Senior class officers accept responsibility for ticket problems, but managed as best they could.
I write to clarify and comment on a few points that Ryan Walsh made in his recent editorial titled "Whose ticket is it anyway?"
The policy of each person being able to purchase as many tickets as they had PUIDs was set by the senior class officers and not by "Frist/Richardson" as Walsh suggested. We decided upon this policy because in all large-scale events that we have been a part of and experienced, the ticket policy has been one ticket per PUID with no limit. Moreover, this seems fair as it rewards those who take initiative and are most enthused about an event.
No one could have anticipated what occurred on Monday morning, Nov. 10 — both in terms of the popularity of the "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" event and the behavior of students on line. I did my best to manage the line and answer students' questions truthfully and was astonished at the arguing, cutting, and scalping I observed.
However, the "immoral" behavior of students on line is not a reflection of the ticket-selling policy but instead a reflection of the students involved. The senior class officers accept full responsibility for the ticket-selling policy for this Senior Week event but maintain that we made the best decisions we could with regard to this event at every juncture.
Rishi Jaitly
Vice President, Class of 2004
Princeton students are very uncomfortable with the status quo — Bush's status quo
As I read Mr. Joseph Barillari's editorial, which claimed "Progressivism among Princeton students is dead," I couldn't help being angered by its utter lack of perception. Mr. Barillari's main evidence for his claim is the overwhelming contrast in recent polls between the percentage of Princeton students supporting President Bush (28 percent) and the national percentage of college students supporting him (61 percent). From these numbers he concludes that we Princeton students have missed the ball on what's really going on in the world. Apparently Princeton is allowed to far surpass national averages in academic prowess, but in analysis of foreign and domestic policy such a dichotomy would be absurd. Mr. Barillari's argument to this end is clearly irrational.
Besides his false presupposition that something "progressive" is inherently good, he draws conclusions that are particularly offensive to Princetonians. His editorial reaches its most insulting pitch when he argues that our insulation (as members of the complacent upper-class) from any negative effects of the Bush economic policy should make us less displeased with our current domestic policy compared with the average American college student. He continues this stream of poor logic by asking why there would be more support for President Bush from people his policies may hurt than from Princeton students who are surrounded by "I-banking recruiters." Mr. Barillari is actually showing the extremely unfortunate prevailing ignorance in our country of Mr. Bush's extremely detrimental domestic policies and his inept handling of foreign policy. His attack on Princeton's political and intellectual understanding of current events is based on an unreasonable manipulation of the recent poll's data, and I'd be surprised if even conservatives didn't become suspicious upon reading it. His accusation that Princeton students are "entirely too comfortable with the status quo" is not supported by the poll. The new status quo has become the daily slaughter of our peers in Iraq, international outrage with the United States and eerie forecasts of spiraling national debt. No, Mr. Barillari, we're very uncomfortable with the status quo.
David Marcovitz '06
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The Trump administration’s attacks on research and higher education as well as a blind reliance on AI chatbots are reflective of a societal backslide: a commodification of knowledge that prioritizes “efficiency” over the messy process of getting to an answer, where nuances are flattened and the truth is fungible.
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It wasn’t revolutionary. It was homework. But it was homework that asked: how do we build schools that work for all kids? Inclusion, after all, is the “I” in DEI. That’s what we’re thinking about together. And caring about each other’s experiences and opportunities, it turns out, isn’t something you can outlaw.