Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against prospective applicants and students coming to visit campus. The school needs these applicants to compensate for the seniors graduating this spring, and we, the students, thrive upon a constant supply of fresh meat that we can teach, haze and otherwise manipulate. It’s a mutual concern.
So it’s not so much that I’m against campus tours. We’re just not fully simulating Princeton life on the current tours. We give a half-picture, and the event has all sorts of faults.
My first recommendation is to get rid of the parents. If I had my way (which I don’t), I’d ban parents from proceeding past Nassau Hall, perhaps with a large barbed wire fence and attack dogs. Nothing is more annoying that the overprotective mom who asks way too many questions about trivial facts like the University’s average ACT score. At the very least, put the students and parents in separate tours. The purpose of a school tour isn’t to make Mom happy. It isn’t so Dad can take 1,000 pictures of the same stone building: It’s to help the students decide if they would be happy living the Princeton life.
It may seem like a cute and fun family moment when parents take a college tour with their children. But if the kids are actually going to apply to this institution and live on campus, it is not healthy to have parents floating over their shoulder. Princeton students almost universally live physically apart from their parents, and this independence provides unique opportunities for a student’s personal, intellectual and moral growth. Prospective students can’t fully judge if they would enjoy this form of autonomy if their mom and dad are standing by their side — remember who is actually applying to school here.
As the tour begins, it usually shows all of the pretty buildings on campus. And I’ll admit, there is a certain feeling of “wow” in looking at the stone buildings like East Pyne and the Chapel. But really, I spend much more time in my room or on my hall or with my friends than in any of those gothic palaces. For the one hour of class I have in Blair, I have several hours of sleeping, doing homework and checking facebook in my room. I think that it would be useful to let prospective students see this inside world of Princeton.
So here’s an idea: Every tour should randomly, and without prior notification, visit at least one dorm room on campus. OK, maybe we’d call the inhabitants a few minutes beforehand so they can get dressed and leave the room. But it would be the only time we’d make the request, “Don’t clean up. Guests are coming over.” The idea is for the room to be kept in its natural state. If you have your textbooks littered all over the floor, perfect! If you haven’t done laundry in weeks and its starting to smell, great!
The purpose isn’t to make fun of our students for their inability to do basic household chores. The idea isn’t to infer that the entirety of a Princeton experience is embodied in an unkempt box we call a dorm room. The idea is to be honest. Sure, students spend a few hours in the library, a few others at Frist near the place where they film “House.” But to define the school in primarily those terms seems superficial at best.
A tour should really represent an honest slice of Princeton life. Such a tour wouldn’t be as dignified or elegant as the stone buildings would suggest, and it wouldn’t be as exciting as the tour guides who sound like they had a few too many espressos this morning. But it would be honest.
Dylan Shinzaki is a freshman from San Diego, Calif. He can be reached at shinzaki@princeton.edu.
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