An unyielding USG president

The success of this drive, though, is debated. Weinstein’s fervor, his colleagues say, motivated USG officers to pursue ambitious projects. It also became a double-edged sword, alienating students on the USG who disagreed with his opinions.

Critics charge that Weinstein’s inability to compromise created internal divisions in the USG, leading to a significant amount of infighting. Most officers

interviewed for this article, however, acknowledged that the USG made important achievements under Weinstein on projects including upgrades to Dillon Gym, expanded Firestone Library hours and improved housing for students not in residential colleges.

Weinstein also cultivated an atmosphere of increased responsiveness to undergraduate views, using polls and surveys more than any other USG president in recent memory and involving more students in USG positions, his colleagues said.

Two sides of passion

Weinstein’s proactive style produced results, former USG vice president Mike Wang ’10 said. “Working with Josh felt like keeping up with a train that would move aggressively forward,” Wang noted in an e-mail, “always with a singular purpose and little hesitation.”

Yet U-Councilor Jacob Candelaria ’09 explained that though he admired Weinstein’s passion during the past year when it produced results for students, he detested it as a source of conflict within the USG and with administrators.

“Josh is a very passionate person who cares very much about being a leader and being accountable to the student body,” Candelaria said. He noted that this has resulted in “a leadership style where it’s ‘You’re either with me or against me,’ which makes it difficult for people to work in the organization.”

Candelaria said that USG decisions became more personal and divisive as groups for and against Weinstein became increasingly rigid.

“It became very clear when doing USG business that no matter how good the argument was or no matter how good the policy, the decision wasn’t going to come down to the argument … because votes were lining up along certain lines,” Candelaria explained.

These divisions turned USG meetings into “a chore to have to go to,” said U-Council chair Maria Salciccioli ’09.

“The USG is very divided. It’s very partisan. Meetings are not friendly, and I think that’s a failure. It’s something we’ll have to change next year,” Salciccioli noted.

“Josh is very strong-willed,” she added. “He has a particular way that he likes to go about things and a particular way that he sees things.”

USG communications director Andrew Malcolm ’09 contended that Weinstein’s critics have exaggerated the extent of rivalries within the USG.

“I think those divisions are really overblown. I think by and large people got along and worked for the students,” Malcolm said. “In any organization, you have differences with people over certain issues.”

Weinstein also said that arguments within the USG during his presidency were not unusually heated.

“There’s always been a lot of infighting within the USG,” Weinstein explained. “I think it’s a normal part of most student organizations that you have people who don’t get along. But in terms of things we can accomplish, it didn’t hinder us.”

Weinstein’s leadership style, though at times confrontational, ensured accountability, said former campus and community affairs chair Cindy Hong ’09, who is also a columnist for The Daily Princetonian.

Unlike former USG president Rob Biederman ’08, who was “a lot more hands off” and not very involved in monitoring USG projects, Weinstein would “constantly ask USG members what they were working on and if they had any updates,” Hong said.

Biederman “would just periodically check in on what you’re doing” and rarely express disagreement, she noted. Weinstein was “more opinionated and tried to give more feedback,” which often resulted in “some hours where people could have been doing something else but instead spent a lot of time arguing and trying to resolve conflicts,” Hong explained.

The increased accountability Weinstein’s involvement offered may have offset the time spent disagreeing, Hong said.

“By checking up on people, he pushed people to accomplish things,” Hong explained. “If you’re hands off, there’s no oversight.”

This style alienated Weinstein from some of his colleagues, Malcolm said, but also resulted in productivity. “[Weinstein] is demanding, because he gives his all to the USG and the students, and he expects that from other people.”

“I think some people were upset that Josh asked them to work hard, while they might have done their own thing,” Malcolm added. “But Josh did the best thing for the USG and for the students, so I’m sorry that some people didn’t have the best interests of the students at heart.”

Confronting administrators

Besides causing confrontations with student colleagues, Weinstein’s stubbornness may have limited the USG’s efficacy with administrators, Salciccioli said.

 “There were some meetings that I was in [with Weinstein and University administrators] in which I was not happy to see the interactions,” Salciccioli explained. “They did not make me feel productive.”

Weinstein had trouble “picking his battles,” Candelaria explained, noting that Weinstein’s frequent arguments with administrators led to a sense in the USG that “the administration and students were gaining no traction.”

Weinstein acknowledged that his relationships with Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Thomas Dunne and Executive Vice President Mark Burstein have been less friendly than those of previous USG presidents, but said it had not hindered his productivity.

“Just because Rob [Biederman] and Burstein are buddy-buddy doesn’t mean that I have to be buddy-buddy with him as well,” Weinstein explained. “There’s no question that it’s been more tense, because I’ve not been afraid to be frank with Mark.”

Weinstein said that his willingness to disagree with Dunne and Burstein, despite the criticism it may have garnered, made him a more effective president. “Just because we disagree on certain issues doesn’t mean that things can’t be accomplished,” Weinstein said, asking, “[What] if I said, ‘You know, Mark, I think you’re right about Spelman, you’re right about Dillon’?”

Burstein declined to comment on his experience working with Weinstein, saying, “It makes more sense to hear feedback from students.”

Dunne did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“Dean Dunne stated a year and a half ago that he didn’t like my approach to USG, but that didn’t stop me,” Weinstein explained. He added, “It doesn’t serve the student body or the administration if the USG is just a rubber stamp.”

Malcolm noted that while Weinstein’s relationships with some administrators were tense, Weinstein worked productively and harmoniously with administrators in many areas, including dining services, transportation and housing.

“Some administrators tried to push through things that were not in the interest of the student body, and when they tried to do things that were not in the student interest, Josh tried to speak up,” Malcolm said.

Class of 2010 senator Cole Morris agreed with the assessment that Weinstein successfully maintained working relationships with administrators without capitulating to their demands.

“I think Weinstein built strong relationships with administrators, but it would be a mistake to call him complacent with them,” Morris wrote in an e-mail.

Weinstein’s administration did not adequately acknowledge administrators’ efforts on behalf of the undergraduate student body, Wang said.

“I look forward to a USG that is more humble and more cooperative with the administration, one that recognizes that its success depends on strong, positive ties to an already-progressive administration,” Wang said in an e-mail. “I think we often overlooked the fact that members of the administration do have our best interests at heart, and that it is up to us to help them identify those interests and guide policies that work best for the school and its students.”

The 101 accomplishments

Despite tension with the University administration, the USG accomplished many of its primary goals for the past year, officers said, pointing especially to Weinstein’s success at securing improvements to Dillon.

“Josh worked tirelessly throughout the spring galvanizing USG members to help create surveys and make presentations in order to get the two new cardio rooms full of brand new equipment, undergraduate life chair Arthur Levy ’10 said in an e-mail.

In addition to extended hours on Saturdays and new exercise equipment, Weinstein said that the University has pledged $10 million for renovations of Dillon over the next four years.

Levy also cited last spring’s “rescue” of Wright Hall and Spelman 7 as another USG accomplishment. Administrators had planned to include the dorms in the Whitman College draw, but they decided against the move after protest from Weinstein and other members of the student body.

Weinstein seemed satisfied with his accomplishments: He posted a list of 101 successes of the USG over the past year on the USG website, noting projects ranging from parking signs to study breaks.

Students may not realize the number of USG officers that work on any given major project, Salciccioli said.

“There are certain things that the USG accomplishes every year. I wouldn’t say the accomplishments are solely the work of one person,” Salciccioli explained. “The major projects that the USG accomplished this year are the work of the entire Senate, which includes senators, U-Councilors and committee heads working together and getting things done.”

Candelaria noted, “The USG president doesn’t act in a vacuum. [He acts] in partnership with all other student representatives, and it would be a little difficult to attribute 100 things to one individual.”

Improving communication

Both Candelaria and Salciccioli agreed that Weinstein was successful in fulfilling his election promise to involve more students in USG.

“He was very interested in soliciting student input. That was one of his goals and that was something he did during the year,” Salciccioli noted. “I think people will probably remember that there was a lot of drama, but also that they had an opportunity to say what they wanted and to get involved.”

Morris attributed the USG’s success in extending Firestone’s operating hours to Weinstein’s ability to engage students on campus. While administrators, including Burstein, had initially been opposed to an extension of Firestone hours, citing prohibitive costs, the Council of the Princeton University Community eventually passed a formal policy recommendation advocating that Firestone stay open until 2 a.m. on regular school nights and 4 a.m. during reading period, midterms and finals.

The USG’s campaign was effective in part due to Weinstein’s use of surveys and his expansion of the USG to involve more students, Malcolm explained.

“It’s good for students to go to the administration with clear data that showed concerns and not just anecdotal evidence,” he noted.

Wang agreed, noting, “I think we made great strides in quantifying and specifying student concerns in the form of surveys and ethnographic-esque research. This allowed us to better reflect the interests of the student body to the administration at key policy junctions.”

U-Councilor Liz Rosen ’10 also praised Weinstein for improving communication with students by establishing new bodies like the Communications Committee.

Weinstein’s communication efforts were not deemed wholly successful, however. Salciccioli felt that the creation of new committees decreased the efficiency of the USG, while Candelaria said that Weinstein was unable to effectively sort through all the opinions he received from his surveys.

“When you have a flood of opinions and a flood of preferences, you need to be able to set leadership priorities and choose what battles you pick to expend political and social capital on … We failed to really set for ourselves a clear vision for the year and set priorities to work towards as an organization,” Candelaria explained.

A ‘tainted’ legacy

Despite Weinstein’s many accomplishments, USG officers said they feared his legacy will be largely shaped by this winter’s chaotic vice-presidential race, in which Weinstein’s support for candidate Michael Weinberg ’11 created the necessity for a revote.

“Both the memory of this year and Josh personally will be tainted by the VP elections fiasco in the near future,” Weinberg, who also served as the USG executive secretary, said in an e-mail, adding that he believed the controversy was ultimately the fault of the organization as a whole and not Weinstein in particular.

Hong agreed that the controversy from the election might overwhelm any more favorable memories of the Weinstein administration.

“Though if you count the number of projects that we worked on and the absolute number of things the USG accomplished, there might be more than for other USGs, the difference is that our failures were prominently discussed on campus and in the ‘Prince,’ and some of them were quite embarrassing because they seem to reflect our incompetence in general,” Hong explained.

Weinstein conceded that his decision to endorse Weinberg initiated a process that negatively impacted students’ perception of the USG. “Obviously what happened after my decision was made was not something that made the USG look good, and that’s not something that I would like to see happen,” Weinstein explained.

However, Weinstein said he believes that others have “tried to hyperbolize the situation,” and make it “a larger-than-life issue.” In reality, Weinstein said, “I don’t think students really care. They view it as petty infighting within the USG, and rightly so.”

Levy agreed that the election controversy would recede in student memory. “Even with this whole revote fiasco, I think Weinstein will be remembered favorably down the road,” he said. “He will be remembered as a USG president with a true passion for his role and a fervent desire to change Princeton for the better.”

According to Salciccioli, even Weinstein’s passion cannot overcome the damage he has done to the public perception of the USG.

“The reputation of the USG has gone from something that people vaguely liked to something that people hate,” she said. “People think that it’s a joke.”