Social justice, tradition in campus construction

As the south part of campus undergoes massive bricklaying and earth-pummeling construction, I ask whether or not the University's itch for expansion is good for the school or not. I do not have a crisp answer, but do know that if the university continues its trends, it will experience a metamorphosis of character — something generally good for "progressives" and bad for "conservatives" of the pure sense.

For the progressives, the trend seems to ooze of the noble goals of academic and cultural improvement, and possibly even an enhancement of the goal of Princeton "in the nation's service and in the service of all nations." How can one deny these very real possibilities in light of the recently completed Institute for Integrative Genomics? Or in plans to allow more people to experience the benefits of a Princeton education through an additional residential college?

After all, an ambitious new genomics program could only aid the world as it seeks to help the suffering through a novel approach to treating baleful diseases. Perhaps these ambitious goals are made most salient by the very design of the massive Genomics structure, which uses massive glass panes to create an omnipresent image of a double-helix DNA strand while inside the building. As for the new Whitman College, what could be more beneficent than endowing more students of future generations to have a Princeton experience? These expansionist goals bask in values of cultural improvement and academic rigor. So who could possibly oppose them?

Conservatives (with a small "c") or those who generally disdain change in institutions of any sort, might. A walk down Elm Drive certainly informs one that change is pending - and starting January, a little further up the road, that change will seem even more looming.

The expansionary changes that can be seen by progressives as a great step in the direction of academic and social achievement can be just as fairly seen by conservatives as a desire for Princeton to become something different from its essence. In this case, that would be a desire to become a hefty big-hitting research type institution as opposed to the small liberal arts college it has always been, selling-out of sorts.

To the conservative, the new red bricks being piled up on south campus could be viewed as an offense to the stone and mortar of the Collegiate Gothic architecture used in the original campus artifices. Newer buildings from Spellman to the Genomics Building — and even the Frist campus center — are all buildings which, from an aesthetic view, might detract from the vague force/aura that can be called the "spirit of Princeton." Woodrow Wilson once commented in the Princeton Alumni Weekly that "Gothic architecture has added a thousand years to the history of the university."

And what can the conservative say about the addition of Whitman College, which to his relief will, in fact, be in the Collegiate Gothic style? Well, he might say that it signifies the loss of the Pagoda Tennis Courts which for 40 years offered a refuge of breathable empty space to students. More importantly, it might be scene as something which will vaporize the proud boast of Princeton as being a college of less than 5,000 undergraduates.

So in this quagmire, justice may be said to clash with beauty, social justice with tradition — debates which ironically exists between the disciplines of the University itself. So the next time you pass the cranking and pummeling of the construction sights on the south part of campus, ask yourself what you wish the future of Princeton to be. I am not sure myself what the answer is, but I know that it hinges on whether one values Princeton as a historical ideal, a sacrosanct end in and of itself, or the notion of Princeton as a means "in the nation's service and in the service of all nations."