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(12/06/18 2:00am)
While holidays mean, above all, food and family, trips home often carry the awkwardness and anxiety of reuniting with high school friends. These are the people you shared time and experiences and secrets with, but slowly the relationships drifted from weekly FaceTimes to intermittent texts to obligatory birthday calls. I often get the feeling that I should be so excited to see them again, but I can’t shake a worry that it won’t be what it used to be. While I jump at the opportunity to sit in my friend’s dorm and do nothing on a Tuesday night, it takes a pep talk to muster up the energy to hang out with high school friends the one night we’re all home.
(11/12/18 12:55am)
As a senior going through the post-graduate job application process, I feel an overwhelming feeling of under-preparedness. And I’m not alone — this is common among my peers. After thinking I have been taking the right steps to set myself up for success, I constantly feel like I have no idea what I’m doing and am not doing enough for post-graduation plans.
(10/06/18 3:06am)
The buzzwords “Brett Kavanaugh” have been ubiquitous as everyone outspokenly offers their own opinions and insights on what is happening and what will happen and what should happen. We talk about the hearings not like an issue of partisan politics but instead as an issue that is intensely personal. Of course, the hearings are part of a monumental, impactful, and semi-permanent decision regarding one of our nation’s highest positions. But why are we, Princeton students, really watching?
(09/25/18 12:45am)
Princeton students are infamous for meticulously structured free time — get coffee with Amanda 10–10:30 p.m., call a friend from home 4–4:15 p.m., hang out in Carly’s room 9–9:50 p.m. With demanding schedules as well as academic, extracurricular, and career pressures, students often feel anxious about wasted time or un-optimized schedules. But in the first few days on campus before our workload escalated, we let ourselves reunite with friends and settle in slowly. Without a routine, we let our days fill up — or not — without the commanding Google Calendar notifications dictating our every minute. And we need to do this more often. Princeton students need to let themselves be spontaneous.
(05/03/18 1:37am)
For a program that hosts some of the biggest global leaders of the field, the computer science department suffers from profound student dissatisfaction. Students are drawn in by the rewarding challenges of 126 and 226, both well taught and well organized. These introductory courses, both prerequisites for the COS major, are taken by a large portion of undergraduates inside and outside the department, with over 300 students enrolled in COS 126 most semesters. But as students move into upper-level classes, their academic lifestyle is too often defined by frustration.
(04/23/18 1:50am)
Last week, the administration released a draft of a new dining proposal for undergraduate students that was greeted with swift backlash. Since the draft has been circulating, students have angrily contested the removal of options fostered by the proposed policy. The proposal essentially forces students to buy a meal plan from the University, which undermines student agency and causes a significant financial burden.
(04/11/18 12:49am)
When course selection comes out right after the grind and frustration of midterms, it's tempting to seek out the classes whose course evaluations promise an “easy A.” Another semester of all-nighters in Sherrerd Hall sounds less appealing than two hours of lecture a week, one hour of reading, and an in-class midterm plus final. But, as we plan for our limited semesters here, we should keep in mind that it is this academic rigor — the constantly challenging material and ambitious curriculum — that drove us to Princeton in the first place.
(03/14/18 12:10am)
The University website flaunts the vibrant extracurricular life available to students through student organizations. With more than 300 clubs, as well as the option to create your own with University support, the website proclaims that “whatever your interests are now, or whatever new ones you discover once on campus,” you will find a corresponding club on campus. But after the initial excitement and compulsive netID distribution at the club fair, club involvement is often not all that it’s advertised to be. Despite our over-involvement in high school, at Princeton our student organizations suffer from a lack of commitment.
(02/27/18 1:45am)
In December 2016, the Princeton men’s swimming and diving team season was canceled following a complaint about “vulgar and offensive” language on the team listserv. This incident came only shortly after the Harvard men’s soccer team had its season canceled for a vulgar Google Doc circulated among members. In light of the these and other past events, universities and students have been especially conscious of inappropriate sexual language.
(02/25/18 6:09pm)
Amid the flood of highly publicized sexual assault accusations in the media industry, the recent accusations toward Aziz Ansari strike a unique and relevant controversy for college campuses. Ansari, an outspoken feminist and supporter of the #MeToo movement, was recently faced with an accusation of sexual assault. The accuser discussed a sexual encounter with Ansari in which she felt pressured to perform sexual tasks, despite her obvious hesitancy and the combination of nonverbal and verbal cues of discomfort that she displayed. The accusation prompted an onslaught of replies targeting both Ansari and the alleged victim. Some criticized Ansari’s hypocrisy, while others questioned why the woman, represented under the pseudonym “Grace,” did not actively remove herself from the situation.
(12/05/17 1:17am)
Princeton students, as long as I’ve been a student here, have suffered from the unbearable condition of cancelled plans — plans later decided to be too troublesome or plans never truly intended to be honored. Things invariably come up that make that brunch date inconvenient: a deadline, an all-nighter, snow, a hangover. We carry a plan-cancelling device in our pockets, and an “I’m so sorry!!!!” text almost feels guilt-free. Princeton students need a little Shabbat.
(11/20/17 1:01am)
The Sackler family, donors of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the University Museum, has recently been surrounded in controversy for their involvement in the opioid industry and the development of OxyContin. The emergence of reports describing the family’s role in promoting the drug, prominent in the opioid crisis that causes over 1,000 American fatalities a week, has resurfaced debates at the University regarding donor stipulations and moral obligations.
(11/16/17 3:44am)
New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof came to campus in October to discuss his work on global poverty and to advise students on how they can get involved. He explained that every student has the capacity to help, as every “drop in the bucket” provides an important contribution. But he also mentioned a huge downfall of university programs: the tendency to study the world without actually seeing anything beyond campus. Kristof’s 2014 article “Go West, Young People! And East!” emphasized the importance of study abroad as the most effective way to broaden perspectives and understand other cultures, lamenting that “fewer than 10 percent of college students study overseas during undergraduate years.” Students study international poverty and history and politics and brainstorm international solutions, but they rarely apply these lessons outside of Princeton during their college years.
(10/19/17 2:10am)
Hoards of blazer-clad students shuffling nervously through upperclassmen dorms marks the beginning of job-application season. It’s often a time of disappointment, frustration, and hits to students’ self confidence as peers compete for specific and limited positions.
(10/04/17 1:39am)
Last weekend, President Trump unleashed a flood of tweets criticizing the protests of NFL players kneeling during the national anthem, even suggesting that kneeling players should be fired. The tweets reignited the debate that has boiled since Colin Kaepernick first knelt during the pregame national anthem last season.
(09/19/17 3:07am)
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ignited a polarizing debate with her Sept. 7 speech explaining plans to repeal the Obama-era Title IX campus sexual misconduct guidelines. The Obama administration’s 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter addressed the problem of sexual assault on college campuses by offering guidelines for handling cases and threatening to withhold federal funds if universities failed to comply. These “suggestions” acted in practice as closely monitored rules as universities updated policies to avoid Title IX conflicts and potential punishments.
(05/02/17 12:46am)
Princeton plans to expand the undergraduate student body size and just published initial plans for the changes to campus. In its 2016 strategic planning report, the University cited its “growing leadership responsibilities that accompany Princeton’s increasingly distinctive capacity to contribute to the world” as motivation for increasing class size. But I am unsure that the University can increase in size without losing its unique campus environment.
(05/01/17 1:30am)
Advertisements for the lecture given by Ryan Anderson '04 about traditional marriage caused a lot of backlash on campus this month, particularly on the residential college listservs. Calls for open discourse were often met with disdain. On WilsonWire, for example, a student invited the listserv to “hear arguments for traditional marriage” and to attend a “lively” Q&A session with Anderson. The listserv responded by criticizing those who share Anderson’s views and even condemning the lecture's existence.
(04/11/17 2:25am)
After a Title IX complaint in 2014, the University amended its procedure for handling sexual assault accusations in September of the same year. The change removed students from the jury in such cases and lowered the burden of proof from “clear and persuasive” to “preponderance of the evidence.” While the legal system relies on the standard of evidence of “beyond reasonable doubt,” Princeton’s new standard convicts the accused if there is only a 51 percent chance the allegations are true.
(04/04/17 1:36am)
It’s tempting to speculate that the lingering artifacts of grade deflation are still at play on campus — when the orgo exam is curved down, when your professor boasts about a 50 percent average on the math midterm, when the “Harvard easy A” jokes are forever funny. The policy of grade deflation is the common enemy and the most reliable scapegoat.