Tilghman should clarify her vision for Princeton

Anyone who has followed the debate surrounding President Tilghman's fourth high-profile female appointment knows that deep down this is not a debate about gender. As rancorous as the arguments have been, many students, myself included, are happy to see our school balancing the gender ratio of our administrators. I don't really worry much about that method either: just as President Shapiro might have been subconsciously more likely to select male candidates, President Tilghman might subconsciously give stronger consideration to female candidates.

That proposition should be unsurprising and uncontroversial. What has been remarkable is that even after President Tilghman denied any amount of active gender bias in her appointments, so few critics have been willing to take her claim at face value. They assume something much more devious is going on. Many seem to be in search of reasons to criticize President Tilghman, and they have latched onto her appointment trend, as innocuous as she argues it to be, as indicative of larger problems.

Almost two years into Tilghman's presidency, it is to be expected that campus pundits will begin evaluating her tenure. They will look for trends, for patterns in any of her endeavors, then try to piece together the puzzle to determine just where she is taking us. That's appropriate and fair, and it should continue. But many of our pundits have been looking for reasons to disapprove since well before her installation. That's not fair. Or is it?

The most common complaints I hear about President Tilgh-man are that she wants to abolish tenure, admit green-haired students and destroy many of Princeton's time-honored traditions. Critics derive these fears from statements she made before taking office and has done little to advance in the time since, but the fears are substantial and weigh upon minds nonetheless. Many apprehend a "secret agenda" that is only just surfacing with the recent appointment trend and will become much more pronounced in later years. I believe the intense debate over the gender issue has been largely an attempt to demonstrate through ferocity today that future steps to advance this presumed agenda will not be tolerated.

Which leads to the question: What agenda is there, really? If President Tilghman wants to turn this school into Brown (or Wellesley, for that matter), then my response is that I like my classmates' hair color just fine, thank you. But if the agenda stops at equalizing gender within the administration, avoiding the need to trim the tenure system, then I'm happy, even excited, to see my school take the lead.

Unfortunately, none of us seem to know where the University is going, and many are assuming the worst. As a result, we have little sense of proportion with which to view President Tilghman's decisions. Is the most recent appointment part of a much larger trend to excessively liberalize the school, or is it simply an inspired choice of which we should all be proud and fear nothing for the future? Have the duties of the office moderated the once highly controversial Professor Tilghman, or is this relatively acceptable gender equalization a harbinger of more radical changes to come? I couldn't say, nor could any campus pundit, at least not with any certainty.

We're on track for a highly adversarial relationship between President Tilghman and a large segment of the University community, and the worst thing about it is that so much is due to unfounded speculation. Her past statements give some indication that she has big plans for Princeton, many of which are distasteful to a good number of students, past and present. What are those plans, and how accurate has the speculation been? Has our president become a moderate, or is she really just a politic radical? These are questions only President Tilghman can answer, and I believe she should do so in fuller form than she has in the past.

She could do much to stave off the unfounded claims that have been circulating by emailing to the student body a memorandum that explains her visions for Princeton and the means by which she hopes to make them reality. Such a memorandum would allow all the campus pundits to put her decisions into perspective, raise comment when comment is due, and give praise when appropriate. Right now we're left guessing about both her hypotheses and her methods, and as any good scientist will tell you, that's no way to start an experiment.