International Orientation needs to cover race in America
The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s 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 author’s views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.
The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.
The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.
The recent release of the final exam schedule has reminded many of us of the current academic calendar’s inconvenient organization. Similar to last year, the last scheduled day for final exams is Dec. 22, which lands a meager three days before Christmas and barely over a week before New Year’s.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
The following is an open letter and reflects the authors’ views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.
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.
Twice this summer, an orange haze of incinerated Quebecois pines descended on Nassau Hall. The sun burned an ominous red, a wrathful pinprick in the sky. My throat stung each day that the smoke engulfed campus, and at night I would wake up coughing. Later, as students returned to campus, we were met with scorching temperatures for the first week of school.
All is quiet on the email Listserv front. Most clubs have concluded their auditions, recruitment emails are slowing down to a trickle, and freshmen are settling into their extracurriculars. But tryouts season is never easy, especially at Princeton and peer institutions. A junior at Yale recently took to The Atlantic to bring to light the rise of “competitive club culture,” a phenomenon where almost every extracurricular activity — from a capella to club sports to debate — has a selective application process. In doing so, she joined a flurry of columnists from other schools chiming in about their own over-competitive campus cultures, with writers from the University of Michigan, Georgetown, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, and Princeton, complaining about the fact that students can never escape from competitive institutions. This represents a remarkable and organic outpouring of dissatisfaction, much of which has been oriented toward the student leaders responsible for perpetuating this system and the perceived culture of exclusivity and egotism.
The first few weeks at Princeton come with a whirlpool of feelings, one part exhilaration and the other anxiety. Inboxes are bursting with emails, each offering a shiny new opportunity: a mind-expanding lecture, a fantastic club event, or — best of all — free food. There are so many options, and students are torn between diving in head-first and running away full of fear of missing out. It’s a curious spot to find ourselves in: inundated with invitations but with a gnawing feeling of not quite fitting in. It’s like standing at the world’s most fantastic buffet but feeling too overwhelmed to choose a dish — fearing that picking one might mean missing out on something even better down the line.
Can I get one Locomotive for the number one university, for the 13th consecutive year, in the U.S. News and World Report’s annual Best National University Rankings?
To the Editor:
Right after summer break, Princeton students returned to a variety of drastically different living situations. In the middle of a heat wave in the first couple weeks of the semester, some students could cool off in air-conditioned rooms while others desperately relied on (mostly self-provided) fans in their non-air-conditioned rooms. Yet the inequity between living spaces is not limited to climate control: the type of bathroom available to students also varies greatly. While some students have access to a private bathroom that they may share with their roommates or with one other single dorm room, others are relegated to communal bathrooms. Communal bathrooms can be uncomfortable for all students, yet they pose a particularly challenging situation for hijabi students on campus.
Although students often discuss prioritizing mental health care at Princeton, they may not know that doing so currently is almost impossible. The gap between potential demand for counseling or therapy and the number of staff available to students is far too wide to make mental health care effective. According to the 2022 Senior Survey, “Just under 60 percent of respondents have pursued mental health counseling or therapy, while 75 percent have considered it.” In comparison, the University’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS) currently has a staff of 27 social workers, psychologists, and counselors on staff. These accommodations are vastly unsuitable for the student body, which consisted of 5,540 undergraduates and 3,238 graduate students in the 2022–23 school year.
Last month, Princeton University announced a restriction on Personal Electric Vehicles (PEVs) during “peak hours,” defined as 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., throughout most of campus. However, this de facto “scooter ban” has been ignored by many and, walking around campus, it is apparent that scooter use is still rampant. While the University has restricted scooter use, it has yet to update the campus transport system that could serve as an alternative: TigerTransit. A Daily Princetonian analysis aptly described the University’s bus system as a “shuttle around the periphery of campus.” But the center of campus, not the periphery, is where students need to travel the most.