Administrators lack necessary skills to address campus issues

As a soon-to-be alumnus, I will never give any money to any of this university's funds that can be touched by central administrators. For every such dollar that is solicited from me, I will give a dollar to Yale. I will avail myself of this opportunity to explain my decision to President Tilghman, those who serve on the fundraising committee and my peers. I will not give money because I have found the administrators' responses to problems I have encountered here to be nothing short of egregious.

At a recent panel discussion sponsored by SHARE and the Women's Center entitled "Men Against Violence," I was pleasantly surprised at how many people cited and condemned the problem of alcohol as the primary contributor to violent and disruptive behavior on campus. I was also outraged when a student recounted how Public Safety and the administrators seemingly did nothing to intoxicated perpetrators who had threatened her, as I had a parallel experience last year.

I am no prohibitionist. I think that curtailing drinking and sources of alcohol is inconsistent with prudent public policy and the classical liberal traditions of our country, as we saw in the 1920s. However, when intoxicated individuals start infringing on other people's rights, they must be dealt with severely. Unfortunately, the blasé attitude among administrators seems to be to send perpetrators of violent and quality of life crimes to McCosh, as if drunkenness were the equivalent of a defense of legal insanity or mental incompetence.

Aside from the experience of the aforementioned student, I have observed and been personally affected by countless instances of drunken disorderliness and disruption. For about half a year, I was routinely awoken at 3 a.m. in the morning by intoxicated individuals playing soccer with empty water jugs. Once, when I tried to tell them to stop, one individual lunged at me, threatened me and had to be restrained by his somewhat less intoxicated friends. After reporting this incident to Public Safety and an administrator, I never received a follow-up on what was done. For all I know, my assaulter could have been sent on his merry way to McCosh. Just last week during initiations, I heard about an incident in which Public Safety officers idly watched as a bunch of drunken students urinated in public.

All this is not to lay the blame with Public Safety, with whom I sympathize for even having to potentially address such problems. At the SHARE panel, a representative from the department asserted that they are constrained from taking more aggressive action by administrators, and I am inclined to believe him.

One unpleasant experience I have had with Public Safety, however, was when I was denied access to the campus in my car by a racist Public Safety officer and decided to disregard what, to me, were his illegitimate instructions. I have regularly witnessed this officer rudely treating drivers attempting to enter the campus, and he seems to disproportionately give minority drivers a hard time. Although this officer has been less arbitrary in more recent years, about two weeks ago I witnessed a dark-complexioned taxicab driver attempt to enter the campus to pick up a student. After being harassed by the said officer and denied entry, the driver drove onto campus anyway in frustration, as I had. The said officer then snidely remarked to me that the taxicab driver could be a "terrorist."

For my insubordination of illegitimate authority, I was given a three months disciplinary probation. The administrator who handled my case also disregarded my allegations. While I am galled at the injustice of my case, I am even more perplexed by the double standard and disparity that exists in the campus jungle justice system. Even if I grant that my behavior was somewhat unruly, I was only punished because I had the misfortune of being sober. Had I been drunk, I no doubt would have been sent to McCosh with nary a slap on the wrist.

Not only have administrators been remiss in cracking down on alcohol-related problems, but they have also declined to seriously address quality of life offenses like smoking in public areas and excessive noise. When I complained about smokers who loitered in hallways and whose fumes inundated my room, an administrator, not very seriously, offered to order the offending students to stop smoking entirely.

However, I did not ask this administrator to go on an anti-smoking social crusade, which once again, I do not consider a prudent or enlightened policy. All I wanted was for the university to enforce its existing policy in "Rights Rules and Responsibilities" that students may smoke in their own rooms but not in hallways or lounges.

In another experience I had with what sounded like small artillery shelling coming from the individual living above me, a housing department official suggested that I should move if I was disturbed by the noise. The absurdity and injustice of punishing the victim seemingly never occurred to him.

One administrator I have interacted with countered that students do not appreciate how the administrators work. She may be right. But this just demonstrates all too clearly that administrators do not understand basic principles of social science, particularly in social psychology. Because students don't have an idea of what administrators' jobs entail, and the ways in which they respond to quality of life crimes, perpetrators get the sense that they have free reign and victims get the sense that there is no justice. To engender respect for rules and regulations, the people in positions of authority must be somewhat transparent about the way they operate and respond to people's needs.

The education that I have received at Princeton has been nonpareil, particularly in the Woodrow Wilson School's public policy program. However, I feel that the administrators, and by extension, the students whose campus life experience is affected by their actions, would greatly benefit from some of the same basic education in public administration.

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All the talk recently about "alcohol initiatives" strikes me as an illiberal, neo-Prohibitionist social movement to cover up the administrators' liberal inhibitions against getting tough on crime. In my four years here, it has been my impression that alcohol is not the root of the problem; the problem is that this campus is out of control, largely because administrators let it be that way. I hope that under President Tilghman's leadership, things will change and perhaps cause me to reconsider my relationship with the University. Eric Wang is a Wilson School major from Roslyn, Ny. He can be reached at ericwang@princeton.edu.