Princeton the Contrarian

Sometimes it’s okay to be a contrarian, particularly when it involves pop culture or Canada Goose jackets.

Until this year, I didn’t consider my university to be a contrarian. I attended Princeton because of the opportunities we could afford each other and not because I had an overwhelming desire to attend a university that, in at least one regard, enjoys being the odd one out. While I often enjoy the idiosyncrasies that many of my Princeton peers hold dear, the academic calendar is not one of them.

Of all the Ivy League universities, Princeton is the only one that has finals for undergraduates in January and post-winter break. According to a 2012 Daily Princetonian article about altering the academic calendar, “the University discussed and rejected the possibility of altering its schedule” in 2007. The rationale for this may be similar to that of discussion, and later rejection, for a longer winter break this year: there are logistical issues and many of these calendars are created years in advance. It is difficult to change something as static as a calendar, but how is this impacting Princeton students’ academic performance?

For me, January is a month that might as well not exist at Princeton. Most student organizations do not meet for the length of the month and going to the Street or being otherwise social feels like a betrayal to our studies. At any given moment, the thought of all the work that I’ve let pile up since midterms ruins any good interaction I’ve had that doesn’t pertain to school work. Of course, this is what I’ve signed up for as a student and surely most students across the countryfeel this way about finals regardless. However, the difference here is that the month of January is the finals battleground, and with it, there is a month lost.

Again, this is not a new conversation. The Task Force on General Education has raised some interesting points in this regard, including, but not limited to, distribution requirements of general education, diversity and culture and even potentially computer science. Academic calendar concerns even reached the Undergraduate Student Government elections, including elected academics chair Shannon Osaka ’17, whose major campaign proposals consisted of calendar changes and the pass/D/fail election policy. Many students are concerned that the current academic calendar does not allow students — some of whom only go home for winter break — to properly enjoy their time away from campus.

For me, the biggest concern is that of the lost month of January. In the Julian calendar, January is a month of beginnings. In fact, it is named for the god Janus, of beginnings and transitions. While a few of us may find finals week in January to be a refreshing start to the new year, it seems that there are very few reasons to maintain a piece of tradition just for the sake of it. Princeton has a notoriously short academic year — 12 weeks per semester — and while I assume no one is asking for more work to stack upon the great loads we already carry, I wonder what we miss with such a short academic calendar and a finals week post-winter break.

As we have seen from debates surrounding Woodrow Wilson that such moves away from what is “traditional” are often met with unwarranted controversy, it seems that the University also maintains tradition that is no longer en vogue. With such questions arising about the academic calendar, we must ask ourselves how we can progress toward a school for which we can all be proud, while maintaining values that sets this school apart from the rest.

Imani Thornton is a sophomorefromMatteson, Ill. She can be contacted at it4@princeton.edu.