May we look back at this pandemic as the moment we finally learned to value one another over marks on a transcript.
If our four years at Princeton are to be more than a sabbatical, we must first realize that a fragile community requires our utmost care.
How we navigate those far-reaching implications is a story worth telling. In the coming weeks, our staff will seek to render visible students’ experiences, from the consequential to the lighthearted.
At the University, where the annual rotation of students makes it difficult to appreciate, much less achieve, lasting change, the ‘Prince’ empowers us to chart this institution’s past, present, and future. In the coming year, we welcome the challenge and opportunity of telling that story.
Thank you all for your continued support to the organization, and I leave you with this: keep reading, keep learning, keep questioning, and keep growing.
Why did it take three years for us to appreciate the show for what it’s worth? Perhaps more importantly, how many memories like that have we missed as a result of worrying about everything else?
Unfortunately, no system will ever be completely fair; if we are to move on, we have to recognize that a change to the system, or even a different solution, will be fair to everyone. That being said, there are ways to respond to a crisis more effectively, and this was not one of them.
As I sit and think about the rewards for spending nearly a quarter of each day putting the paper together, the word that keeps me coming back is “impact.” The days when we are able to publish something that has an impact — that engages students in conversation and maybe even effects change — are the days when I feel most rewarded.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have served as editor-in-chief, and I am excited to see Chris Murphy ’20 lead the 143rd Board.
Yet across the country women refuse to be silenced. The event with Sotomayor and Kagan today is billed as a conversation, but it is more than a casual exchange or a play on our Orange and Black heritage.
Journalists at Princeton are neuroscientists, pre-med students, philosophers, sociologists, mathematicians, artists, computer scientists, pre-law students, athletes, musicians, poets, and writers. In other words, journalists at Princeton are you.
This issue seeks to highlight great strides, but also persistent challenges, for women in our community. These struggles and achievements are topics that we will continue to dissect throughout the remainder of the 142nd Managing Board.
Journalists must approach everything with skepticism – that’s our job. In every story – including this one – we strive to fairly report the facts. Our reporter worked with integrity, and I stand by that reporting.
When we broke the story that night about the student’s reaction, we had to decide if we would print the word “n****r.” Because the story was explicitly about the word’s use, many expected that we would print it. In fact, some college newspapers have. We chose not to.
Here at Princeton, some go so far as to allege that the University has become a haven of left-wing groupthink. For its part, the left seems like it will tear itself apart over ideological differences — just look at the Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cornel West feud, or the continued battles in the Democratic Party between the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton wings.
A piece of documentation should not stand in the way of a person’s dreams. It’s on all of us to make undocumented people’s dreams a reality.
Today, so many of us mourn the lives lost in a mass shooting at a church in San Antonio – a gross violation of the sanctity of a place of worship and its community. Today, I hang my head in shame at our collective inaction and complacency. As a journalist, I hang my head in shame at the proliferation of fake news and a double standard in the reporting on recent attacks. As a student, I hang my head in shame at our silence. Prayers and condolences are not enough, so I ask each of us to critically consider our capacity and responsibility to act in the service of humanity. Our campus community seems confined to politically polarized echo chambers, and it can be rare to find a platform for discussion across ideological differences, as opposed to vitriolic debate defined by identity politics. I invite you to engage directly with someone who does not share your race, faith, or political stance, because we are all part of one community and the onus is on each and every one of us to act in its service.
This fall, the ‘Prince’ will revise its process for publishing unsigned editorials, which accompany the bylined columns, guest contributions, and letters on our Opinion pages.
Trump may end DACA as early as Sept. 1. We urge Trump not to end DACA without a suitable, compassionate, and permanent replacement and the University to bring DACA students back to campus before the Sept. 5 deadline imposed by the group of attorneys general who have threatened to sue the Trump administration. Let’s live up to our motto — “Princeton in the nation’s service and the service of humanity.”
Your class is taking – and will take – unprecedented strides forward in many respects, as the first class to enroll more women than men, the class with the highest percentage of first-generation college students, at 16.9 percent, and the first class to enroll five military veterans. So as Princeton serves this nation, serves humanity, as its unofficial motto prescribes, by moving towards greater equality in opportunity, expanding those opportunities for everyone, and redefining ‘public service’ and what it means to serve, it’s now your turn – as a part of our collective responsibility – to consider how you, too, will serve, not only your community here at Princeton, but humanity. Looking back, as an incoming freshman, I certainly didn’t give Princeton’s motto a second thought (granted, the University motto was different then too). In fact, the only conception of ‘service’ that I harbored before arriving at Princeton entailed volunteering at the local public library, hospital, or food bank.
