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U. looks at course guide expansion

U. looks at course guide expansion

As students continue to register for spring classes, one University official introduced a plan yesterday to elicit more reviews of professors and courses on the USG's Student Course Guide website.Peter Quimby, the associate dean of the college, said that in order to boost the number of evaluations on the site, a program could be set up to prevent students from seeing their final grade in a course until they had accessed the guide and either written a review or selected the "no comment" option.Quimby, along with site webmaster Joe Perla '09, spoke at the weekly USG meeting in Frist last night about recent improvements to the guide.

NEWS | 12/03/2006

Meryl Streep mixes humor, candor while reflecting on acting career

"I'm very honored and grateful to be invited here," Meryl Streep began her address in McCosh 50 last night, "to be the Belknap prisoner ... vis ... to be the Belknap pris ... visitor!""Oh my god," she said of her gaffe as the packed audience burst into laughter.

NEWS | 11/30/2006

Library opening delayed

Contracting troubles have forced the University to delay the opening of its new multimillion dollar science library.

NEWS | 11/30/2006

If I forecasted it

Like Ted Stevens earmarking $400 million for a Bridge to Terabithia, this week's weather has been completely inappropriate.

NEWS | 11/30/2006

More funds alotted for smaller deptartments

Since 2004, West College has inundated freshmen and sophomores with materials encouraging them to join smaller departments.With information sessions at Career Services and the residential colleges, increased attention to course design and the distribution of pamphlets describing successful alumni from small departments, administrators have enlarged some departments by as much as 60 percent.The University, though, has also put its money where its mouth is.

NEWS | 11/30/2006

USG hopefuls confront past indiscretions

USG presidential candidate Rob Biederman '08 was forced to explain his own disciplinary record yesterday, one day after opponent Grant Gittlin '08 admitted at a public forum that he was asked to move off campus after three disciplinary violations.Gittlin supporters suggested on Thursday that Biederman was not being forthright about his own run-ins with the University.

NEWS | 11/30/2006

Statement by Grant Gittlin '08

My quote in the Prince yesterday unintentionally implied that the administration does not take disciplinary actions seriously.

NEWS | 11/30/2006

Alum urges athletics as education

Athletics deserves as much intellectual inquiry as the liberal arts, Trinity College philosophy professor Drew Hyland '61 said in a lecture yesterday, asking the audience to imagine a world where wrestling vies with mathematics as a main school subject.Hyland, a former Princeton basketball player, addressed about 100 students and members of the Princeton Varsity Club in McCosh 10 at "The Sweatiest of the Liberal Arts: Athletics and Education." Making allusions to ancient Greece and current European educational models, he argued that the common view of sports as divorced from the academic sphere harms students' potential growth."By giving short shrift to the arts and physical education, we are cutting off from our children [their] core sensibilities," Hyland said.He began by describing the ancient Athenian view that the two foundations of a young person's education were the pursuits of the muses and those in the gymnasium.

NEWS | 11/30/2006

Conference examines dining options, grading

Student government delegates put sexual abuse, dining options, grading policy and other issues on the table when they gathered Nov.

NEWS | 11/29/2006

USG debate takes personal turn

USG presidential candidate Grant Gittlin '08 addressed questions about his disciplinary record and relationship with the administration at last night's pre-election presidential forum.The candidates ? both USG veterans ? staked out their priorities if elected and reviewed their service records, with both emphasizing the risks and opportunities in transitioning to the four-year college system.In response to an audience member's question, Gittlin, the three-term Class of 2008 president, admitted that he received three violations from the Committee on Discipline and was subsequently asked to move off-campus, where he now lives.Audience member Ruben Pope '07 asked Gittlin if he thought his history with the administration might impair his work as president of the student government."It's sort of suspect how someone can live off campus and expect to work with administrators," Pope said in an interview after the event.

NEWS | 11/29/2006

Amid charge of bias, Rapelye stands firm

"Anything that seems unfair is under scrutiny," Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye told students yesterday in a rare roundtable discussion that ranged from allegations of discrimination to the implications of the University's elimination of Early Decision.Addressing the ongoing investigation into the University's admission policies for Asian-Americans, Rapelye told roughly 30 students in Frist 308 that "the numbers don't indicate [discrimination]," and "what we're doing is as fair as it can be."Last month, Yale freshman Jian Li filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights, claiming that the University discriminated against him because he is Asian.

NEWS | 11/29/2006

Sophomores applaud new financial aid policy

As sophomores pondered their future social options yesterday over Frist chicken fingers and looming homework assignments, most applauded the University's recent expansion of financial aid as a much-needed effort to make eating clubs more accessible to all students."There were some friends of mine who weren't even considering eating clubs because of the financial issues," Laurissa Yee '09 said.

NEWS | 11/29/2006

Behind victory, a break from the past

When all 10 eating clubs agreed in recent weeks to partnerships with the University, they confounded perceptions built up over more than a century of acrimony between Prospect Avenue and Nassau Hall.Though the individual agreements are largely being kept private, the University has pledged to make club membership more financially accessible ? providing students on financial aid with $2,000 more in annual grants ? and each club has agreed to allow some members to share their meals with a four-year college.Nassau Hall and the clubs are both claiming victory, celebrating the potential for increased diversity in club membership and the opportunity for a few dozen students to divide their meals between the clubs and the colleges.

NEWS | 11/29/2006

Frist '74 drops bid for GOP nomination in 2008

Retiring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist '74 (R-Tenn.), who had been widely expected to seek the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, said yesterday that he is abandoning plans for a White House run to return to his medical work and spend more time with his family."In the Bible, God tells us for everything there is a season, and for me, for now, this season of being an elected official has come to a close," Frist said in a statement issued by his office.

NEWS | 11/29/2006

University to up budget funding in 2007-08

The University Board of Trustees approved an increase in endowment spending last week to provide more undergraduate financial aid, including funds earmarked for the dining costs of upperclassmen, the University announced yesterday.The trustees, who normally announce budget decisions in January, also expanded the target range for endowment spending in the future."They had to make some sort of adjustments now, particularly the ones related to financial aid that affect students' thinking about their eating arrangements in the next year," University Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee '69 said.Juniors and seniors can expect to receive about $2,000 more in their aid package to cover the difference between dining hall board and the average eating club contract of $6,300, the University said in a press release.The additional endowment funds will also go toward reducing the school-year work obligations of aid recipients and building a dedicated staff to attract more corporate and foundation funding for faculty research.President Tilghman and University provost Christopher Eisgruber '83 recommended the "onetime infusion into the budget," Durkee said. Rising expendituresThe University's endowment rose to $13 billion dollars this year, buoyed by a 19.5 percent return on investments, the Princeton Investment Company (PRINCO) reported.

NEWS | 11/28/2006

Tilghman, profs sign gay rights petition

President Tilghman and University professors Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cornel West GS '80 and Edmund White recently joined five Nobel Prize winners, six Academy Award winners, 10 Pulitzer Prize winners and hundreds of other individuals and organizations in a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality.The campaign seeks a United Nations-mandated "universal abolition of the so-called 'crime of homosexuality', of all 'sodomy laws' and laws against so-called 'unnatural acts' in all countries where they exist." It was spearheaded by French academic Louis-Georges Tin, president and founder of the International Committee for the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO).White, a creative writing professor, became involved in the campaign against the criminalization of homosexuality after being approached by a friend who is a gay rights advocate in Israel.

NEWS | 11/28/2006

In court, barbs traded over Wilson School

TRENTON, Nov. 28 ? The latest chapter in the Robertson lawsuit saga unfolded here yesterday as lawyers for the family and Princeton argued motions before Judge Neil Shuster in Mercer Superior Court.While attorneys raised almost every issue related to the trial, the trial itself may be months, perhaps even years, away.

NEWS | 11/28/2006

Panel discusses self-segregation

The University has a limited role in combating self-segregation in the student body, a student panel concluded in a discussion yesterday evening.Moderated by Wilson School professor Stanley Katz, the discussion ranged over several stereotypically self-segregating groups, including athletes, eating club members and ethnic minorities.

NEWS | 11/28/2006

Nassau Hall unveils new club financial aid plan

The University has taken a major step toward bolstering the four-year residential college system, announcing proposals yesterday to make club membership more financially accessible and allow upperclassmen to affiliate with both club and college.Nassau Hall said it will provide larger financial aid grants for all upperclass students and offer a number of shared meal plans ? the total number determined by individual clubs ? that will allow students to split their meals between the clubs and colleges.The moves are the culmination of more than a century of attempts to reform the eating club system, long considered divisive and damaging by administrators.

NEWS | 11/28/2006

Annan urges immediate disarmament

"Mutually assured destruction has been replaced by mutually assured paralysis," outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday of the state of international debate over nuclear arms in a major policy address at Richardson Auditorium.Likening the international community to a pilot "asleep at the controls of a fast-moving aircraft," Annan criticized the lack of a unified, global strategy for disarmament and nonproliferation as the main reasons that nuclear weapons still threaten humanity.While he did not discount the importance of combating the spread of biological and chemical weapons, Annan said that he considers nuclear arms the greatest current danger, citing a crisis of confidence in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and fears that terrorists may gain access to nuclear materials."Even a single bomb can destroy an entire city," he said.

NEWS | 11/28/2006

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