In search of a center

Yale has its Old Campus, Stanford the Old Quad; Harvard has its Yard. These venerated spaces do more than anchor their campuses as geographic crossroads; they are centers of campus life, indispensable sentimental, historical, ceremonial and functional terrain. Pomp, revelry and everyday life cohabit these physical and symbolic hearts of campus. It is here that a student body can come together in its bustling aggregate, in times of fun, sadness or transition, and where students find a shared sense of place.

Princeton is not necessarily a heartless place. It's just that our campus is. Of course, Princeton has some of the fanciest university facilities anywhere, and stately open spaces abound across our Arcadian sprawl. Ask a student where the center of campus is, though, and you may get a question in return. Do you mean the geographic center of campus? Head to the Art Museum or Prospect House. Is it history and ceremony you're after? Go to Nassau Hall and Cannon Green. The epicenter of everyday life? Check out Frist Campus Center. Looking for Princeton's spiritual center? Try the Chapel. (Or, gauging from that most sacred of all campus rituals, the elliptical machine workout, perhaps Dillon Gymnasium.)

Our campus's lack of a focal point is neither a fatal shortcoming, nor even a widely acknowledged one, but without a true campus crossroads, it is sometimes hard to find Princeton's collegiate pulse. Granted, lunchtime fills Princeton's pathways with bikes and backpacks, and University members stage an occasional demonstration or fund-raiser on the steps of Frist. Still, it would be a gross exaggeration to say there is a space on campus with a life all its own, a place where old tradition and young energy mingle and sometimes clash, the sort of place equally capable of incubating spontaneous vigils, drum circles and snowball fights.

Ours has been labeled the 'country club' of the Ivies, and the abiding air of Princeton's green campus is one of dissipation and calm rather than centrality and noise. Afternoons find students strolling Princeton's paths, dwarfed by trees, arches and sedate greens. Worlds of collegiate energy — whether art, athletics, politics, media, community service or aimless fun — exist at Princeton, scattered across the campus, but such activity rarely reaches critical mass in public view. Our pastoral setting soothes the strains of coursework and extracurriculars, but it also muffles the ruckus of college.

When Princeton students do congregate, it is usually to drink beer in dim and jovial anonymity. Rarely do we join together in a mass of opinion and energy in the campus's public spaces. Of course, it is not just Princeton, but much of our generation, that remains politically and socially tongue-tied. But whether or not an experience of politics-in-the-open would do our staid school any good, the lack of convenient physical and social space for Princeton to see itself, console itself, express itself and enjoy itself in the aggregate surely shackles the student body.

Cannon Green and the Frist Center surroundings come closest to the description of large, venerable and well-utilized public spaces. Cannon Green, already employed for many of Princeton's formal and solemn community occasions, might offer a lively and central campus space were it not for one thing — the fences that ward students off its too-precious grass. While Frist's steps and lawn are convenient spaces, both lack the scale and sentimental centrality to count as effective public spaces at Princeton.

We could more fairly think of Princeton as a garden, as opposed to a social arena, if the campus were some static relic, preserved intact from earlier centuries — here, Oxford's impeccable quads come to mind. But Princeton is a living, breathing and changing American college, and at least the perennial fencing and zebra-striped earth-movers on campus attest to this. Princeton has rapidly expanded outward from the campus boundaries of yesteryear, and is even developing inward, chewing up the open space it has left near the campus center for libraries and residences.

As Princeton's campus planners continue building beautiful pockets of landscape and architecture on campus, they might do well to think more holistically, and remember that the physical spaces provided on campus have a major role in shaping the social space here. The availability of large, accessible and attractive public spaces in the middle of the campus — the kind of spaces that beg young crowds to form — would certainly add new vitality to a campus crisscrossed by divergent paths.

One easy start would be taking down Cannon Green's finicky fences. Would a little brown grass cause so much harm to the office views of West College bigwigs? Kyle Jaros is a Wilson School major from Palo Alto, Calif. He can be reached at kjaros@princeton.edu.