Opinion

Facing the realities of Facebook

When I tell friends that I don’t have a Facebook, their eyes widen. Then they gush support for my decision. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking I should do that too,” they say. “It takes up so much time!” But I didn’t deactivate my account because I felt like I wasn’t productive enough.

On encouraging Rhodes Scholars

I can honestly say that I would never have applied for the Rhodes later that same August had Dean Frank Ordiway not e-mailed me encouraging me to do so. Thankfully, I had enough good sense to respond to his e-mail and to explain to him why I wasn’t planning to apply. What he replied, in short, was: “Let us or the Rhodes committee reject your application: Don’t reject yourself.”

The freedom of being B.S.E.

Using those very structures that some perceive as oppressive, the B.S.E. program ultimately allows us the most intellectual freedom.

Cartoon: Life lessons

Dissent: On grade deflation

The Editorial Board offers a majority and dissent on grade deflation.

Editorial: On grade deflation

The Editorial Board offers a majority and dissent on grade deflation.

Warming up to skeptical engagement

“Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith re AR4?” It sounds like a shady government conspiracy about torture or ethically questionable pardons.

Cartoon: Black Friday

Flying home

A typical college road trip, save our final passenger: a live goose.

Functional families don't play Scrabble

Real families happily argue in cars and throw things at one another in a healthy manner. They aren’t forced into contrived family bonding activities, whether they are board games, camping trips or potato sack races.

A changing profession

Princeton expects a lot of its professors. We are supposed to teach gifted undergraduate and graduate students; run or help run departments and programs; and do original research — research that pushes the borders of our fields. We also collaborate with colleagues here and around the world, organize meetings and workshops, edit, and serve as referees, judge fellowship and prize competitions and hire new colleagues. It makes for a busy life.

What are we gonna do with our lives?!

We thought getting into Princeton would sort out our lives, but it didn’t. Most likely, getting into McKinsey or Goldman Sachs isn’t going to sort out our lives either. We’re never going to know exactly what the hell we’re going to do with our lives, and frankly, we probably don’t want to.

Editorial: Fairer FRS applications

More than 1,200 applications were submitted for 75 freshman seminars in the fall and spring terms. But since the number of freshman seminars cannot meet the high demand for them, it is important to ensure that the seminar application process gives students ample opportunity to compete for the seminar they want.

Cartoon: Dad enters the cyber age

Cartoon: Giving thanks

Editorial: A necessary editorial

It's that time of the year again: the Editorial we shouldn't be writing.

The idea of a University

It seems to me that Princeton has already decided that she prefers not to hold any values.

Letters to the Editor: Nov. 25, 2009

On Darwish and freedom of speech; Rhodes article lacks inspiration

Rejecting the rhetoric of redefinition

When the vote was extended to African-Americans in 1870 and then to women in 1920, the meaning of the word “vote” did not change. So why should a change in the legal rules governing marriage amount to a change in the meaning of “marriage”?

Agents without principals

A less talked-about but potentially deeper flaw is: Where were the principals — the shareholders and boards of directors of these firms who should have watched the risks that their bankers took?