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(11/01/23 3:55am)
Every April, stress abounds throughout campus as freshman BSE and sophomore AB students face the deadline to declare their concentration. They struggle to pick the right department to fit their individual scholarly needs. Yet this stress is unnecessary: career professionals regularly tell college students that their majors do not affect their employment prospects, and alumni from universities around the country increasingly regret their choices in hindsight. So why do Princeton students agonize over this seemingly meaningless decision? More importantly, why does the University require concentrations at all?
(11/01/23 4:25am)
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many top universities, including Princeton, paused their standardized testing requirement because of difficulty accessing the test. However, even after the pandemic, many schools have permanently eliminated the requirement to submit a standardized testing score. Princeton has extended its test-optional policy through 2025 while it “assesses the role standardized testing should play in our admission process.” Advocates of a test-optional policy for college admissions claim that doing so increases socioeconomic diversity in incoming classes because lower-income students don’t have the same access to test prep resources that wealthier students do.
(10/31/23 2:51am)
Princeton’s campus is known for its history, beauty, and art. Scattered throughout our main campus’s nearly 600 acres are dozens of hidden (or not-so-hidden) gems, pieces of art that make campus a museum in its own right.
(10/30/23 2:44am)
Considering the growing political divide in the United States and legislation targeting various intersectional identities, Princeton must ensure that students are ready to productively learn about and discuss the politics and experiences of members of underrepresented and intersectional identities. I took GSS 201: Introduction to Gender and Sexuality Studies during my first year, and the class and its incredible teaching staff had a clear and positive impact on me. GSS 201 should be compulsory for all undergraduates under general education requirements.
(10/27/23 4:26am)
In his first lecture of POL 388: Causes of War, Professor Gary Bass described a small number of the horrors of war as detailed by its survivors and perpetrators. He detailed the sight of the transformation of a human body into a mist of blood and guts after being hit with artillery blasts, or the sounds of soldiers dying whilst screaming for their mothers. This instilled in us a sense of the solemnity of our topic. Every time I’ve opened Instagram in the past two weeks and seen my acquaintances, peers, and friends negotiate the justice of war and revolution in Israel and Gaza through infographics, memes, and reposted videos, I think back to this lecture. Then, I contemplate when people began to mistake the figurative battleground of social media for the real thing and began to believe that they accomplished something by promoting rhetoric that demands to be fulfilled in blood.
(10/26/23 3:53am)
Who is who in the class council campaign? No one really ever knows.
(10/26/23 3:28am)
In the days since the Hamas terror attacks of Oct. 7, which resulted in the kidnapping and murder of thousands, universities across the United States released formal statements with strikingly differing tones. Responses from peer institutions, including Harvard, UPenn, and Columbia, faced widespread press, public and donor backlash, and have been criticized for being relativistic and lacking moral clarity. Princeton’s timely, morally unambiguous response, emphasizing compassion and education in the service of humanity, constituted a stark contrast to those of peer institutions.
(10/26/23 2:46am)
As tens of thousands of high school seniors vie for a spot in Princeton’s Class of 2028, many will be accepted through their Nov. 1 early applications. For the Class of 2024 — the class with the most recent publicly available early admissions data — nearly half of the students were accepted through early admission. Early action (EA) acceptance rates are considerably higher than those for regular decision (RD) at every Ivy League institution: early commitment clearly increases a student’s chances of getting into top schools. But the nature of restrictive (or single-choice) early action (REA) processes, like Princeton’s, offer that benefit to only a privileged collective. In order not to disadvantage and dissuade applicants who need more security in the college process, Princeton should adopt non-restrictive early action or, at least, return to its pre-2008 early decision (ED) program.
(10/25/23 1:12am)
The recent “Who Runs Princeton” special issue from The Daily Princetonian highlighted many key figures on campus, but one in particular stood out: the nearly 1,200 non-faculty staff members the University has hired over the past decade. Many of Princeton’s peer institutions have seen a similar uptick in the number of administrators and have faced backlash from students. The calls to — as one Harvard student put it — “fire them all,” stem from a belief that more administrators drive up tuition prices and increase the various and complex levels of bureaucracy that students must navigate when seeking to impact change on campus, or simply get answers to their questions.
(10/24/23 3:42am)
Elite schools are commonly criticized for disproportionately funneling their graduates into the privileged professions of finance and consulting, fields which have been exposed again and again for unethical practices and corporate greed. Princeton is no exception, with nearly 20 percent of graduates in 2023 entering these sectors, a phenomenon which some Princetonians feel contradicts Princeton’s unofficial motto of being “in the nation’s service and the service of humanity.”
(10/23/23 1:38am)
When the first-year class descends upon Princeton’s campus each fall, they are ready to begin the next chapter of their lives. Their first steps include attending events with hundreds of new faces, completing dozens of orientation sessions, and embarking upon orientation trips. These experiences help students acclimate to the Princeton community, but after orientation programming, first-years are faced with an entirely new campus landscape: in their absence, nearly 4,000 sophomore, junior, and seniors have moved back onto campus. Many students find this new landscape overwhelming; yet for some, the transition seems less drastic, thanks to prior connections to upperclassmen, which often resulted from privileged upbringings. To provide a more even playing field for all students, the University should create opportunities for all first-year students to build comparable connections with upperclassmen.
(10/13/23 3:21am)
As the Class of 2026 prepares to declare their majors this spring, sophomores anxiously dissect the options available to them. Which major would meet their academic interest? Which one would align with their career goals? But for international students, one more significant consideration weighs on their mind: which major would allow them to extend their time in the United States?
(10/13/23 3:11am)
As one of only seven American institutions to offer need-blind admissions to international applicants, Princeton appears to do more than most universities to help students of all backgrounds from around the globe. This includes supporting a crucial, yet often overlooked group necessary to creating a vibrant campus community: low-income international students. Despite need-blind admission, the University still does not do enough to attract low-income students globally and integrate them into the community.
(10/06/23 3:11am)
Beef is perhaps the most essential element of the American diet. We are carnivorous to a greater point than possibly any other country on earth. The carnal pleasure of sinking teeth into flesh has been painted as inexorably American in cowboy movies and fast food advertisements. Beef eating is so inextricably entwined with American cultural identity that not eating it may have been used as a justification to exclude people from the country. The extent of America’s addiction to beef is staggering. We use 654 million acres for grazing our 94.4 million cattle, an area larger than Alaska. This obsession comes at a staggering cost. Producing one kilogram of beef produces the equivalent of 100 kilograms of carbon dioxide, more than any other common food. Beef’s global warming potential is 7.2 times greater than chicken and 26 times that of lentils.
(10/05/23 2:03am)
Amid the rise in anti-trans legislation proposed to target trans communities across the country, as well as growing political opposition surrounding access to gender-affirming healthcare, it’s more important than ever for Princeton to support transgender and gender-diverse students. As an institution committed to representing a diverse community, Princeton can and should implement strategies that benefit these students' physical and social well-being.
(10/04/23 2:45am)
Even in the quietest lecture halls, one sound is ever-present: coughing. From small seminars to COS 126, sickness in the classroom is ubiquitous. Such a trend at the start of the college year is not unheard of, especially during a COVID-19 spike. Many students, however, have tested negative for COVID-19 and claim to instead have the “frosh flu,” which is a colloquialism for having moderate to severe flu-like symptoms during students’ first year, an offshoot of the more widespread “Princeton plague” which has confined many a student to their rooms in the past few weeks. What’s unclear, however, is what adjustments the University and student organizations are making for these students. The answer is few, if any. As three interviewed first-years who caught some variation of the “frosh flu” can attest, Princeton’s general accommodations for students who are sick seem to fall flat, leading them to miss out on important Princeton or social experiences, shoulder extra personal costs, and fall behind academically. The University and student groups should therefore consider how to best accommodate such students in ways that allow them to prioritize their health, while not forgoing their academics or placing other undue burdens on them.
(10/03/23 3:51am)
What does the word “great” accomplish in the expression, “The Great Class of 2027?” In my first two weeks at first-year orientation, I heard the phrase in impassioned speeches, incessant emails, and dinnertime conversations more often than I did my own name — an experience that I am certain is shared by other first-years. We are showered with this slogan so often that it almost gains a sort of religiosity. The word “great” instills people with a sense of certainty that their presence here is justified and deserved. But this pervasive Princetonian pride for being great is more insidious than it appears to be. It reveals that pursuing a more meritocratic admissions system, an aim that many progressives subscribe to, is based on a sense of intellectual superiority rather than a genuine desire for equality. The idea of a “great class” destroys our humility and obscures the fact that we are all here because of a force even greater than merit — luck. The solution is straightforward and radical: partially randomizing Princeton’s admissions process.
(10/02/23 1:50am)
Joining together with 75,000 other people, 60 Princetonians took the train up to New York City to tear our throats chanting, brandish hand-made signs, and connect with people who are just as terrified of the climate crisis as we are. As the largest national mass mobilization on climate change since 2019, organizers hosted the March to End Fossil Fuels to call on President Biden to fight harder against a fossil fuel industry that actively sabotages our chances for a liveable future.
(09/29/23 5:19am)
President Christopher Eisgruber doesn’t speak publicly much, but when he does, we’ve gotten jarring reminders about how little he understands students and our problems. Take the most pressing campus issue: Princeton’s well-documented mental health crisis, which calls for a transformational response from administration. But instead of taking responsibility for — or having curiosity about — the University’s role as both a potential driver of this crisis and a provider of solutions, he’s blamed it on ‘online activity’ making it hard to “think healthy” and now-infamously belittled students’ concerns with Princeton’s toxic work culture to calls for “academic mediocrity.”
(09/28/23 1:07am)
My roommate and I missed the first three days of the second week of classes due to COVID-19 isolation. Left hungry by the inadequate portions of isolation meals, we relied on the generosity of friends who brought us, among other things, a jumbo-sized jar of peanut butter, miso soup, and gummy bears. We were sick and exhausted, and our capacity to keep up with Princeton’s academic rigor was severely diminished. We worried that spending five days out of the social loop and missing our first Lawnparties would cause our burgeoning friendships to stagnate. The immense cumulative setback of missing a few classes means we’re still catching up on work.