News

A man, a bus and a cause: An alum's ride for gay rights

Bram Wispelwey '06 will climb on a bus next month and take a road trip with a purpose.Wispelwey will join 55 other young activists in the Soulforce Equality Ride, which will visit 32 colleges and universities that ban openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students from enrolling.

Anthropologist seeks methods to solve AIDS epidemic

Encouraging monogamy is an ineffective way to combat the spread of HIV, since people will have extramarital sex and put themselves at risk even if they are warned against doing so, public health anthropologist Jennifer Hirsch '88 said in a lecture yesterday in Wallace Hall."Unilateral monogamy is about as successful as unilateral disarmament," she said.Sponsored by the Wilson School's Princeton AIDS Initiative, Hirsch's lecture drew upon her research regarding intimacy and fidelity, which she uses to lobby for public health policy changes to fight the transmission of HIV."You cannot prevent heterosexual transmission [of HIV] by telling men not to have sex," she said yesterday.

Go the distance

Harvard's head, a child of Princeton

Drew Gilpin Faust, who was confirmed as Harvard's new leader on Sunday, has another presidential connection in the Ivy League: She's descended from two past presidents of Princeton.Among her ancestors, Faust counts the University's second president, Aaron Burr, Sr., and Jonathan Edwards, the University's third president.They are far from the only Tigers in Faust's family tree.

Computers' role in classrooms questioned

Technology may well turn out to be the new taboo on campus, as professors increasingly worry about laptops in lecture and other pitfalls of the 21st century.Faculty members and technology experts debated the role of computers on campus yesterday, during the first Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meeting of the new semester.

Purported Times reporter follows pickups

A journalist armed with a camera who said she was with The New York Times followed Tower Club pickups Friday morning until she was told to leave campus by Public Safety officers.The reporter's presence is consistent with recent attempts by the Times to contact eating club presidents for a story on bicker clubs, but when questioned by the University, editor of the Times' Education Life section Jane Karr denied sending a reporter to campus on Friday."[The reporter] said she was from The New York Times," Tower president Jonathan Fernandez '08 said.

Faust gets Harvard's top post

In a long-anticipated move, Harvard confirmed the appointment of its first female president yesterday, announcing that Drew Gilpin Faust will be the university's 28th president.Dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a civil war historian, Faust beat out a strong field of contenders for the position, including Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan '81 and the presidents of several elite universities.Faust is the fifth woman ? the fourth in the last six years ? to become president of an Ivy League university.

WPRB students oppose plan to sell

Despite more than a decade of financial struggles, WPRB, the 67-year-old student-run radio station, will not be shutting down.On Saturday, WPRB's alumni board of trustees presented the student officers with possible plans for change, including selling the station's broadcasting license and then either donating the profits to the University or converting the broadcast format to webcasts.

USG proposes mini-golf course, crush website for upcoming year

Having increased student e-mail quotas, chartered buses to Yale and lobbied the University to make late meals start earlier, the USG is now aiming to help students find true love.Last night, USG vice president Josh Weinstein '09 presented a prototype "crush website" that will allow students to list the netids of five students they have a crush on.

Tower, Cap increase in selectivity

The five Bicker clubs saw a small increase in the number of students seeking to join last week, with Tower emerging as the most selective.About 60 percent of the students who bickered the five selective eating clubs last week were accepted this weekend.

RCAs comfort hosed advisees

As bicker clubs picked up newly accepted sophomores on Friday with noisy chants and generous dollops of shaving cream, other students whose bicker attempts were not so favorably received found far less enjoyment in the weekend's events.Anticipating the possibility of such emotional trauma ? as well as the more physical risks that can accompany Bicker, pickups and Initiations, such as sexual assault ? residential colleges increased efforts this year to inform sophomores about eating options and address their concerns during and after the bicker process."Clearly, last year's Bicker was a disgrace and certainly dangerous in certain respects," said Mathey College Master Antoine Kahn GS '75.

Mo' weather, mo' problems

The following weather column is in loving memory of Anna Nicole Smith, Barbaro and the dignity of the American space program.Brrrr, Weather Fans, it's dog sweater cold: I fervently hope you spent Intersession in a toasty fashion, much as I did.

Harvard expected to name Faust first woman president

Harvard is expected to name Drew Gilpin Faust its 28th president this weekend, marking the first time in its 371-year history that the nation's oldest university will be led by a woman, according to two reports last night.The Harvard Corporation, the university's main governing body, has settled on its choice and will recommend Faust to the school's alumni board of overseers for approval on Sunday, The Harvard Crimson and the Boston Globe reported last night.The overseers are expected to make an announcement the same day, the Globe reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation.

Joke op-ed debated at joint forum

Discussion struck a measured tone last night when around 40 people gathered in Dodds Auditorium to talk about self-segregation, eating clubs and the overall Asian-American experience on campus.The forum ? which was billed by organizers as an opportunity for Asian Americans to voice their thoughts on all aspects of campus life ? fluctuated between criticism of a fake column published in The Daily Princetonian and discussion of larger issues of campus race relations.The meeting, cosponsored by the Asian American Students Association (AASA) and the 'Prince,' was organized after the newspaper ran a column in its annual joke issue that relied heavily on Asian stereotypes.

In USG, a new focus on details

Sitting at his desk in the USG office, newly inaugurated president Rob Biederman '08 summarized his hopes for the next year in a sentence that any of his predecessors could just as easily have uttered: "I would want Princeton to become a more enjoyable place to go to college."But he wants to achieve that goal differently, by focusing on details.He said he plans to persuade the U-Store to accept prox swipes as payment, to work on reopening Campus Club and to organize weekly viewing parties for television shows such as "24" in Frist Campus Center.Unlike the previous administrations under which members worked on personal projects, Biederman has set aside five to seven goals for the USG to work on jointly.

'Jewish Jordan' speaks on balancing basketball with Orthodox faith

A six-foot, three-inch point guard took Dillon Gym by storm Wednesday night, effortlessly sinking 19 of 20 shots from just inside the three-point arc.

Report: U. green efforts get B minus

The University received an overall grade of B minus for environmental sustainability from the Sustainable Endowments Institute, an organization that monitors the green practices of the nation's wealthiest universities.The institute released its College Sustainability Report Card last month on the campus environmental practices and endowment policies of the 100 richest universities in the United States and Canada, and Princeton was listed among 25 "Campus Sustainability Leaders" along with five other Ivy League schools."We believe that it's difficult for rating and ranking systems to capture the distinctiveness of any institution's efforts," University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt '96 said in an e-mail.She explained that the University has long had policies in place regarding sustainability and climate change, but that "these early efforts are often not credited by ranking systems that focus on new initiatives."The institute rated schools on seven categories, including administration, climate change and energy, food and recycling, green building, endowment transparency, investment priorities and shareholder engagement.The University received grades of D for both endowment transparency and shareholder engagement.In the area of shareholder engagement, the Institute criticized the lack of student and faculty involvement in the University's investment decision making.Currently, Princeton's investment managers handle proxy voting for securities, and University administrators vote on issues of social concern for mutual funds and proxies.The University's low marks for endowment transparency derive mainly from the inaccessibility of proxy voting records ? they are only available to the University Resources Committee.

Ex-USG pres. returns with his class

Fifth-graders from P.S. 70 in the Bronx crowded the lobby of Frist Campus Center yesterday during a visit aimed to convince them that, eventually, they might enter through FitzRandolph Gate not as visitors but as students.Former USG president Leslie-Bernard Joseph '06, who now works for Teach for America in the Bronx, brought his class to Princeton for a field trip in conjunction with the Black Student Union's Leadership and Mentoring Program.

Scarred by segregation

One day more than four decades ago, a white boy boarded a bus in Knoxville, Tenn., with his African-American nanny.

At GS, parents criticize daycare rules

More than 100 graduate students and faculty have signed a petition blasting the University's policy on child care subsidies.