Until a few weeks ago, terms like ?Bicker? and ?hosing? were vague, shadowy elements of a college experience that I neither understood nor cared about.
The Princeton Alcohol and Drug Alliance announced in a meeting on Thursday that it will form a task force to review an ordinance that would prohibit underage drinking on private property. Among other implications, this new ordinance would enable Borough police officers to search the eating clubs, as long as they have probable cause.
Why stop at a center devoted to the Persian Gulf when one could have a whole campus there? What is Princeton’s international strategy? The new president must face these questions as he or she articulates what it means for a university in suburban New Jersey to declare itself “in the service of all nations.”
One of the reasons we come to the University is to accumulate knowledge, but a more important aspect is the building of our capacity to understand how that knowledge is useful. Perhaps, since any factoid can be unearthed immediately, the new frontier of not knowing exists exclusively in the realm of sophisticated problem solving — Princeton teaching us how to think.
Today, instead of taking a stance on an issue, we would like to explain the editorial process and invite interested freshmen, sophomores and juniors to apply to join the Board.
But every time I log into TigerTracks, it feels like a hassle. Will I find something useful, or won’t I? How often do I have to log in to find a relevant position — every day, week, month? Do I need to upload an updated resume? Was I automatically logged out again? For what it’s worth, I do find TigerTracks to be pretty good. Pretty, pretty, pretty … pretty good. However, I would suggest a few updates.
It’s hard to deny that, at its core, Bicker is elitist, demeaning and sometimes shockingly cruel. Saying that Bicker is a necessary evil is one thing (though I disagree), but claiming that it’s not problematic is another.
In a large body of students, a few will always be tempted to cheat if the opportunity presents itself, but if surreptitiously glancing at a fellow classmate’s test or your own notes is already considered blatant cheating, almost nobody thinks of doing what the Harvard students did. However, because the usual prohibited behaviors were allowed, the format acted as sort of gateway to more extreme methods of cheating.
It’s not really a groundbreaking assertion that college isn’t the real world. We live on our own, away from our parents and families, but we’re not really on our own.
My hunch is that other women have something most women in Slaughter’s demographic don’t — a support network that reaches beyond the nuclear family to more distant relatives and friends. It seems that families with lower incomes on the whole tend to live closer to one another — if not together — and interact more frequently.
By creating a dichotomy of leaders and followers, you ignore the complexity of human ability. Every great leader has, at one point, had to follow. I would go so far as to say that true leaders understand the necessity of being able to take direction, to surrender notions of ultimate authority and to value more logical systems of checks and balances.
While I enjoy moving forward in this amazing crowd of future senators, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, mol-bio researchers and the like, I must admit that sometimes I feel as if I’m walking while everyone is sprinting before the words “ready, set, go” have even been said.
Here’s my pitch: Princeton should create a program modeled after the freshman seminars for second-semester seniors.
There needs to be an undergraduate course at Princeton that addresses the ethics of finance. It’s a no-brainer, really, or at least it ought to be, especially in light of the recent fiscal crisis; the growing inequality our country faces; the Sandy Hook tragedy and the arms-manufacturing divestment responses of many Americans, including Princeton alumni and faculty and the fact that one-third of Princeton graduates go into the financial sector. By not offering such a course (or courses), Princeton falls short of its educational mission.
The more I work in groups and observe their dynamics, the more certain I am that the idea that everyone should be a leader is a misplaced ideal. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it is a person’s following potential, not their leadership potential, that maps more closely with academic and social success.
