The University should establish a set procedure that allows any student of any religion to celebrate and honor his or her religious commitment without compromising his or her academic performance.
Is being in the University’s wider service a good use of professorial time? If a professor’s reputation comes from scholarly work, does he or she have any incentive also to be a good citizen? Yes and no. Professors who want to produce little versions of themselves, mini-mes, will not be entirely wrong to encourage their students to focus on acquiring deep knowledge in one area and may actually be setting a good example by engaging in as few extracurricular activities as possible. But saying this unsettles me since it is clear that doing just one thing, however well, is neither the way to get into college nor, for most people, the way to get out.
It sounds a little silly to say, but when I tell the truth, the world is good. I feel better, and I treat people better and consequentially am treated better. If I had never realized that, I don’t know how I would have turned out. It’s entirely probable I’d be just like the students who cheated at Harvard — just like the students who cheat here — raised in a society that only rewarded them for being intelligent and never for being honest and who found out there were consequences for immorality much too late.
Campus attitudes toward Princeton funding could use a little more thoughtfulness. The phrase “Princeton will pay for anything” reflects a casual certainty in the institution’s money that I find frankly childish. In actuality, most students use funding responsibly, but by uttering or even laughing at the mantra above we feed a general mindset that regards University funding with less respect than a parent’s credit card. In many ways, such an attitude indicates an immature lack of understanding over the meaning and value of money. No matter where it comes from, a thousand dollars would be considered a significant windfall to many people. The reaction to receiving such a grant should extend beyond gleeful celebration — there should be recognition of responsibility and a commitment to using the funding appropriately.
The same independence that once fueled my desire for college now fuels my dread of graduation. This truth has increased my resolve and, I would hope, the resolve of my classmates to to enjoy this final chance we’ve been given the often-misunderstood paradise that is the Princeton undergraduate experience.
Over the years, the unsigned editorials featured on this page have discussed a wide variety of issues, including the freshmen year rush ban, the room draw process and affirmative action. The Daily Princetonian Editorial Board is collectively responsible for writing these pieces. The Board is the independent body responsible for determining the position of the ‘Prince’ on matters that affect Princeton, our campus community and society as a whole. 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.
Before we begin another year, here’s something that we should all keep in mind: We need to stop willingly broadcasting ourselves all over the Internets.
It is crucial to recognize the importance of the MENA region. Awareness and involvement from the Princeton community can be very important for helping to bring peace and prosperity to the region.
ust know this, dear freshman self, a year from now you’ll return to the campus that looks so foreign today and find that it really is the “best old place of all.”
After four years at Princeton, I think the only profession I have really learned about is academia. We spend a lot of time with professors and begin to understand what their daily lives are like. So why can’t other people teach? Professors research part-time and teach part-time, so why not have professional computer programmers or doctors teach? They might be better teachers, and they will certainly expose students to other ways of using what they learn in class in their future careers.
What Princeton Reunions have, that Facebook can never take a way or make obsolete, is the element of all-inclusiveness — grandparents, students and grandchildren all having fun simultaneously.
It is from these moments that I learned that what makes Princeton amazing is not the brand name, or the world it opens up to its students. It is simply the people it has brought to me. And when I charged through Bloomberg arch on Saturday, ending one history with Princeton as I begin another, it was those same people that ran beside me, who continued to make every moment as quintessentially Princeton as it is, and ever will be.
It is time to restore the tradition lost in 1970 of acknowledging Princeton’s country and heritage. It is time to sing the national anthem during graduation and recognize that Princeton stands for more than itself.
Tomorrow is Dean’s Date, with 5 p.m. marking the official deadline for all undergraduate written work with the exception of take-home and in-class exams. An unofficial holiday for the University, with the USG and ODUS sponsoring food and festivities in McCosh Courtyard, it is meant to be a time of ease and relaxation before diving once more into the books for the rest of exam period. For many seniors, this relaxation will be short-lived as they must prepare to sit for senior departmental exams on Wednesday and Thursday.
And there were the serious lessons. As a graduating senior, I can officially say that out of all the classes that I’ve taken here, there is only one, just one, that I would go back and drop. Every single one — sometimes in fields that I had never even been aware of before — broadened my mind, taught me something valuable, changed my outlook or simply fascinated me by virtue of the sheer coolness of what I was learning. And those snippets of knowledge have come from all over the academic world: philosophy, molecular biology, French theatre, politics, chemistry, classics, anthropology and more. So I learned the value of a liberal arts education too.
In the final scene of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” a glowing Gene Wilder tells Charlie not to forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted. Charlie shudders for a moment. This is the final dose of the Wonka charm we’ve grown to love: He ignites fear and then extinguishes it with childish warmth. Like a bipolar peekaboo, Wilder beams: “He lived happily ever after.”
