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USG discusses ways to increase student voter turnout during elections

USG discusses ways to increase student voter turnout during elections

Katherine Oh

The Undergraduate Student Government will be implementing efforts to increase student turnout at USG elections, chief elections manager Sung Won Chang ’18 said at the senate meeting on Sunday.Chang said that he would be setting up tables before future elections to encourage students to vote and might also look into implementing a single transferable vote system which would eliminate the need for runoff elections.“We could do much better in increasing the turnout, including increasing publicity,” Chang added.

NEWS | 12/13/2015

Méndez discusses regulations for treatment of prisoners, calls for abolishment of death penalty

Myrial Holbrook

Torture does not provide safety and actually exacerbates societal problems, Juan Méndez, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishmentand prominent human rights advocate, said in a lecture on Thursday. The lecture coincided with Méndez receiving the 2015 Adlai Stevenson Award for a “career of service to the global community,” according to the award’s website. Méndezexplained that even if one could say that torture provides intelligence and information, it also leads to a decrease in the citizens' trust and faith in their country. He added that citizens have fallen into a relativism about the moral condemnation of torture fueled by some state practice but also by our culture. “The culture in which we live is one that makes us feel that torture is ugly but it has to happen, that it’s inevitable, that somebody has to do it, that it keeps us safe — and if it keeps us safe, then we might as well look the other way and live with it,” he said. Mendez stressed the importance of understanding and upholding the international normative framework for human rights as essential to human rights advocacy and global accountability. He noted that the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which establishes such a framework of obligations, is ratified by many nations and includes obligations of the state to prevent torture, obligations which Méndez sees as the foremost concern. Mechanisms for prevention of torture include periodic review of police practices, allowance for civilian oversight of law enforcement bodies and re-training of law enforcement officials, Méndez said.

NEWS | 12/10/2015

Greenpeace alleges U. professor accepted monetary compensation for writing research papers

Shriya Sekhsaria

Physics professor William Happer GS ’64 has been accused of accepting bribes to write research papers that cast doubt on the reality of climate change, however he hasdenied these allegations. According to the details of the investigation published on Dec.

NEWS | 12/10/2015

Q&A: Juan Méndez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture

Myrial Holbrook

Juan Méndez is the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment and a prominent leader in human rights advocacy.

NEWS | 12/10/2015

U. spokesperson Mbugua to leave U. for Carnegie Mellon in February

Claire Lee

Martin Mbugua, Director of Media Relations and University spokesperson, who has held the position since 2011, will leave the University to join Carnegie Mellon University as Assistant Vice President for Communications. Mbugua will start in his new position Feb.

NEWS | 12/10/2015

Chase discusses innovation, calls for replacing outdated technology

De Vann Sago

Startups are attractive in the outward-facing parts but disgusting behind the scenes, Robin Chase, the co-founder and former CEO of ZipCar and Buzzcar said at a lecture on Wednesday. “If we think about startups, they kind of remind me of hotels [in] that the public areas are really beautiful, and then you open up that wrong door and you go into the back cement area that’s dirty and has mud,” she said. Chase discussed how the idea for ZipCar developed from a 1999 conversation with her child’s best friend’s mother. The German woman went on vacation to Berlin, where she sat in a café, looked across the street and saw a shared car.

NEWS | 12/09/2015

Q&A: Robin Chase, entrepreneur and co-founder of Zipcar

Gladys Teng

Robin Chase, co-founder of the world's largest car sharing company Zipcar as well as Buzzcar and Veniam, gave a lecture titled “How a New Organizational Paradigm is Changing the Way We Work, Build Businesses and Shape Economies” on Wednesday.

NEWS | 12/09/2015

U. to renovate Bainbridge House on Nassau Street for arts, culture

Kristin Qian

The University will convert Bainbridge House, one of the longest standing buildings in Princeton since its construction in 1766, into a multifaceted arts and culture space open to the community.The goal of the restored Bainbridge House is to make it attractive for a passerby to open the front door, go in and have a moment of discovery by learning more about Princeton, both the town and the University, University Art Museum Director James Steward ’70explained.The Historical Society of Princeton has rented the 158 Nassau St.

NEWS | 12/09/2015

U. Architect McCoy GS ’80 discusses furniture on campus

Marcia Brown

While certain pieces of furniture around the University’s campus have a list price of several thousand dollars and others are listed as several hundred, the University typically receives a discount of 30 to 40 percent compared to showroom prices, University Architect Ron McCoy GS ’80 said. McCoy noted that these list prices do not reflect the discount the University receives from retailers. He explained that the University bids all furniture, meaning that they appeal directly to the sellers for deals and can essentially get discounts on every piece of furniture because they are either returning customers or making a bulk order.

NEWS | 12/09/2015

Whig-Clio freshmen debate diversity requirement

Marcia Brown

Four freshmen convened at the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's annual Frosh Senate Debate on Tuesday to debate whether the University should add a distribution requirement on the history of marginalized people.The Whig side, which argued in support of the requirement on the history of marginalized people, won the debate 20 to 17 after attendees and debaters voted.One of the demands made by the Black Justice League during the sit-in in November was to add a distribution requirement about the history of marginalized people.

NEWS | 12/08/2015

U. Librarian Trainer to step down after 21 years

Gladys Teng

University Librarian Karin Trainer, who has been in the position for 21 years, will be stepping down from her position on July 1, 2016.“It seemed as if it were a good time to turn the reins over to a new person,” Trainer said.

NEWS | 12/08/2015

Study finds plants are smart, strategic

Samvida Venkatesh

Plants are smart and change their nitrogen-fixing strategies based on their environments, a study by ecology and evolutionary biology professors Lars Hedin and Simon Levin found.The paper, published in the journal Nature Plants, looks at plants as smart and strategic beings rather than as passive features of the environment.“The approach we have taken, appropriating agency to plants, is a rather unique one and is one of the strengths of the ecology and evolutionary biology department here at Princeton,” Hedin said.Levin, who has worked on this problem along with Hedin for over ten years, said that this paper is the culmination of much effort and hard work that began with a review paper by Hedin in 2009 that set up the question of distribution of nitrogen fixers in different biomes.The counterintuitive distribution of nitrogen fixing plants in tropical and non-tropical environments has been a long-standing question in ecology.

NEWS | 12/08/2015

U. to launch mental health initiatives with Jed Foundation

Annie Yang

The University has implemented and gotten approval for a number of mental health initiatives, including an expansion of the UMatter program, since it joined the Jed and Clinton Health Matters Campus Programin October 2014. The program works with universities to implement and reassess policies involving mental health, substance abuse and suicide prevention programming on campus, according to theCampus Program Framework. Member institutions are required to commit to this program for at least four years and work with the program to develop and reassess various initiatives in place. Dr. Victor Schwartz, medical director of the Jed Foundation, explained that when a college joins the program, it is committing to form a campus-wide mental health task force and engage in a series of surveys which are used by the school to assess mental health and substance abuse prevention programming.

NEWS | 12/08/2015

Faculty approve rule changes, discuss WeSpeak survey results at meeting

Caroline Lippman

The faculty voted in favor of revisions to rules regarding the faculty who are in consensual relationships with students during its meeting on Monday.Dean of the Faculty Deborah Prentice presented revisions to the rules and procedures of faculty in “Rights, Rules, Responsibilities” that pertain to consensual relationships with students.She said the Faculty Advisory Committee on Policy undertook such revisions under the recommendation of the Faculty Student Advisory Committee to clarify policies on sexual misconduct.Prentice also noted changes related to sex discrimination and sexual misconduct “to streamline processes for adjudicating the cases of sexual misconduct.”Both changes were approved by the faculty.English professor Deborah Nord from the Faculty Student Advisory Committee discussed the results of the WeSpeak sexual misconduct survey.Nord noted that when the faculty met last September to vote on new processes for adjudication of sexual misconduct, she was asked to report back the following year with specific concerns and issues to address.She said that the survey results show an increase in the number of reported sexual misconduct cases than previous years, and explained that the new processes and procedures are making people feel more comfortable coming forward.She also noted that as a result of the new procedures, there were more appeals on sexual misconduct cases than usual this year.She highlighted some statistics from the survey, which shows that one-fifth of the student respondents experienced inappropriate sexual behavior, one in eight experienced inappropriate sexual contacts and one in nine experienced unwanted sexual activity, including rape.Furthermore, the results found that women were three and a half times more likely to experience inappropriate sexual behavior than men, and students who identified as LGBT were twice more likely to experience inappropriate sexual behavior than their heterosexual counterparts.In addition, 70 percent of the students who had been assaulted reported that their assaulter had been using drugs or alcohol, or both.

NEWS | 12/07/2015

Tilghman to join Harvard Corporation

Zaynab Zaman

University President Emerita Shirley Tilghman will be joining the Harvard Corporation in January.The Harvard Corporation is the oldest corporate body in the United States, and is also known as the President and Fellows of Harvard College, according to the corporation homepage.Tilghman will be replacing Harvard advisor James Rothenberg, who unexpectedly passed away in July.Though joining the Harvard Corporation Board is a significant commitment, Tilghman explained that her role at the University will not be altered.

NEWS | 12/07/2015

Mudd launches collection of student activist archives

Christina Vosbikian

The University Archive is launching a program called Archiving Student Activism at Princeton, University Archivist and Curator of Public Policy Papers Dan Linke said.According to the Mudd Manuscript Library’s Digital Archivist Jarrett Drake, ASAP is meant to collect and preserve individual and organizational records created by the University students who engage in activism both on and off-campus on a broad range of issues and perspectives.The collection will take place in Frist Campus Center between 11 a.m.

NEWS | 12/07/2015

U. to demolish Butler apartments following delays

Maya Wesby

The permit for the demolition of Butler Apartments will be granted to the University by the Municipality of Princeton this week, allowing construction to begin, Director of Community and Regional Affairs Kristin Appelget said.She said the exact date of demolition will be determined as soon as the permit is issued to the University and project managers in the Office of Design and Construction coordinate with their contractor.Graduate students moved out of Butler Apartments once construction for Lakeside Apartments finished in June.“We now have graduate students who are living in modern housing with access to conveniences that they didn’t have in the Butler tract,” Appelget said.Christine Philippe-Blumauer GS, the former chair of the now-disbanded Butler Committee, which consisted of Butler residents that voiced concerns about the building's maintenance, said that she will be sad to see the site torn down but believes that the step is necessary.Butler fostered a sense of community and had affordable rent, she said."You’d walk around the streets and there would be kids, there would be dogs, there would be a lot of [grad students] that we knew … so it was a nice little suburban place to live in,” noted Alexander Berg GS.In September of 2014, Berg wrote a column in The Daily Princetonian criticizing the administration's handling of graduate housing.He added, however, that the facilities were in a constant state of disrepair, while Philippe-Blumauer said that the Butler housing had poor insulation and defunct heating systems.Appelget explained that the Butler tract was installed in 1947 as a means of temporary housing for students coming back from military service in World War II, and until the spring of 2015 it was used for graduate student housing.The demolition process has been in place since this past summer, when utilities such as refrigerators, washers and dryers were donated to area nonprofits, and hazardous materials like asbestos were removed.Appelget said that the demolition of the buildings would last for several weeks, and afterwards grass would be planted to fill in the spots where the apartments once stood.The delay of the opening for Lakeside Apartments caused tension between University administrators and graduate students.

NEWS | 12/07/2015

Updated: Harvard Law professor, expert on race relations Kennedy ’77 to speak at Baccalaureate

Ruby Shao and Paul Phillips

Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy ’77 will be the speaker for the University’s 269th Baccalaureate Ceremony, the 2016 Class Council announced in an email Monday. “I see this email from the President's office and I had no idea what it would be, and then when I opened it up and saw that it was this invitation to give the Baccalaureate address, I must say it really did bring tears to my eyes.

NEWS | 12/07/2015

News & Notes: Harvard discontinues use of 'House Master' title

Daily Princetonian Staff

Harvard Dean Rakesh Khurana said the institution would discontinue the use of the term "House Master," which currently refers to the heads of Harvard’s residential houses, theHarvard Crimson reported.The announcement comes on the heels of a similar change that took effect at the University on Nov.

NEWS | 12/06/2015

USG discusses new P/D/F policy, Thanksgiving buses

Katherine Oh

The Undergraduate Student Government is discussing a complete reversal to the pass/D/fail policy in which students would be allowed to reverse a choice to take a class with a P/D/F option, academics committee chair Ramie Fathy ’16 said at the weekly senate meeting on Sunday.He noted that the committee also included an alternative in which students could reverse a P/D/F option only if the course was used for a concentration or a certificate program.“A lot of students have said that they didn’t have enough information about whether to P/D/F by the ninth week of classes,” Fathy said.He added that students also said they wanted to use the P/D/F option for introductory language classes, which students must currently take for a grade.USG president Ella Cheng ’16 noted that the USG could push for professors to publish midterm grades for higher-level classes, not just 100- or 200-level classes.Cheng is a former staff writer for The Daily Princetonian.U-councilor Brandon McGhee ’18 said that the Thanksgiving buses this year were a success, with tickets selling quickly due to high demand.

NEWS | 12/06/2015

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