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Opinion

The Daily Princetonian

A little nicer

The cartoon that ran on Monday parodying Susan Patton’s opinion letter easily summarized the most socially indicative part of her piece: Titled “A universe of women,” it depicted a male stick figure surrounded by multiple beckoning women.

OPINION | 04/04/2013

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The Daily Princetonian

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Take it or leave it

BY LOLITA BUCKNER INNISS Class of 1983, Parent of a member of the Class of 2009 As a woman who attended Princeton and who holds deeply feminist views (and who, full disclosure, has been married for 30 years to the man she dated since freshman week), I have to say that while I disagree with most of Patton’s assertions, I don’t find them especially offensive.

OPINION | 04/04/2013

The Daily Princetonian

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Advice for the young women of Princeton (and colleges everywhere)

BY HELEN COSTER Class of 1998 As a Princeton woman who’s been out of school for 15 years, I offer my own experience—and the experience of almost all of my female friends — as an argument for why you should ignore Susan Patton’s advice. At Princeton I spent four years taking classes I loved, juggling 10,000 activities and spending time with friends.

OPINION | 04/04/2013

The Daily Princetonian

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Baseless assertions

BY H. CAROL BERNSTEIN Parent of a member of the Class of 2016 As an advanced-degreed executive officer of a publicly-traded technology company who has 28 years of experience in both for profit and academic institutions focused on science and technology (and Princeton parent of a male student), Susan Patton's March 29, 2013 Letter to the Editor appears wholly inconsistent with my personal experience as a wife, mother, friend and professional, as well as mentor and sponsor to various men and women throughout my career and 20-plus-year marriage. Moreover, her regressive beliefs, which appear to be based on little more than her own unhappy circumstances, detract from the important responsibilities those of us who are more senior in our careers and lives have to those younger men and women in our personal and professional communities of various academic and socioeconomic backgrounds who look to us for some guidance, assistance and example with regard to career development, "balance", leadership and social responsibility. Compatibility and success — whether in the personal or professional realm — are borne of many things but generally arise from and are sustained by common values; superficial measures such as equating mutual attendance at certain academic institutions with a priori "intellectual equality", or other of the snobbish inanities proffered by Patton, serve as false proxies for them. Furthermore, Patton's baseless assertions regarding the issues with which current college and newly post-college age women and men are supposedly concerned, and ignorance of the broad dissemination and availability of, and discussion related to, information regarding such issues (including the active debates of the past year alone engendered by thoughtful views of various individuals such as Anne-Marie Slaughter and Sheryl Sandberg like the very one in which Patton "participated"), make me question her supposed qualifications as a "human resources consultant and executive coach", or at least why any entity or individual who has read her letter would ever consider hiring her for anything even remotely related thereto. H.

OPINION | 04/04/2013