News

Rabbi joins University as spiritual guide

Rabbi David Wolkenfeld and his wife Sara, who will spend this year at the University as part of the Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (JLIC), aim to support Jewish learning on a non-denominational campus through weekly courses and informal interaction with students.?Being a religious student of any religion at a modern university is something that can be tremendously challenging and tremendously rewarding, and there are opportunities to grow ... as one is getting a college education,? David said.

A sweet spot in town

A New Yorker with a proclivity toward cupcakes will probably swear by Magnolia Bakery and Crumbs. A Princetonian with that particular type of sweet tooth might now swear by the House of Cupcakes, newly open for business at 30 Witherspoon St.Behind the zebra-print partition and lime-green walls are ovens hard at work, baking nearly 30 different varieties of cupcakes from ?Coconut Snowball? to ?Brooklyn Black Out.?The House of Cupcakes, which opened in late August, already has a steady base of customers.

Discovery may lower drug costs

Deep in the bowels of Frick Lab a light bulb went on above the head of postdoctoral researcher David Nicewicz of chemistry professor David MacMillan?s group.

Former CIA administrator talks technology

Correction appended

Councilmen: Do not move the Dinky

Four hundred and sixty feet may not be a long walk for most college students. The furor of Princeton residents over the proposed relocation of the Dinky Station, however, may force the University to substantially redraw its current plans for the Arts and Transit Neighborhood.At an open house at the Arts Council of Princeton last night to discuss plans for new University neighborhood, residents and Borough Council members rose to express their vehement opposition to the move.?You are saying that this is a development for the community, but I am going to say that this is really a development that is happening to the community,? Borough Councilman Andrew Koontz told Neil Kittredge, an architect for Beyer, Blinder, Belle, the architectural firm hired by the University to lay out the new site.?There are plenty of expendable University buildings down there that have no artistic value and can go [to make room for the development],? Koontz argued.

Princeton not as green as Harvard, Yale

Princeton lagged behind both Harvard and Yale in a new Princeton Review survey ranking colleges and universities based on their environmental impact.

Borough officer faces felony charges

Sgt. Kenneth Riley, a 17-year veteran of the Princeton Borough Police Department and former Borough Police Officer of the Year, was indicted on six felony counts by the Mercer County Prosecutor?s Office last Friday.The charges brought against him are two counts of third-degree computer criminal activity, two counts of third-degree unlawful access and disclosure of computer data, and two counts of second-degree official misconduct.

University takes hit as Lehman Brothers sinks

This week, as the shock wave from the Wall Street meltdown reverberated worldwide, the University took a direct hit.University Controller Kenneth Molinaro told Bloomberg News on Wednesday that interest rates on some of the bonds issued by Princeton have more than quadrupled in the last week, costing the University about $8,000 per day.

Architects present model of U.'s arts and transit neighborhood

Architects and University administrators presented detailed plans last night for transforming the southwest portion of campus into the Arts and Transit Neighborhood envisioned in the Campus Plan.At an open house held at the Arts Council of Princeton, a team of architects ? accompanied by University Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee ?69, creative writing professor and director of the Lewis Center for the Arts Paul Muldoon and Director of Community and Regional Affairs Kristin Appelget ? walked observers through a forest of poster boards illustrating the substantial development slated for the area south of McCarter Theatre.The centerpiece of the plan is a 130,000-square-foot arts complex that will comprise three connected buildings facing a fountain.

Crime around campus

Green HallSept. 11, 11:46 p.m.A DPS staff member reported being stopped by a student about an individual urinating in a bush outside the building.

Top marks fall across programs

The total percentage of undergraduate A?s fell from 40.6 percent between 2004 to 2007 to 40.4 percent between 2005 and 2008 as the University?s controversial grading policy inches closer to its target.Between 2001 and 2004, the three years before the implementation of the grading policy, A?s comprised 47 percent of the grades in undergraduate courses.In a statement during the faculty meeting Monday afternoon, Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel announced the progress of the four programs ? engineering, social sciences, natural sciences and humanities ? in bringing down the number of A?s distributed.Malkiel could not be reached for comment Tuesday.According to a University statement, ?[i]n humanities departments, A?s accounted for 45.5 percent of the grades in undergraduate courses in 2005-08, down from 55.6 percent in 2001-04.

Students invest in local produce

The Princeton Farmers? Market, held Tuesday for the first time this year, is adding a new service to help bring organic food from local vendors directly to students? dorm rooms: box shares that are delivered weekly to the local market for pickup by students and other community members.Students who buy a box share for the fall season are purchasing ?shares in the bounty of the farm,? said Sherry Dudas, one of the owners of Honey Brook Organic farm, which grows herbs and vegetables and is one of the suppliers for the Farmers? Market.She explained that because the box share entitles the purchaser to part of the season?s harvest, the customer ?assumes some of the risk of farming,? noting that the contents of each week?s box will vary depending on the harvest.

New director joins McCarter Theatre

Timothy Shields, recently named the new managing director of McCarter Theatre, will take the helm in January with plans to focus on increasing attendance in spite of the recent economic downturn.?The challenges are always ones of trying to be relevant to a broader audience,? Shields explained in an interview.

Daily Princetonian Video: Alan Blinder '67 and Harrison Hong on the financial crisis

Veteran administrator Harmon '78 leads alumni outreach

Justin Harmon ?78 has returned to Princeton as director of development communications after spending the last eight years at Wesleyan University.Harmon was Princeton?s director of communications from 1987 to 2000, when he left for a position at Wesleyan.

Professor gets $2.5 million grant

Molecular biology professor Ileana Cristea has been named one of the three inaugural recipients of the $2.5 million Avant-Garde Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which is part of the National Institutes of Health.The award grants each recipient $500,000 annually over the course of five years and is aimed at encouraging research into high-impact HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in drug abusers.Cristea?s research focuses on virus-host interactions for Sindbis fever using a methodology she developed that ?allows tracking of protein localization and elucidation of interacting partners? and can be applied to HIV as well, a NIDA statement said.Cristea, who joined the University in February 2008, will use

Panel advises campus conservatives

Students packed into Robertson Bowl 001 on Tuesday evening to hear two Rhodes scholars and other conservative alumni discuss how to stay true to conservative beliefs amid a general campus atmosphere that they said is too liberal.The discussion, moderated by politics professor Robert George, included Rhodes scholars Sherif Girgis ?08 and Christian Sahner ?07, Cassy DeBenedetto ?07, Daniel Mark ?03 GS and Cason Cheely ?03.The panel members gave advice on how to overcome the ?double standard? of being conservative in a liberal campus environment, including the social concerns they faced when they arrived at school.

Alums face hazy future after Lehman Brothers collapse

Just three weeks into her full-time job, Anita Gupta ?08 sat at her desk Monday and wondered how she would continue to pay the rent on her newly leased New York City apartment if she suddenly became unemployed in the wake of one of the largest Wall Street shakeups in decades.After graduating last spring, Gupta joined the ranks of more than 100 University alumni employed at Lehman Brothers, the financial firm that officially filed for bankruptcy early Monday morning after failing to find a buyer.Over the course of the weekend, employees said, it gradually became clear that no potential buyer would be willing to merge with the firm without assistance from the federal government.

Students fear Ike’s destruction

For students hailing from coastal Texas, the start-of-classes malaise that often supplants the elation of Lawnparties weekend was overshadowed by far stronger anxieties about the state of their homes after the destruction unleashed by Hurricane Ike.The tropical cyclone made landfall early Saturday morning on the island of Galveston as a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

Municipalities divided over debt issues

Monetary disputes between Princeton Borough and Princeton Township have exploded in the past month, as the Borough has sought to receive reimbursements from the Township for costs that the Borough bore in administering agencies that serve both communities.The Princeton Packet reported that in July, the Borough had received a $1.68 million payment from the Township.