Letter: Expansion will hurt student experience

Regarding "Benefits of student body expansion outweigh costs" (Wednesday, March 2):

The editorial board is a stranger to the truth of Princeton life.

First, the campus is not undercrowded. I invite the editorial board to visit Butler College, where rooms that once held six students now hold eight, or Mathey, where quads are hastily converted into quintuples and doubles into triples. The University should use Whitman College to solve current space issues before trying to satisfy class expansion needs.

But second, and more troubling, accepting more students will hurt those 1,100 we would have admitted anyway. Yes, they may be equally qualified, but our 1,100 will now be deprived of the incredible access I have had as an undergraduate to faculty and administrators, and other opportunities. I also recognize the faces of a most of the Princeton community.

Furthermore, what leads us to believe we can get these people into smaller departments when we cannot convince current undergraduates to choose them? Improving the advising system could accomplish this far more than busing in more loads of students.

Accepting more students will bloat this place to the size of Harvard and Yale, and we've seen how happy those people are. The generations of Princetonians before us donated their money, time and efforts so we could have the experience we have today. We will have utterly failed those who come after us if we do not do the same for those yet to come.

Everyone talks about why we can expand class size. No one talks about why we should. This editorial is the first attempt I've seen to answer it, and I remain unconvinced. Zachary Goldstein '05