Columns

Verbal vagueness is a time-honored college tradition. It is the overworked student’s trusty standby in those seminar sessions when everyone except the teacher knows that no one did the reading. However, there’s such a thing as excessive equivocation, and too many students at Princeton are toeing the line.

OPINION | 12/07/2011

Movember

Susannah Sharpless

As Movember illustrates, a man has much more freedom to present himself in a way that makes him physically unattractive without confronting any of the social risks that a girl who chooses not to wear makeup faces, but he also cannot talk openly about prostate cancer without making people uncomfortable.

OPINION | 12/06/2011

The power of the prox

Aaron Applbaum

If the University and downtown shopping venues were to work together to allow prox purchasing, they would create a mutually beneficial relationship, whereby students would have easier, more appealing access to outside food, stores would have more customers and Princeton University would create a positive, working relationship with its neighbors.

OPINION | 12/06/2011

Contributing to the Internet

Kinnari Shah

The more we interact with the information on the Internet, the more we change it and contribute to it and check it for accountability, the more robust and accurate it will inevitably become.

OPINION | 11/29/2011

A traditional Thanksgiving

Rebecca Kreutter

So in order to round out my patented three step approach to American assimilation, I set out to experience the quintessential American holiday. However, the slight obstacle of 9,558 miles separating New Jersey and Singapore prevented me from doing the requisite amount of feasting with family this Thanksgiving.

OPINION | 11/27/2011

Dreaming in America

Philip Mooney

The United States is a country with a prosperous past, but also one straddled with an uncommonly uncertain future. Standing in the long customs line at Newark Liberty International Airport when I arrived in September, with Manhattan’s skyline dominating the glass window behind me, I had no idea what to expect from this country. Now, almost three months in, I am still struggling to piece together the parts of this jumbled American jigsaw.

OPINION | 11/27/2011

Writing on campus

Susannah Sharpless

Metzger dismissing the Nass is characteristic of the general Princeton attitude to the arts in general. In this particular case, the Nass takes the hit because it is the most prominent artistic voice on campus, but what’s really being questioned here is the role of the arts, specifically literary, in the Princeton community.

OPINION | 11/21/2011

Relations with P-Safe

Aaron Applbaum

Students and Public Safety officials ought to be on the same page — the general welfare and comfort of the Princeton community is everyone’s objective. Unfortunately, this ethos has not been created and Public Safety’s mode of operation has sometimes turned hostile and even adversarial.

OPINION | 11/21/2011

Occupy the Streets: Princeton

Kinnari Shah

There is no promise that you will see any results from your protests with Occupy The Streets: Princeton. But if you expected anything different, that was your own fault.

OPINION | 11/15/2011

Great educations

Philip Mooney

We read the books, finish the problem sets, take the exams and then, having been “taught to think,” we are shoveled out into various careers, better equipped to contribute in any field. Or so we’re told.

OPINION | 11/14/2011

Let's knot

Rebecca Kreutter

As I stepped into the bathroom today I had a choice of four vacant showers. Waiting for me in shower one was a diverse array of hairy situations plastered on the wall.

OPINION | 11/14/2011

Unhelpful advice

Tehila Wenger

It seems that there are enough advisers per student to take care of every social and academic aspect of our lives. And yet, one semester into my college career, I have difficulty identifying ways my advisers have benefited me in concrete terms.

OPINION | 11/09/2011

Being happy at Princeton

Susannah Sharpless

What we don’t understand is that being happy isn’t like being a good student; emotions aren’t graded. If they were, the only way to get an A would be admitting to others and, more importantly, to ourselves when all we want to do is cry.

OPINION | 11/08/2011

Rethinking diversity: part III

Nathan Mathabane

This final installment sets a critical eye to the implementation of diversity programming on campus and the question of whether or not diversity can be compulsory.

OPINION | 10/25/2011

Change with passion

Aaron Applbaum

Using our talents, passions and personal interests to create social change is a primary legacy left by Kopp. We should all be incredibly proud of Teach for America, but we should also be proud of students such as Satok and Friedman and perhaps take inspiration and motivation from them to be creative and be our own vehicles for global change.

OPINION | 10/23/2011

Failing diversity

Philip Mooney

The University should continue to welcome students from every corner of the world, from every background and with every set of values. However, the administration should beware of shiny statistics and those ticked boxes. Numbers are one thing, reality another. Without real integration, “diversity” will result in a shallow pretense of unity.

OPINION | 10/19/2011

The dying breed of economics majors

Kinnari Shah

Having asked multiple humanities majors about their future career options, most casually respond that, if they do not end up with a job in their respective concentration, they can always go into finance as a backup. As a backup. Even science and engineering majors are ostensibly starting to consider finance as a secondary plan for their future careers and internships. This trend is perceptible among Princeton students.

OPINION | 10/19/2011

Activities fair: hold the crazy

Rebecca Kreutter

I walked into the fair with a plan. I knew which three groups I wanted to scope out, and I was ready to power through the crowd. Get in, get signed up, get out. Oh, how clueless.

OPINION | 10/17/2011

Confronting religion

Tehila Wenger

The policy of minimizing religious differences adopts the political correctness of indifference to skin color, nationality or sexual orientation and applies it to religion. You’re an Orthodox Jew? We won’t tell. And yet — would a French student appreciate being told that nobody will notice her accent? Why promise a gay teenager that nobody in his peer group knows of his orientation if he is open about his sexuality? These assurances imply that there is something embarrassing about the student’s identity. Moreover, religion, unlike the aforementioned categories, is a choice. If anything, the assumption upon encountering people with unusual religious practices should be that they are proud of their faith.

OPINION | 10/13/2011

Misplaced pride

Susannah Sharpless

Princeton’s attempts to make me a crazed devotee of Butler are off-putting and confusing in their intensity and irrationality. In doing so, Princeton is asking me to bypass one of the most important parts of college: the discovery of who I am and what I believe in.

OPINION | 10/12/2011

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