Overcoming the academic-social divide

One of the most constant criticisms of Princeton's undergraduate population is that we're apathetic. We're the "Organization Kids" with five classes, a thesis and an internship, but we don't really care about social or political issues. Within our "Orange Bubble" (to use another Princeton cliche) we're secluded from the rest of the world, solely focused on getting that spot at Morgan Stanley or Harvard Med.

There's an obvious truth to this stereotype. Think back to the last protest that you attended at Princeton — chances are it was the "Frist Filibuster" or "nothing."

But that isn't the whole picture. We're not like the dismal automatons at a northeastern tech school, working day and night. As anyone who has read the New York Observer in recent months knows, Princeton has a pretty active social scene. There are frats, sororities, secret societies, eating clubs and a host of other organizations devoted to providing undergrads with a good time.

Princeton students are focused, but we don't have tunnel vision — you can insert your own corny joke here about working hard but playing harder.

There's an obvious divide in most Princeton students' lives. Terrace can get hundreds of people to come out and see "Girl Talk," an awful indie-electronica DJ, but Whig-Clio can barely get 25 students to see Anne-Marie Slaughter '80, dean of the Wilson School, present her vision of American foreign policy in the 21st century.

Princeton students tend to look at an event as either "academic" or "social." If it's in any way academic, and if it doesn't count toward a GPA, then it's pretty much ignored.

I promise you, I have a point, and it's not simply that Princeton students like partying more than political lectures. I think that this academic/social divide is artificially inflated by the administration's policies. Princeton would have a more active and engaged student body if the administration would relax its rules concerning alcohol at University events.

Princeton didn't always practice prohibition on campus. It was once common for students to join a visiting professor for cocktails after a public lecture. And, if you've ever wandered the rooms of Whig Hall, you'll see what got Princeton students to attend public debates and political events in years past: promises of "free beer" and "free whiskey sours." And you know what? It worked. Through the 1970s, Whig-Clio had over 1,000 members and huge weekly attendance at its subsidiary meetings.

Extracurricular enrichment and alcohol used to mix regularly on college campuses across America. Reminiscing in The New York Times about his own collegiate experience, Jack Hitt lamented that "routine college functions," like "a Dizzy Gillespie concert or a Robert Penn Warren reading," would once have been "followed by a reception, with drinks and hors d'oeuvres." Thanks to universities' anti-alcohol policies, such events are no longer possible on most campuses.

Princeton's alcohol regulations are particularly draconian. Alcohol can't be served — even to individuals over age 21 — at an event where people under the legal drinking age are present. And if you did arrange to exclude Princeton's freshman, sophomore and junior classes, you'd still have to get permission to serve alcohol directly from the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students — even if you're not on campus and not at an official University function.

These policies create the academic/social divide in the Princetonian's life. The administration doesn't trust the undergraduate population to enjoy alcohol responsibly. They want to discourage binge drinking, so they prohibit alcohol from University events — and drive people to find entertainment on the Street, where binge drinking takes place.

After Dean Slaughter gives a lecture discussing 21st century foreign policy, there's no reason why Princeton students shouldn't be able to continue the discussion with her over cocktails. After a heated senate debate on American hegemony between Princeton's national champion debate team and a team from Oxford, there's no reason why the debate shouldn't be able to continue over a beer at a reception.

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If the University were to relax its alcohol restrictions, Whig-Clio wouldn't turn into T.I. Instead, I think that you would see more undergraduates getting engaged with extracurricular activities and political events on campus, as student groups could work to transcend the academic versus social false dichotomy. Jason Sheltzer is a molecular biology major from St. Davids, Pa. He can be reached at sheltzer@princeton.edu.