles about the Trump administration’s family separation policy. I was proud of these articles, but I now realize how insufficient and microscopic my contribution — which may be too strong of a word — to the leftist “Resistance” has been. As we start the new school year, many of us at Princeton — an institution beautifully yet dangerously removed from the terrors of the wider world — continue to fiercely oppose Trump’s racist xenophobia. But actionless ideological opposition is politically meaningless — or, at the very least, embarrassingly inadequate. Maybe we all should be at the Southern border protesting this state-sanctioned cruelty, or maybe we should all dedicate our lives, at least temporarily, to combatting one of the most brazen, explicit acts of state violence in recent memory. But if we are being honest with ourselves, we know that we will likely be unable, and perhaps unwilling, to perform any significant level of coura-
geous, substantive resistance. Part of the reason for this is out of our control. Authoritarianism, the primary political philosophy of Donald Trump, seeks to, and almost always does, distort and destroy moral and physical realities. As Masha Gessen wrote in The New Yorker, the notion of an American “concentration camp” — a term New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez employed in June to describe the government’s migrant-detention facilities — is fundamentally “unimaginable” and therefore easy to cognitively dismiss. According to Gessen, given the “mythologized” contextualization of world-historical evils like the Nazi Holocaust and the Soviet Gulags — a contextualization that renders these atrocities so unconscionable that they become inconceivable, and other atrocities become degraded in severity by comparison — concentration camps in the land of the free are “something that can’t happen here.” The only problem is that something — the detention of migrants in concentration camps — is indeed happening here, and most of us are doing nothing about it. What does that mean? Does it prove we don’t care? Surely, some of us do — or like to think we do. Does it prove we are, on some semi-conscious level, okay with, if not approving of, it? Probably not. Or does it prove that we have become
so numb and so depleted that we simply don’t have the moral bandwidth and political energy to confront this evil? Bingo. Living under Trumpian rule has felt like a tormenting, delirious psychosis in which we believe things could not get any more despicable and horrific until they inevitably do. As these horrors multiply, they become diluted and uninteresting, sometimes to the point at which their simple acknowledgment and problematization seem unnecessary, if not redundant. We have become hardened not necessarily because we now more easily digest the contents of Trump’s violations; rather, we have become desensitized and unaffected, if not pacified, by the incomprehensibility of it all. But of course, just because something is unbelievable doesn’t make it any less real or any less urgent to confront. Just because it is unbelievable that our government is throwing children in cages doesn’t make these children any less brutalized. Maybe we all should be camping out and demonstrating at the Southern border for the foreseeable future. But how can we even begin to contemplate radical resistance if we can’t even acknowledge the ghastly reality afoot? Samuel Aftel is a senior from East Northport, N.Y. He can be reached at saftel@princeton.edu.
Columnist
T
o take advantage of opportunities for
which this campus is especially noted, we are often encouraged to attend exclusive, high-profile, and high-brow events. The distinguished speakers likely attended the University, and they might have donated substantially. Regardless, take a look at your inbox for the past week; how many emails did you overlook or pay heed to, depending on your disposition, regarding the institutional ties held by impending guests, ties which we are taught relentlessly to covet and venerate? Reflect, briefly, on what we tend to find convincing — what sorts of backgrounds motivate us to turn out in droves to soak in the transcendent wisdom of the modern village elder? It’s all well and good to have a healthy respect for life experience. But which people we choose to listen to most reveals features of the ideological and cultural structures to which we pledge allegiance in our actions, more so than in our words. This is not because we are blameworthy as individuals; there are other reasons that a certain deference to a particular elite represents the default setting of our population at large. But a failure to acknowledge the considerations that come to the fore in our prioritization of voices on campus is nothing more than a reflexive defense of antiquated delusions regarding the definite ideological content of our so-
cial and intellectual surroundings. When we set aside time in our day to attend an event with a particular speaker, we must consider the selection and approval by a segment of the campus community of this person. Broadly speaking, it seems safe to assume that this individual has made statements and commitments that evoke positive responses, at least somewhere. This, by the way, represents the basis for arguments favoring ideological diversity: that, absent a broad and representative distribution of political perspectives, our exposure to deviant, but potentially insightful, ideas will be curtailed. If this line of reasoning represents a genuine dedication to self-improvement, via an occasional exodus from one’s conceptual comfort zone, then it will take much more than vibrant disagreements about isolated issues; instead, voices must be elevated and heard that do not conform to the conventions expected by the middle-of-the-road orthodoxy of mainstream, respectable discourse. What is it that allows us to take a particular speaker seriously enough to slice those precious hours out of our days, which we constantly protest are packed to a point past bursting asunder? Generally speaking, in other words, why even bother? The mainstream reaction, of course, is that we should make maximum use of our cosmopolitan environment, that we should make ourselves noticeable and impressive in the eyes of the particular movers and shakers in whose shoes
we might aspire to eventually step. Such rhetoric is characteristic of a very particular regime of titular esteem. That is to say, we elevate credentials and affiliations over the specific accomplishments that supposedly distinguish the individual under consideration. But it tends to be the case that these people are where they are precisely because they do not play distinctive or revolutionary roles; rather, they have had the good, self-preserving sense to refrain from rocking the boat too aggressively. This is not a categorical case against stability, but with the understanding that institutions have assumptions that gain momentum over time, those who serve as their heralds and figureheads must be identified with those assumptions. The values that flow from these structures, despite what their advocates might profess, are no more factual than those voiced by their opponents. Occasionally, speakers are chosen for deviating from the default narrative. Furthermore, there are generally no efforts to explicitly prevent their participation in campus discourse. While they may be even more deserving of praise than their competent, but conformist, counterparts in the political and social middle, they are not afforded the same type of audience; their speech is not taken quite so seriously. They do not emulate the behaviors of an elite in-group, and they are therefore denied full entry not by formal edict, but through the instrumentality of a false, unbiased impartiality that relegates their input to the dis-
Keep yourself informed on the go! Follow us on Twitter:
@Princetonian
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
Speakers who comfort Braden Flax
vol. cxliii
cursive sidelines. This is not to say that people should attend everything or nothing, or that we should judge one another on the basis of where we spend our time. Yet the association of dissident voices with ideology, as though strident political conviction, as opposed to the innocently tedious speeches of mainstream voices, is equivalent to membership in a cult whose every ritual is beyond the pale, ignores the very tangible ideological presuppositions taken for granted, if not stated outright, on center stage. Those who occupy the center can afford to remain calm, to articulate themselves with the poise that we’ve come to expect of professionals who have long ago mastered their fields. As such, we associate urgency and dissent with bias and stridency; the center is invariably depicted as the reasonable, that which is without arbitrary prejudices or baseless presumptions or unfounded starting points. This allows us, as a general rule, to be more impressed with those who, for instance, fight their way from the middle to the top than by those who struggle from sinking even more, having started clinging to the first rung of a social ladder, the existence of which it is inconvenient even to contemplate. But we are here, hopefully, to get something out of our experience that goes beyond the expediency of the comforting outlook of the default culture. Braden Flax is a sophomore from Merrick, N.Y. He can be reached at bflax@princeton.edu.
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 editor Samantha Shapiro ’21 Josephine 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 Jade Olurin ’21 Christian Flores ’21 head design editor Charlotte Adamo ’21 associate design editor Harsimran Makkad ’22 cartoon editors Jonathan Zhi ’21 head video editor Sarah Warman Hirschfield ’20 associate video editor Mark Dodici ’22 digital operations manager Sarah Bowen ’20
NIGHT STAFF design Ava Jiang ’21
?
Opinion
? Friday September 13, 2019
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }
What could I be at T HE DA ILY
Arts Photographer
Programmer Cartoonist
Copy Editor
Layout Designer
Reporter
Graphic Artist
Sports writer
Columnist
Ad Sales Manager
Videographer
If you see yourself
writingthinkingreporting doodlingdrawingexpressing communicatingdescribing photographingprogramming in college, check us out
join@dailyprincetonian.com
page 5
Sports
Friday September 13, 2019
page 6
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } LIFE AFTER PRINCETON
Princeton in the Pros: Lovett, Horsted, Carlson, and Ford making waves By Jack Graham
Head Sports Editor
In April, John Lovett, Jesper Horsted, and Stephen Carlson, the three leaders of Princeton football’s historically dominant 2018 offense, signed with NFL teams as undrafted free agents. Five months later, each remains involved with the NFL to some capacity. Horsted and Carlson, both college receivers who became professional tightends, signed with the Chicago Bears practice squad and Cleveland Browns practice squad, respectively. Being on the practice squad allows players to practice with NFL teams, although they aren’t officially on the roster and can’t appear in games. Lovett spent training camp with the Kansas City Chiefs, where he was transitioning from quarterback to fullback and tight end. He suffered a season-ending shoulder injury in the first game of the NFL preseason and was placed on Injured Reserve. Horsted entered the Bears training camp at the end of the depth chart, but he earned himself a spot on the
practice squad after catching eight passes for 121 yards and two scores in the final two preseason games. “He did a good job of being consistent,” Bears head coach Matt Nagy told chicagobears.com. “You can see he does well with catching the football. He still has a ways to go in regard to trying to become a better blocker and learning what routes to run in the pass game. He’s very, very raw.” Carlson caught four passes for 38 yards in the preseason with the Browns, also demonstrating enough value to the team to warrant a practice squad position. Meanwhile, former Princeton baseball star Mike Ford ’15, who made his MLB debut for the New York Yankees in April, has continued to produce down the stretch. Ford has hit 10 home runs in 39 games for the Yankees this season, with the highlight coming on a pinch-hit walkoff homer against Oakland on Sept. 1. “I don’t think it set in yet, but I definitely dreamed about it in the past, so it was just an awesome dream,” Ford said to reporters following that game.
COURTESY OF BARSTOOL SPORTS
Ford ’15 has impressed during his time with the New York Yankees.
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Bella Alarie’s international summer By Josephine de la Bruyere Assistant Features Editor
Bella Alarie doesn’t have an off switch. On Feb. 1, the then-junior picked up the Ivy League’s game-points record (45), game-field goals record (20), and Princeton’s all-time block record (160). A week later, she scored her 1,000th career point. On March 13, she became an eight-time Ivy Player of the Week and two-time Ivy Player of the Year. The New York Times profiled her on March 16; her 25 points, six rebounds, five blocks, and three assists helped the Tigers earn an Ivy League Title the next day. Six weeks later, USA Basketball invited the newly minted captain Alarie to the national 3x3 championship. Less than a month after that, she competed at team trials for the Pan American games. Alarie dominated both competitions, earning spots on both the USA’s new national 3x3 women’s team and its national 5x5 women’s team. When she heard her name called for the latter roster, she told Princeton Town Topics, “I was kind of shaking a little bit.” So began “literally the coolest summer that [she] could ask for” — one that took her at breakneck speed from Princeton to Las Vegas; Yekaterinburg, Russia; Chengdu, China; Turin, Italy; Montreal, Canada; Lima, Peru; and back again. She didn’t just rack up airline miles; a silver medal at the Pan-American games and two bronze ones from
international 3x3 tournaments joined her already sizable trophy collection. On Princeton’s court, Alarie inevitably finds herself at the center of plays and of attention. Her summer provided her with an entirely new on-court experience. “Being surrounded by girls who are doing the same things at their programs was crazy,” she said. “We’re all the go-to players on our college teams, and when we’re together we have to learn to play different roles. You’re not getting the ball every play, and that’s different for sure.” Alarie’s stats reflected her statement; she averaged 22.8 points and 10.6 rebounds a game last season, and only 6.6 points and 5.6 rebounds in the Pan American tournament. But those numbers didn’t disappoint her. If anything, to her they represented her personal growth. “It was a really humbling experience to be able to play against the best teams in the world. I was guarding girls who were, like, 30 years old. It made me realize there’s a lot of growth to be made personally. Playing against people who are better than you is the only way to get better.” After her summer of international trophy-hunting and hard-earned improvement, Alarie is ready to return to more familiar courts. “I hopped off the plane from Canada, packed my car up and drove here. It was a hectic way to end summer, but a great way to cap off my summer with USA bas-
Tweet of the Day “School’s been in session since...wait for it...yesterday.” Princeton Golf Team (@ princetongolf)
ketball, get to school. It was great to see all my teammates that I’ve missed for the past few months,” she said. And though the senior
captain is back on her home turf and in front of her home crowd, she won’t get complacent anytime soon. “The summer’s given me a lot more experience and
I’m excited to use it. I’m hungry to win our third Ivy title. It’s my senior year, and my co-captain Taylor and I have talked a lot about how we want to leave Princeton
COURTESY OF GOPRINCETONTIGERS.COM
Rising senior captain Bella Alarie spent her summer playing on the USA’s new national 3x3 and 5x5 women’s teams.
Stat of the Day
Follow us
10 home runs
Check us out on Twitter @princesports for live news and reports, and on Instagram @princetoniansports for photos!
Mike Ford ’15 currently has 10 home runs for the Yankees as they look to win the World Series.
the PROSPECT.
ARTS & CULTURE DISPATCHES
Horseplay at the Hipódromo Editor’s Note: The Prospect is thrilled to debut “Dispatches,” in which ‘Prince’ staffers reflect on their travel and work experiences. Whether close to campus or across the globe, our staff are gaining new perspectives and insights, and we are delighted to share some of them with you. DISPATCH SAN ISIDRO, ARGENTINA | July 20, 2019
By Jon Ort Managing Editor
As I watched a parade of sleek racehorses and limber jockeys spill onto the racetrack, the man next to me cleared his throat. He was curious if I could make out horse number eight’s fourdigit “dividend,” displayed on a screen several hundred feet ahead of us — at least, that’s what I surmised. My inadequate Spanish, coupled with my profound ignorance of horse racing, prevented me from providing an answer, much less understanding what he had just asked me. I stammered out an evidently incomprehensible response, since he posed the question again. I stumbled again, before he changed tack, asking me which horse I thought would win. Though I comprehended his question, an answer still eluded me. A few days before, I had resolved to attend the Sunday horse races at the Hipódromo (Racetrack) of San Isidro, several miles north of Buenos Aires. I had arrived in the city two weeks earlier, and I was ready to experience something completely new, not to mention
embark on my greatest public transportation challenge yet. The Hipódromo bears a pedigree as distinguished as that of any thoroughbred. Constructed in the 1930s to seat 100,000 spectators, the complex is, in many ways, the perfect horseracing venue. At 2,783 meters (~9,130 feet) in length, the Hipódromo’s main grass track allows horses to compete in thousand-meter races without making turns. The sand track boasts similarly vast dimensions. Each December since 1940, the Hipódromo has hosted the Gran Premio Carlos Pellegrini, billed as the most important horse race in Argentina. At the 1952 Gran Premio, the Hipódromo drew 102,600 spectators in one day — the most in its history, and a figure emblematic of a bygone heyday. On this particular Sunday, the races began in the early afternoon and continued at 25-minute intervals until after nine. Throughout the day, I told myself I would leave soon for the Hipódromo. Yet, thanks to eight hours of procrastination (“there are still so many races”), it wasn’t until after six that I found myself on a northbound train, darkness encroaching. San Isidro’s train station and residential blocks bask beneath a florescent apron of street lights, which abut — but do not illuminate — the Hipódromo. When I arrived, I started west along the complex’s southern edge, the reassuring neon fast receding behind me. Without having consulted any kind of map, I was confident that I would find the entrance. The Hipódromo, however, is immense. The grounds encompass 365 acres — the rough equivalent of 275 football fields, or more than half of the Princeton University campus. When I told
a coworker about my adventure the next day, he observed that between Gran Premios, the Hipódromo hosts Lollapalooza Argentina. That night, I learned why many thousands of revelers fit within the grounds. Twenty-five minutes later, I staggered to the lone lamppost on the southwestern corner, baffled at the eternity that had passed since I got off the train. After 10 more minutes, I found a ticket booth and gained free admittance from the clerk, who was astonished anyone would come with only forty minutes left in a full day of horse racing. A few dozen spectators milled on the lawn, and several more gazed out from the box seats of the portentously named “Jockey Club.” At the Hipódromo, spectators may place bets on horses whose prospects they deem favorable. It is an enterprise
dominated by men, many of whom observe the proceedings from balcony perches, their views half-obscured by dense wafts of cigarette smoke. Before each race, the horses slated to compete are paraded around a circular pen, affording all an equal chance to inspect the contenders. Of the horse-racing gamblers (if such a grandiose title befits people who were putting down only a few dollars) I encountered, all seemed well-versed in the minutiae of the sport. Online, I had failed to decipher an inscrutable statistics sheet, which included every horse’s name, stud, record over the last four races, jockey, trainer, hair type, mother, and father. Yet, my Argentine counterparts maneuvered through the numbers and names with a facility I imagine could only be acquired through lifelong exposure.
My legs were sore as my eyes followed the jockeys heading out for the first horse race of my life. I blundered through my awkward conversation with the gambler. A few more minutes and the race began, albeit beyond our sight, on the far side of the track. The jockeys soon dashed into view, straining to overtake one another before again disappearing into darkness. A voice announced first, second, and third place via loudspeaker. The process repeated twice. I ignored the schedule in my hands, and I did not realize when the last race of the night had finished. While watching a sport obsessed with the passing of every second, I lost track of time. I had fallen into the Hipódromo’s regimented rhythm, which, after nearly a century, still hums to the beat of pounding hooves.
JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
Loving and losing in Miami DISPATCH MIAMI, FLORIDA | July 29, 2019
By Samuel Aftel Managing Editor
Before my Miami-based internship this summer, I first encountered the city metaphysically, through cinema: Barry Jenkins’s “Moonlight” (2016) introduced me to a Miami beyond the sensory stimulation of seductive palm trees, shiny cocaine, ritzy beachfronts, Pitbull music videos, and easy, consequence-less hedonism. The film does not simply take place in Miami, but is consciously about Miami — about the interior lives of the Miamians who don’t chug refined cocktails at LIV, about the city’s economic dispossession and racialized subjugation, about the noxious homophobia and sadistically masculine expectations that plague the lives of the city’s most existentially vulnerable. The film documents the experiences of Chiron, who is black, poor, gay, bullied nearly to death, fatherless, neglected by his crack-addicted mother, and suffocated by insular material and relational deprivation. I found very little hope in “Moonlight.” It’s a sobering American tragedy and a haunting exhibition of forgotten lives on the brink of social destruction, of people at the end of the line and ready to give in. There are times when, as a viewer, you just have to look away — the film is too grisly to be enjoyed, much like the Miami “Moonlight” portrays. Yet one scene undercuts this grueling tenor. One night on a quiet beach removed from Miami’s nervous energy, a teenage Chiron and his love interest, Kevin, have an erotic encounter. Sitting aside each other glancing at the
ocean, the boys begin kissing, and Kevin delicately masturbates Chiron to orgasm. As he approaches climax, Chiron clutches the darkened, cooled Miami sand, gripping a momentary escape from socialized trauma and repression. Chiron’s short-lived ecstasy embodies the inexact, potent longings of Miami, a restless city craving a de-numbing from the anguish of quotidian life. I felt a comparable sort of longing in the weeks prior to my arrival to Miami. I told my friends that this summer I was going to expose myself to the social elements. I was going to venture out into the world and have experiences worthy of remembrance, experiences that would make me reconsider my generally ordinary existence. I’m not Chiron — my life and his are essentially and systematically disconnected — but, upon entering Miami, I yearned for a reprieve from a wanting loneliness that he and countless other native Miamians have endured. Part of this Miamian longing is structurally embedded, as the city’s urban landscape is terribly disjointed: Miami’s public transit system is limited, and its neighborhoods feel sprawling yet effortfully secluded — physically, socially, and institutionally — from one another. My internship took place at the University of Miami, whose stunning campus resides in Coral Gables, an upperclass suburban enclave; for lodging, I lived in the dorms. The Gables, to use the location’s pretentious nickname, is a prime example of the city’s troubling design — the town is as stunningly beautiful as it is culturally and economically insular. I tried not to take for granted how privileged I was to have spent the summer in a safe, well-endowed, and generally welcom-
ing neighborhood. Despite, or perhaps irrespective of, the town’s saturation of wealth, the residents of the Gables have been nothing but hospitable and kind to me, a clueless college kid from the North. In the same way, I found revitalizing hope in my internship, a PICS position in which I served as a teaching fellow for a head-start education program for high-achieving Miami students from under-resourced backgrounds. The wholehearted passion of the program’s administrators and the intense brilliance of my students evidenced the city’s radiant profundity. But still, I was frustrated by my frequent lack of proximity to what I conceived as Miami at its rawest — the Miami where the party’s at, the Miami where the living happens. Occasionally, I escaped the Gables
and experienced metaphorical (and actual) parties. I spent a Saturday at Miami Beach and another at Key West; I unashamedly indulged in mouthwatering Cuban cuisine (if you’re a foodie, you should immediately report to Miami); I spent a Friday evening with my lovely colleagues at the bustling Sunset Place; one night, after other plans unraveled, I watched the traumatizing and mesmerizing “Midsommar” at a comfy movie theater with friends; I had a vulnerable conversation with a disarmingly sociable Lyft driver on my way home from an awkward Tinder date; and I celebrated a dorm mate’s birthday party at a pulsing, deafening Latin nightclub in West Miami. Yet, of course, lingering beneath these revelatory experiences has been the anticipation of departure from not only Miami but also from the city’s
people, some of whom I now consider close friends; in a few days, after eight weeks here, my internship will wrap up, and I will take a flight back to New York, where I’ll remain before returning to Princeton. Despite my long-term singledom, my experience in Miami has felt like a fated, doomed summer love affair, a tragedy as mundane as it is cataclysmic. A heady dissonance parallels an infatuation with people and places I’ll leave all too soon and likely never see again. It’s like having sex with someone for the last time: we sometimes feel the closest to our lovers in the moments right before we lose them for eternity. Perhaps, then, we find — and lose — the intimacy we’re looking for in the places in which we live on borrowed time, in the places where we know we can’t stay.
SAMUEL AFTEL / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
the PROSPECT.
ARTS & CULTURE DISPATCHES
Striving and driving DISPATCH LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA | August 14, 2019
By Rachel Kennedy Associate Opinion Editor
“Between the trees, you can see it,” I pointed as we merged onto Route 10 Eastbound. My boyfriend’s eyes stayed on the Tesla in front of us while mine spotted nine letters jutting out of the mountains. The Hollywood Sign — an emblem of fame, fantasy, and fandom — was now fading into the rearview. He quickly tried to crane his neck, but it became a speck amongst the smog. “You’ll catch it on the way back,” I said as we drove away from the sea, through the Valley, and into the desert. The first time I saw the sign, I had just landed in L.A. for my twomonth stay. L.A.X. was the nightmare I’d learn it always is, and car culture was already disrespecting me, with a 45-minute, eightmile drive. Uber selected a chatty George Lopez look-alike to be my first tour guide around America’s busiest highway system. He gave me recommendations and asked about Boston for 20 minutes until he told me something about himself. “And on your right,” he said, in a voice that made me miss Fenway Park, “there’s the Hollywood Sign! I like rides from the airport more than rides to the airport. People going to the airport are from here. The people I pick up aren’t. They still get excited about the sign.” It’s easy to see how the sign los-
es its luster. Crooked letters on a patchy mountain, it makes for better b-roll than a tourist attraction. Just like most of L.A. The sign is just another billboard to any Angeleno born since 1923. But there’s a reason newcomers pull over to take pictures of it, or hike two hours in the blistering heat to get to it. For 96 years, it has symbolized America’s favorite myths about success and stardom. The people landing hope to be stepping into possibility and promise, and the sign is the first indication they are on their way. L.A. is brimming with that hope. Most of my Uber drivers were aspiring actors, singers, directors, or screenwriters (because I made the mistake millions do by not using L.A.’s underappreciated public transportation, I had a large sample size). I was handed mixtapes on rides home from work, and one driver told me of his plans to revive the lost art of the music video by visually representing the spirit of marijuana, “our generation’s savior.” Those who weren’t hustling into the entertainment industry often had riders who were firmly planted in it. A driver told me he drove TV execs regularly and once scored Steven Spielberg. Another found himself learning more sex-ed at age 55 than in middle school after picking up porn stars from a set in Malibu. My favorite driver said he’d dropped someone on set for Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood.” Tarantino’s love letter to the bygone era of hippies and hitchhikers paid homage to the sign in
promotional posters. Heavy on the iconography and easy on the dialogue, “Once Upon a Time” toys with the gritty folklore surrounding the Manson Family yet doesn’t mess around in its depiction of an over-the-hill actor and failed stuntman turned personal assistant. The horror of “Once Upon a Time” is that careers fail all the time, especially in Hollywood. Anyone can walk towards the sign, but very few can reach it. Chances are you’ll never hear of any of my Uber drivers. But their striving energy thawed parts of
me that froze at Princeton — a Hogwarts minus the mystifying spirit. Because many of our goals feel so tangible, it was nice to hear about dreams and conjure up a few for myself. I had forgotten about serendipity and nostalgia, forces that seem all too romantic and impractical for campus life. Being a tourist and snapping pictures of the Hollywood Sign, the Troubadour, the Santa Monica Pier, and Griffith Observatory began to remind me. Aside from a brief run in with James Charles on Rodeo Drive,
the only stars I saw were in Joshua Tree National Park. Completely removed from light pollution, we looked up at the sky and tried to remember the constellations we knew as kids. We hoped to see a shooting star, but once the full moon rose, it cast shadows in the middle of the night. One night in the desert, and then before we knew it, we were back on the 10, stuck in the daily stampede into L.A. When the Hollywood Sign peeked between the trees, my boyfriend realized we were almost home.
RACHEL KENNEDY / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
Tuesdays with Germaine DISPATCH PHILADELPHIA, PA | August 30, 2019
By Ivy Truong Head News Editor
Most nights, we guzzled party platters of sushi for just the two of us and ate 40 pieces of dim sum ourselves. But on Tuesdays, we cooked dinner with Germaine. For all our incessant eating and almost carnivorous college-student palates, these dinners went against our very being. We made vegan burgers and eggplant parmesan. Our dinner omelets were full of mushrooms, broccoli, and other green stuff that Anna (McGee ’22) and I would never purposely choose for our meals. And the kicker? We made it all from scratch. Our hummus was not of the perfectly creamy store-bought variety; rather, it was of the chickpeas-tahini-butter-pouredinto-a-food-processor-kind that’s more crunchy than creamy. Our whipped cream was made by me whisking heavy cream and sugar together. We used ingredients from Germaine’s garden in the back of her Philadelphia rowhome, and the pile of dishes left at the end of the night meant that I didn’t leave Germaine’s Airbnb until 10:30 p.m. every Tuesday. Our nights together were inspired by Germaine’s philosophy — a belief in the journey of a dish from procurement to plate that meant eating sustainably and without waste, and an even greater belief that cooking with friends is better than cooking alone. In practice, this meant we cooked without a microwave —
because there was not a microwave in the kitchen — and we went without paper towels — because those are not sustainable. We cut off the florets of broccoli, which I ignorantly thought were the only edible parts of broccoli, and kept the stems to use for stock the next day. We were an odd bunch. Anna and I are two college students from Kentucky and Illinois, respectively, who were planning on eating our way through Philly. And Germaine is an older woman, a holistic nurse who lives eclectically in a home of mango-colored walls and turquoise doors, a Greenpeace sticker on the back of her Prius. In hindsight, I wonder about the twists of fate that brought us all together. The mishap with Anna’s first Airbnb that led her to seek out another one. My bragging about the neighborhood around my Airbnb that led Anna to South Philly. Germaine’s kindness to welcome Anna into her Airbnb under short notice. Germaine’s warmth to invite the friend of her Airbnb guest to dinner one Tuesday — which led to multiple Tuesdays. Before the summer began, I had many ideas about what a summer in Philadelphia would entail, even though I had already broken many expectations when I accepted my internship. I was a Slavic major working at an affordable housing developer, and perhaps I was just looking for a way to make sure that every other element of the summer would be clearcut and predictable. I would be the stereotypical tourist who would stumble through Old City and Independence Hall. I would take a photo with the Rocky statue and try to have the stamina
to run up the Rocky steps. My vision of a “good summer” was measured by the quantity of experiences that I wanted to have, and I had wanted to conquer Philadelphia in its entirety. Ultimately, I didn’t do any of the options that those travel-advice sites told me, through numbered lists, that I should’ve done before I left Philadelphia. I didn’t go to Independence Hall (I went last year). I didn’t take a picture with the Rocky statue (the line was too long), and, perhaps most shockingly, I didn’t eat a Philly cheesesteak (it’s just meat and cheese!). But I eventually realized that those wouldn’t have been the
memories to stay with me anyway. Rather, the times when I knew we were all in together, doing stuff for and with each other, would. That first Tuesday we cooked. The Fourth of July in the office. That night we danced while doing dishes. That night “we” (mostly Anna) cooked without Germaine. That time we tried to find a suitable eggplant for half an hour and failed. That night we never ever thought would happen. The morning after. I wish I was more conscious of those moments when I had them. I want to make dinner at Germaine’s with Anna again. I want to wander through a Mexican corner market
as a clueless Slavic major looking for ingredients. I want to make whipped cream by hand in that kitchen and watch for the peaks in the cream. Every week, when we finished cooking and setting the table and lighting candles to add to the ambience, we said grace. The first time I said grace, Germaine said I had too much “nervous energy” emanating off me — fair enough, I didn’t know what to say. Now I do. I’m thankful for those fleeting moments where different journeys came together and where the food was good, and the company even better.
IVY TRUONG / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
the PROSPECT.
ARTS & CULTURE DISPATCHES
Argentina’s terror, near at hand DISPATCH BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA | August 30, 2019
By Jon Ort Managing Editor
ESMA lies among leafy streets and luxurious high-rises. On three sides, residential towers soar above the abandoned barracks, where aspiring naval officers once studied; a busy highway completes the fourth. Prisoners detained there in the 1970s could determine where they were, even from windowless cells, by listening to passing cars, children walking to school, and the nearby train. Indeed, ESMA belongs to its surroundings. Founded in 1928, the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy (ESMA, its acronym in Spanish) was the largest detention and torture site under Argentina’s infamous military junta (1976 –1983), which “disappeared” some 30,000 Argentinians at more than 400 clandestine detention centers. The regime’s “Dirty War” targeted students, activists, militants, and journalists, a disproportionate number of them Jewish. At ESMA alone, the junta detained some 5,000 people. Fewer than 200 survived. More than a decade ago, the Argentine government converted ESMA into a Space for Memory and Human Rights, to document and reveal the junta’s crimes of statesponsored terrorism. The grounds feature monuments to the disappeared and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who courageously demanded news of their abducted children. The former Officer’s Mess, the building in which detainees were imprisoned and tortured, houses the searing ESMA Memory Site Museum. Narrow windows on the uppermost floor of the Officer’s Mess. In summer, the space was sweltering; in winter, frigid. The Officer’s Mess has been preserved as it was found, half-rotted and derelict. The paint has peeled; the walls are cracked. The austere tile floors, bathroom counters, and staircases are original. At every turn, the visitor is an arm’s-length from crossbeams and girders, window frames and sink basins that witnessed horrific crimes. The museum’s claustrophobic intimacy confounded me. Both detainees and captors inhabited the Officer’s Mess, in startling proximity to one another. Yet, rather than engender compassion, such close quarters gave rise to heinous cruelty. To enter the building, I passed through a glass pavilion with the faces of the disappeared etched onto its panes. On the fourth floor I walked along an elevated platform, a foot above the crawlspaces where detainees were forced to lie. Five floors below, I entered a cavern of concrete pillars, where officers perpetrated appalling acts of torture, such as electrocution and waterboarding. The glass entrance to the Officer’s Mess, with faces of the disappeared. “Being Women at ESMA — Revisiting Testimonies,” a temporary exhibit on display since March, explains that women detainees faced unique abuses, including sexual assault. In a cruel irony, they were sometimes forced to dine at restaurants with their captors. The infants of women who gave birth at ESMA, whether from prior pregnancy or rape, were illegally given to other families.
More than ninety percent of the prisoners held at ESMA were “transferred,” a sinister euphemism for murder. Most “transferees” were drugged and dropped from aircraft — unconscious, but still alive — over the ocean, on socalled death flights. On my first visit to ESMA, I spoke with a journalist who recalled, as a boy in the 1970s, discovering the corpses of victims that had washed ashore on beaches south of Buenos Aires. In a room on the fourth floor, a quote from a survivor’s testimony: “How was it possible that children were born in this place?” To perpetrate such exterminatory violence, the guards denied detainees their humanity. Prisoners were only known by assigned numbers. When moved between floors or tortured, they suffocated under burlap hoods, which further shrouded their identities. Within Argentina, silence has largely cloaked the trauma inflicted by the junta. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have become embroiled in political scandal, and remembrance efforts are generally contentious. The Argentinians I met were reluctant to discuss, much less acknowledge, places like ESMA. Upon learning of my visits there, a coworker remarked, “Why would you go? You’ll see things you don’t want to.” An acquaintance derided the museum as “Communistic” and “made-up.” Someone else observed, “You must really like victims.” The U.S. government has never fully recognized its own terrible complicity in the human-rights abuses of Argentina’s junta, a vague apology delivered by President Obama in 2016 notwithstanding. Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, Washington encouraged right-wing autocrats across South America to persecute anyone presumed to pose a leftist threat. ESMA, and innumerable other atrocities, ensued. Yet, denial of the truth, whether uttered in a Buenos Aires bar or issued by the White House, cannot negate the historical proximity of the junta’s crimes — a reality I grasped after four visits to ESMA. The site is neither remote nor removed. Rather, the violence committed there has seeped into the surrounding city. Soldiers often abducted civilians from public spaces, such as bus stations and street corners. The disappeared could have been anyone. ESMA throbbed to the pulse of everyday life. Even within the Officer’s Mess, I was engulfed in the bustle of Buenos Aires. I could hear the rumble of passing trucks, and the few windows offered glimpses of apartment blocks. I imagined that the people living there could look back and behold where I was.
JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
the PROSPECT.
ARTS & CULTURE DISPATCHES
Giving children smiles DISPATCH CINCINNATI, OH | September 2, 2019
By Harsimran Makkad Associate Design Editor
There is nothing as heartwarming as the smile of a child. It can brighten even the darkest of days, cheer up the grumpiest people. At least, that is what my mother always says. And I have found myself agreeing with her on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, there are many unhappy children that live within our communities, hiding their misery, their struggles, behind fake smiles, emaciated faces, tattered and old clothing. In my hometown of Cincinnati, the child poverty rate, now considered one of the highest in the nation, has been on the rise. Nearly half of Cincinnati’s children live below the federal poverty line. This means that over 80,000 children may go hungry, while more than 16,000 infants and toddlers do not have enough diapers. With so much need comes the presence of many organizations with missions to address each necessity: food, clothing, jobs, shelter. This summer, I worked with Give Like a Mother, a nonprofit that provides clothing to children free of cost. Give Like a Mother partners with 19 local schools to identify and reach children whose families cannot afford to buy clothing even in resale shops. Throughout the year, the organization accepts new and gently-used clothing
and gear from donors around the city. Twice a year — once in the fall, and once in spring — Give Like a Mother hosts clothing distributions for families who have requested assistance. The goal is to provide underserved children with enough properlyfitting clothing for a week of school, thus reducing the stigma often experienced by those who wear the same clothing day after day. While much of my work involved researching funding opportunities and applying for grant money, I was able to witness just how much providing clothing impacted underprivileged children and their families at a clothing sign-up I assisted with. I saw a mother whose son wore the same t-shirt and shorts every day because he had nothing that fit. I saw a teenage girl whose siblings wore shoes that were too big because they couldn’t afford to buy new ones. The streets filled with people receiving free school supplies and haircuts as well as requesting free clothing. But even as I saw so much need, I also saw so much hope. I met a baby who had come to a foster family with just a diaper, smiling in bright clothes and a stroller that had been provided by Give Like a Mother. I talked to children whose faces lit up as they talked about favorite characters, colors, hobbies, and sports teams. One little girl, who looked to be around six or seven years old, was particularly shy, hiding be-
hind her mother in clothes that appeared to be too small for her. She was so timid that her mother was the one answering most of the questions. But after a few minutes of mostly one-sided conversations with the girl, with her nodding or shaking her tiny head in reply, she began to open up about her likes and dislikes. Before I knew it, she was chattering about magic and her favorite fairies, her hands moving up and down as she bounced on her small feet. Such interactions showed how providing clothing meant more than meeting a need. For these kids, giving them clothing
meant giving them back their dignity and self-worth and allowing them to express their personalities. No longer would they have to worry about being ridiculed or bullied; they could now focus on just being kids. Their families were hopeful, too. With the knowledge that childhood poverty is linked to lower educational achievement and increased exposure to violence, there was hope that their children could rise above their poverty and be successful, that the cycle would not be repeated. While the statistics and the reality of poverty may seem grim, I realized that someone
who cares to help may give hope to the underprivileged, impoverished children in our communities. In the words written by two children at the sign-up, you can “ma[k]e a lot of people smile :)”friend realized we were almost home.
HARSIMRAN MAKKAD / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
Stories worth telling DISPATCH BATTAMBANG, CAMBODIA | September 4, 2019
By Benjamin Ball Head News Editor
We read excerpts from memoirs. We read love letters. We read scientific essays on everything from sleep to the importance of owning a dog. To watch my students, in a language that was not their first, grapple with complex topics of empathy and memory and loss and love was nothing short of beautiful. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at 3 p.m., reading club began. A group of about 10 Theravada Buddhist monks, followed by about a half-dozen laypeople, would file into a small classroom in a small university in the small(ish) town of Battambang, Cambodia. And then, we would read. Venerable Tola, my boss for the summer at Preah Sihanouk Raja Buddhist University, had asked me to start this reading club because he was concerned that too much of Khmer education was focused on comprehending and then repeating information, and too little on argumentation and analysis. Many students at the university, monks included, were looking to write theses, and to do so, Tola believed they needed the skills to identify arguments and craft their own. For two months, I had the privilege of teaching that class, as well as two English language
classes in the evening. Outside of class, I got to visit Angkor Wat. I took a weekend trip to Kuala Lumpur. I got to see Venerable Tola’s hometown and meet his parents. The summer abounded with experiences that I will never forget. But what I loved most about the summer were the stories I was told. From hearing Venerable Tola talk about growing up listening to Sinn Sisamuth, the “Elvis of Cambodia,” and wanting to be just like him someday, to watching the culture fair the students put together to celebrate Cambodian food, fashion, and sports, and finding so much joy in their history, I loved hearing all of their stories. Since the time difference in Cambodia put me 11 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, most of the time I spent Skyping with my girlfriend was early in the morning, before my work started in the afternoon, just as she was going to sleep. Each night, I’d regale her with the events of the day, such as when I ate a frog but refused to eat a scorpion, or when I introduced Venerable Tola to the concept of breadsticks, or when I taught a class of monks the word “dude.” As a result, I went through my day constantly thinking, “this will be a great story to tell Anna in the morning.” That changed how I lived my trip. There was something to telling the story that authenticated those experiences for me. It was as if the experiences didn’t feel quite real if I didn’t
tell her about them. On the last day of my reading club, as a special “bonus” reading, I presented my students with W.H. Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939.” After eight dreary stanzas on how terrible the world around him seems, Auden ends his poem on a strangely hopeful note, saying that, despite all of the gloom, there are “ironic points of light...wherever the Just/exchange their messages.” My students concluded that Auden’s focus on the exchange
of voices to show an “affirming f lame” requires individuals to go outside of themselves, to participate, and to find meaning in that darkness. What gives Auden hope, one of my students remarked, wasn’t that he was merely alive, but that he could share that life with someone else. Battambang has made me think a lot about sharing stories, both the ones I was told, and the ones I’ve gotten to tell others. To tell a story, I think, is to be a part of something bigger
than yourself. For now, all I feel is thankful. Thankful for Battambang, thankful for my experiences there, and thankful that I have people in my life to exchange experiences with.
BENJAMIN BALL / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN