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(05/11/14 6:10pm)
Last week, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice decided against speaking at Rutgers University’s commencement ceremony. Though the Rutgers administration declared that it continues to stand by her invitation to speak, Rice declined so as to avoid “a distraction for the community at this very special time.”
(04/27/14 6:20pm)
As a columnist for The Daily Princetonian, I pay more attention than most to these pages. Knowing that, and having heard thehorrorstoriesover the last month regarding Counseling and Psychological Services and the administration’s treatment of mental health, you might be surprised at where I was last Tuesday morning. But then, it should not be surprising to find any given Princeton undergrad in the CPS waiting room, especially this time of year. Despite the newly blue skies and the flowers spring brings, moods grow darker as thesis deadlines, final assignments and summer changes approach. I was not the only student in the silent waiting room.
(04/13/14 6:00pm)
Last week, the University's premier magazine of conservative thought, The Princeton Tory, posted a list (now retracted) of the sort that has become an unfortunate fixture of American conservative publications: a list of worthless college courses. Sprouting up everywhere from Conservapedia to Business Insider, the idea that American higher education has been overrun by a rash of useless classes has dug its way into the American consciousness. The alleged culprits for this epidemic range from lazy students to liberal professors bringing their skewed views of the world into the classroom, but the underlying message in dismissing so many courses offhand is that college education should fit strict ideals of usefulness in “the real world.” Of course, I cannot defend every course, professor or college attacked in such an article on the basis of their own merits, but creating a category of “useless” courses we are simply uncomfortable with is dangerous and threatens both the integrity and the utility of education.
(03/30/14 5:45pm)
Last month, Rep. Rush Holt shocked the 12th congressional district of New Jersey with his announcement that he would not seek reelection. His decisions saddened many in the district, as he has worked for his 15-year tenure as a tireless advocate for reason and rationality in policymaking. In a district which has for years favored the Democratic incumbent by heavy margins, Holt’s announcement threw the congressional race wide open, as four Democrats and one Republican rushed to fill his seat. Because the district votes so heavily Democrat, the upcoming Democratic primary on June 3 will be just as if not more important than the general election between the primary winner and Republican candidate Alieta Eck. Among the Democratic candidates are Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula, Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, State Senator Linda Greenstein and Dr. Andrew Zwicker, a research physicist and science educator from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Though each of these candidates has a strong record of leadership, Dr. Zwicker stands out as a successor loyal to the leadership this district has seen in Holt. Beyond the obvious similarities in the two researchers’ backgrounds, Dr. Zwicker has shown himself to be a tireless advocate for science and education in particular, and more broadly, a rational and questioning approach to policy. Such a representative is just what Princeton, the 12th congressional district and the nation need.
(03/11/14 8:38pm)
My underpants are showing.
(02/26/14 9:36pm)
This column is the first in a series about socioeconomic diversity and low-income students at the University.
(02/05/14 7:13pm)
It is, by now, a fact of life to most of us at Princeton that we will see no real breaks during the academic year. Though placing fall and spring breaks after midterms theoretically allows a mid-semester respite, everything from essays to take-home midterms to midterms scheduled oddly in the week after break makes these less of a break, and more of a short stretch of work without classes. And this says nothing of our winter schedule. Our longest break — the five weeks of winter break and reading period — is situated at the exact time when students have high-pressure final projects and papers due, and finals themselves are just around the bend. This situation is especially poor for freshmen, who have little idea how much effort needs to be put into academics over winter break in order to adequately prepare for finals. Inertia and controversy over what any change to the calendar would look like, however, have kept this format since its Depression-era inception. Only by finding the best option for change to the academic calendar, and rallying as a student body and as a University behind it, can we hope to adjust our outdated system.
(12/05/13 4:10pm)
Aaron: Before entering Princeton, I held an obscure image of what I believed to be the “ideal University student.” I imagined that once I arrived, I would be expected to participate unquestioningly in a social and academic community to which I was not accustomed. Some part of me imagined that to be a good representative of the school, I would need to repress my racial and economic identity. Initially, this possibility didn’t concern me because I suspected that my identity as an African-American from a lower middle class household wouldn’t matter as much as the more “important” qualities (virtue, moral sensibility, etc.) that would allow me to be a well-educated and useful member of society. As time passed, I began to realize that for many people, embracing one’s social identifiers was just as important as fostering a love for humanitarianism. The way I self-identified as a student and human being gradually transformed while the vision I had of the “perfect” Princetonian dissolved into something else entirely.
(11/21/13 9:30pm)
You can hardly say I was raised on football. For me, NFL stands for “National Forensics League” and phrases like “The USS Enterprise Carrier is nearly four football fields long” were more confusing than helpful. But we did have the Broncos’ 1997 Super Bowl victory on VHS, and I shared with my boyhood peers pick-up football and the same sort of generalized admiration for Broncos stars from John Elway to Jason Elam. More important than the sport itself, though, were the rituals it begot —my family has always observed the de facto national holiday that is Super Bowl Sunday, and some of my fondest childhood memories include a football game running in the background to friendship and community.
(11/07/13 10:07pm)
This Monday, the Editorial Board conditionally endorsed the White House’s college ranking system and its plan to award Pell Grants based on these rankings. Though I appreciate the desire for accountability in higher education, a one-size-fits all college ranking system directly tied to financial awards to the school is simply the wrong approach. The plan not only distorts the choices students make between schools and schools make in educating students, it fundamentally devalues college education by treating it as a mundane commodity and ignores the causes of poor student performance even as it claims to address the symptoms.
(10/24/13 7:19pm)
It’s Friday. Midterms are over for all but the unluckiest. For a week we’ve been herding into lecture halls to take exams alongside hundreds of our peers, bonding over horrifying schedules and desperately waiting for break. Now it is upon us, and many leave campus and their friends for the week, knowing that all will still be there come November.
(10/09/13 8:36pm)
You could, I suppose, call me exercise-adverse. You won’t, for instance, find me in Dillon Gymnasium for pursuits more athletic than the Frosh Week activities fair. Nor will you see me in Jadwin wearing any uniform besides that of the Band — a decidedly not sporty bunch. I gain very little pleasure from pushing my body to do what neither it nor I want to do. But as I rush to 8:30 a.m. orgo on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester, I find myself missing my semi-regular early morning routine of last year. Then, as I jogged around Carnegie Lake gasping for air, my eyes, ears and nose were gulping in stimuli of their own, from the sunrise-red dew and the birdsong to the occasional deer or family of goslings I’d meet along the way.
(09/25/13 9:40pm)
This month, while everyone was returning to the quintessentially Princeton setting of ivy-covered castles (or, in the case of Wilson, ivy-covered bomb shelters), I was also returning, along with a number of others, to a setting that holds little in common with everything ivy: the Wilcox/Wu dish room.