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Teaching outside the classroom

Teaching outside the classroom

Markus Brunnermeier had seen this game play out before. The intense trading, the pronouncements of indefinitely rising prices, the herd mentality — everything about the real estate markets seemed reminiscent of of the dot-com bubble that had popped not so long ago.

NEWS | 04/29/2010

Recognition or prohibition? The future of Greek life

Matt Westmoreland and Josephine Wolff

In October 2008, a Princeton freshman should have died. During a reunion of Sigma Alpha Epsilon alumni at a campus tailgate, a freshman pledge was made to consume dangerous amounts of Everclear. Later that day, the pledge was rushed to the University Medical Center at Princeton, where doctors found he had a blood alcohol level of 0.40.

NEWS | 04/29/2010

Gutmann decries gap in admission

In her first public address at Princeton since leaving in 2004, University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann challenged universities to combat the underrepresentation of middle-class students on college campuses and to act in a “publicly defensible way.” Gutmann, a former Princeton provost, spoke Thursday afternoon to an audience of several hundred people in the Lewis Thomas Laboratory and delivered a lecture titled “Leading Universities in the 21st Century: Chances and Challenges.”

NEWS | 04/29/2010

Taormino speaks about feminist pornography

“Can there be such a thing as sex-positive, meaningful porn?” prompted the blurb advertising the talk given by Tristan Taormino in McCosh 10 on Thursday. Taormino said yes, in a controversial USG-funded forum sponsored by the campus group Let’s Talk Sex (LeTS).

NEWS | 04/29/2010

Alumna sends controversial e-mail to friends at Harvard Law School

An e-mail written by Stephanie Grace ’07 has sparked controversy across the country for suggesting that intelligence directly correlates with race.

NEWS | 04/29/2010

Rocked by recession: A department's dilemma

Members of the economics department, consistently ranked among the top few in the world, agree that the leadup to the financial crisis, and the recession that followed, have revealed flaws in their field’s approach.Some of economists’ core assumptions — that people act rationally and that market prices reveal true value — did not hold during this tumultuous era. But rather than disavow their techniques, which rely on the use of such assumptions to understand complicated issues, members of the department have maintained faith in their approach, albeit with a larger dose of caution.

NEWS | 04/28/2010

Volcanic eruption disrupts travel for faculty members

The eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano two weeks ago spewed clouds of ash 11,000 meters into the atmosphere above northern Europe, rendering trans-Atlantic air travel impossible for a week.The largest peacetime disruption to air travel in history, the explosion cost the aviation industry hundreds of millions of dollars. Some members of the University community were among the passengers whose travel plans were disrupted by the roughly 100,000 cancelled flights.

NEWS | 04/28/2010

Website's goal: Get students what they need, and quickly

Princeton students are willing to pay $20 for a ride to Quaker Bridge Mall, $10 for a club soda and $5 for a phat lady sandwich from Hoagie Haven. And through nowineed.com, a new website that officially launches today, they can get what they want.

NEWS | 04/28/2010

NCAA mandates sickle cell trait screening

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has announced that all Division I student athletes must be tested for sickle cell trait, or sicklemia, effective at the start of the 2010-11 academic year, unless athletes show proof of a previous test or sign a waiver exempting themselves from the test.

NEWS | 04/28/2010

Swearing the oath: Inside St. A's

Matt Westmoreland and Josephine Wolff

Each Thursday evening, 45 Princeton students cloaked in black robes meet by candlelight and swear an oath of loyalty to a hooded figure known to them as Most Noble Archon.“Si vis perfectus esse, vade, vende quae habes et da pauperibus, et habebis thesaurum in caelo; et veni, sequere me.”

NEWS | 04/28/2010

Average GPA is 3.0 at public universities, 3.3 at private schools

The average GPA is 3.0 at public universities but 3.3 at private institutions, according to the results of a survey of 160 American colleges and universities.

NEWS | 04/27/2010

Adjusting to America

When Chern Han Lim ’11 arrived on campus, adjusting to the American education routine of homework and class participation was jarring. At his high school in Malaysia, Lim had been on the British track, in which course grades were based almost solely on exams. “I wasn’t used to working hard. I could just afford to slack off the entire semester and cram before exams,” he explained.

NEWS | 04/27/2010

The road less taken

While many of his peers spend their time behind desks, Robert Marshall ’13 will be spending his summer tending a herd of cattle, renovating a cabin and working at an auto shop. Elizabeth Hopke ’10 will be working for her local county Parks and Recreation department in Williamsburg, Va., where she has worked every summer since she was 12 years old, and Brian Lesh ’12 will apprentice for an acoustic instrument shop learning to make basic repairs.

NEWS | 04/27/2010

Six years of silence: Shirley & the Greeks

Matt Westmoreland and Josephine Wolff

Six years ago this spring, in a second-floor classroom in Frist Campus Center, there was a meeting that may have been the first of its kind. It was also the last.

NEWS | 04/27/2010

Eighty percent respond to census

The University had an estimated 80 percent response rate for the 2010 census among undergraduate and graduate students living in on-campus dormitories.

NEWS | 04/27/2010

Obama ’85 will not attend 25th reunion

Every spring, Princetonians return in droves for their 25th reunion, donning orange-and-black class jackets, to reunite with classmates, march in the P-Rade and sing “Old Nassau.” But the highest-profile member of the Class of 1985 — First Lady Michelle Obama — will not join her classmates.

NEWS | 04/26/2010

Karp ’10 named valedictorian

David Karp ’10 has been named this year’s valedictorian, and Marguerite Colson ’10 has been selected as Latin salutatorian, Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel announced at the faculty meeting on Monday.

NEWS | 04/26/2010

Rifle team boasts world-class athletes

When Eric Hagstrom ’13 arrived on campus, he had only shot a rifle “once or twice before in Boy Scouts,” he said. Yet two weeks ago, Hagstrom, who joined the club rifle team in September, traveled to Purdue University to take part in the Intercollegiate Rifle Club Championship, which featured top clubs from across the country.

NEWS | 04/26/2010

Whiter & Wealthier: Who rushes and why

Matt Westmoreland and Josephine Wolff

Stereotypes surrounding Princeton’s sororities and fraternities are not uncommon on a campus with an unusual and often hostile relationship to its Greek organizations.

NEWS | 04/26/2010

New luxury townhomes constructed in Palmer Square

The Residences at Palmer Square will be the first new housing development in Princeton Borough in decades. But the majority of faculty and graduate students seeking off-campus housing will be priced out of the development’s 17 townhomes and 83 condominiums.

NEWS | 04/26/2010

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