Cormen '78 gets active in New Hampshire town

Correction appended

From her time at the University to her current role as city councilor in Lebanon, N.H., Nicole Cormen ’78 has tried to better her surroundings.

“I’ve always been sort of an activist,” said Cormen, who was an independent concentrator in linguistics.

Cormen became further involved in public service while at Princeton, lobbying and taking part in demonstrations to compel the University to divest from South Africa.

“I think I saw her budding political activism [at the University],” said Karen Winn ’78, Cormen’s freshman-year roommate.

Cormen first moved to Lebanon, where she now lives, in 1992, when her husband, Thomas Cormen ’78, became a professor at Dartmouth. After working to protest a change in street name that would result from a modification of New Hampshire’s 911 emergency system, Cormen decided to become more active in her new community. After working for six years on the city’s planning board, she moved on to the conservation commission and ran for city councilor this year.

“We have about 12,000 people here. I guess I just saw some opportunities to actually help make the policies that we live under,” she explained, noting that it is easier to effect change in a small town than in a big city.

Cormen ran for one of the “at-large” council seats and won after receiving the most votes among the at-large candidates. Councilors at-large represent the citizens of the entire city and not the citizens of just one particular ward.

Her platform focused on promoting the belief that government should have an “appreciation of [its] citizenry” and on advocating “wise” and “sustainable” land use.

Though she receives no salary as a city councilor and has only held the position for six months, Cormen said she “can’t imagine living anywhere else and not being involved at some level.”

“The beauty of the scale of the work up here is that it is very personal, and any interested citizen can really get informed and make a difference,” she said.

“I think the thing that’s consistent about Nicole is that she’s always been a very enthusiastic person about whatever she’s talking about, even small things,” classmate Karen Stigler ’78 said.

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Cormen has begun to make good on the conservation portion of her agenda.

During a street-design project, Cormen explained, several mature trees that were not supposed to be removed were accidentally cut down.

“We unanimously came together and made sure that we righted the process,” she said, noting that she acted together with the other recently elected councilors to plant new trees in response to community uproar.

This year looks to be a tough one for Lebanon, Cormen said, adding that high fuel costs will chip away at the budget, which the council sets.

“The economic situation is also causing a lot of consternation,” she said. “We’re going to have a very tough budget year.”

But there is a silver lining. “I’m not happy about it, but I’m looking forward to it because I’m looking forward to a process of the community coming to a decision about what our priorities are,” Cormen said.

Life at the University

Cormen criticized the University’s campus environment back when she was a student, noting that she had difficulties fitting into the campus social scene after attending a public high school and growing up in a racially, ethnically and financially diverse community.

“Although I did meet folks from all over the place, the dominant culture felt that very old-time Ivy way. We weren’t that far behind the first classes of women,” she said.

Cormen met her husband during freshman week when they were both living in Lockhart Hall: She lived in the third entryway, and he lived in the second. They married in 1980.

Thomas Cormen was a member of Campus Club for his sophomore spring, but neither he nor she had a social life tied to the Street.

“We were not really part of the whole eating club scene, so that really colored our view of the place,” he explained.

“The whole selective thing just really disturbed me,” Nicole Cormen said of the eating clubs. “I just felt … why do I have to convince someone to hang around with me?”

She explained that she and her husband evenutally formed their own social scene.

Thomas Cormen recounted one of his vivid memories of his wife at the University. She threw a party with another friend in the lounge where they cooked; this was unusual because at that time all the parties were in the eating clubs, he explained.

“We just threw an open party, and it was great,” he said.

Nicole Cormen has many positive memories of her life at the University as well. She explained that she loved the beauty of the campus, the open stacks of Firestone and meeting people who remain close friends today.

One of those friends, of course, was her husband.

“[Princeton is] where I met my sweetie,” she said.

Correction

The original version of this article stated that Cormen had worked for four years on the Lebanon, N.H., planning board.