The three ways Princeton can respond to the affirmative action ruling
The following is a guest contribution and reflects the authors’ views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.
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The following is a guest contribution and reflects the authors’ views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.
At Princeton, a collection of progressive student organizations recently advocated for class-based affirmative action as a potential solution to the Supreme Court in SFFA v. Harvard ruling race-conscious college admissions practices unconstitutional at most all higher education institutions
The following is a guest contribution and reflects the authors’ views alone. For information on how to submit an a piece to the Opinion section, click here.
On June 29, the Supreme Court ruled (6–3) against race-conscious admissions in cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). While Chief Justice Roberts noted in the majority opinion that applicants may still discuss “how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” universities are now unable to use race as a part of the holistic reading process. As a result, the future of admissions and diversity efforts at universities, including Princeton, is unclear.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court finalized its long-awaited decision regarding affirmative action, ruling the practice unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause in the Constitution. Some have argued that this ruling is a step in the right direction of ending racial discrimination. After all, it prohibits the consideration of race in admissions. This can’t be further from the truth.
With the Supreme Court’s June 29 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, race-based affirmative action officially came to an end.
The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit an article to the Opinion Section, click here.
On Tuesday, I had the privilege of watching several of my close friends in the Class of 2023 don their caps and gowns and take part in Princeton’s annual Commencement. It was an idyllic day for the occasion — the weather could not have been better, and a joyful, festive feeling filled the air as the ceremony began. All around me, parents, grandparents, relatives, and friends beamed with pride for their graduates and eagerly awaited inspiring and uplifting remarks from the individuals slated to speak at the ceremony.
Content Warning: The following article contains mention of death and suicide.
The University recently announced its plan to transition from certificates that students could earn to a system of minors. This change will allow existing interdisciplinary certificate programs to transition to minors, but will also allow departments to propose minors within a single department. The introduction of minors is a positive shift, created in order to recognize students who study one field outside their main field deeply.
The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit an article to the Opinion Section, click here.
Content Warning: This piece contains mention of student death.
To the Editor:
The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit an article to the Opinion Section, click here.
To the Editor:
Yes, this will be as straightforward as it sounds: no title could better encapsulate the nature of this piece and our motivations for writing it. Reading The Daily Princetonian and seeing the negative charge towards the University in many articles prompted us to write this letter to immortalize our staunch feeling of love and gratitude for Princeton. We realized that, both in our case and in the case of many other students, it so often happens that the desire to better one’s community renders you blind to all the great things the community already bestows you. In spite of the challenges it can pose, Princeton is an incredible place to learn, grow, and prepare for life.
Last summer, as a fellow in his namesake program in government service through the Princeton Internships in Civic Service (PICS), I got to hear Leonard Schaeffer ’69, a businessman, speak about maintaining a good work-life balance. Schaeffer spoke about how trying to attend his children’s big games or shows — even jetting around the country for this purpose — often meant that he was the only father in a room full of mothers. This advice, while inaccessible to most of us without private jets, felt particularly meaningless for the women in the room. Schaeffer was able to make his contribution to his kids lives seem completely compatible with his career. Yet what about those mothers which he was the only father among? If those women in his story were all stay-at-home moms, what were we supposed to think about our career prospects? He left a persistent problem for the female participants to discuss post-lecture: how do high-achieving women have it all?
“The most striking thing about the lesbian community at Princeton,” one 1979 article in The Daily Princetonian noted, “is that it doesn’t exist.”
Now that Princeton University has begun a process of fossil fuel divestment by committing to remove publicly traded fossil fuel companies from its endowment, it is time to apply the same logic to the University’s employee retirement plan. All of us in the Princeton community — the Board of Trustees, President Eisgruber, faculty, staff, and students — can contribute to persuading the retirement plan managers, the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA) and the Vanguard Group, to divest their funds of fossil fuel companies. In the interim, Princeton should supplement the available options in its retirement plan with a broad selection of fossil fuel-free funds.
What should I do with my time here? This question sometimes feels like a specter haunting me while I try to make my way through campus. Much of the time, the answer is obvious: try to keep up in the fast-paced academic environment that Princeton prides itself on, which is a tall order in and of itself. Much ink has been spilled over whether or not Princeton’s academic environment is conducive to a balanced and healthy existence. But what about the rest of our time? Overlooked in the past semesters’ mental health discourse is the toll of our obsessively competitive culture. Princeton’s network of competitive systems feels natural to us, but it is worth considering: is striving to one-up each other truly the best use of our limited time on campus?