Peace up, P-Town down: Updating Princeton for the MTV generation

America loves winners. We believe ourselves a country full of winners: winners of wars and winners of Olympics. Besides baseball and epidemic obesity, winning is what defines America as a place. It's why each year, millions and millions watch the Super Bowl, the World Series and, to a much, much lesser extent, the Stanley Cup. It's why we have the Oscars, the Grammys, and those awards for people who die funny. Where would America be without winning? Why, without winning, America would be nonexistent, or worse, France.

That is why this tie at the top of the U.S. News & World Report's rankings of the top universities upsets so many Princetonians, myself included. I lose my temper just thinking about it; whenever I'm reminded that the school I attend has to share the title of "Best University in America" with another elite school in a somewhat arbitrary list ... well, I just get really, really angry. I can only comfort myself by saying "Well at least I'm not at Yale" so many times.

So how can we remedy this situation? Even though I'm just a freshman from a small Georgia town who still doesn't know the difference between the two McCosh's (I'm still waiting on those free condoms, English department), I have some ideas. And if you listen, I'm positive that the tie with Harvard will be broken. I'm not saying the tie will necessarily be broken in our favor, but it'll be broken, all right.

Essentially, Princeton needs an extreme makeover. The whole "venerable institution of higher learning" thing just isn't going to cut it if we want to be number one. Princeton needs to be faster and hipper, more appealing to the MTV generation of high school seniors. So let's start with the name.

Don't get me wrong, our name now is okay; but I feel as if "Princeton" is getting between us and the youth of America. I am suggesting that we shorten it, from "Princeton" to "P-Town." Just think of the advertising opportunities. "P-Town" would lend itself very well to rap music. We could get Usher to mix in a "Peace Up, P-Town down" every now and then. And our commercials could feature Dave Chapelle, decked out in Rick James attire and wig, staring into the camera and screaming "P-Town, bitch!" Those undecided valedictorians will have decided by the time The King of Funk gives them his college advice.

Princeton's mascot, too, has run its course. While a tiger may have been scary in the 19th century when no one in America had ever actually seen a tiger, today the felines aren't as intimidating. In fact, following an invasion of adorable television tigers like Tony the Tiger and Tiger Woods, the tiger has become sort of wimpy. So how about a mascot that's on the cutting edge, which will incite fear into the hearts of competitors? The Razorkillers. The Murderbots. The Rob Schneider. Can you imagine an Ivy League football match-up between the Harvard Crimson and the Princeton University Militia of Death? It would just make the fact that Harvard's mascot is a color that much more embarrassing.

As part of our new, fiercer image, Princeton needs to prove to the world that it isn't afraid to talk some trash. So let's get out some mud and sling it toward Cambridge:

"Harvard smells bad." "I heard that Harvard didn't admit any women last year." "I was in the same bio class as Harvard, and in the middle of an exam, he let out a huge fart, and he just sat there and started laughing. It was so gross."

(Note that Harvard receives the pronoun "He" because universities and colleges innately tend to be masculine ... at least that's what Lawrence Summers told me.)

So get out your cell phones and Blackberries and get your smear on, Princeton students. Tell your friends and relatives, your teachers and advisers, your neighbors and employers. And hey, someone could even send the story to CBS News, because they'll run anything.

And now, administration, if you want Princeton to be number one on that list as badly as I do, you should take action. And when that 2006 edition of the U.S. News & World Report is released with a small N.J. school all by itself at number one? Well, when that day comes, the world will know that our name is P-Town. Jason Gilbert is a freshman from Marietta, Ga. He can be reached at jogilber@princeton.edu.