Opinion

Laundry room etiquette

I hate to dedicate an entire column to a topic as mundane as the laundry room but hold onto your eye rolls and scathing comments for just a second and hear me out. I’m just asking that we shape up — myself included. I don’t expect everyone to be folding the underwear of the mystery person who used the dryer previously, or even to use the whiteboards because we all know there’s never a freaking marker anywhere to be found, but there are some practices of common courtesy that should be routine.

Letter to the Editor: October 3rd, 2012

As women writers who have been vocal in pointing out the disparity between the ways men?s and women?s books are treated, we were disheartened to read Professor Jeffrey Eugenides? comments during an interview with Salon, in which he accused Jodi Picoult (?87) of ?bellyaching.? His implication: a successful author should have nothing to complain about.However, as we have been suggesting for years, there is a serious and persistent problem in the way books are covered?and being best-sellers does not blind us to the problems, or give us the right to sit in ladylike silence while sexism and double standards persist.Here?s the issue: the women Eugenides teaches will graduate into a world where their work is less likely to be acquired by publishers, where their books are less likely to be reviewed, and where they are less likely to write for important publications.As Professor Eugenides knows, the literary canon is fluid.

Stop and look

On Saturday, a suicide bomber killed himself and one bystander in Yemen. On Friday, 19 people died in a plane crash in Nepal. Two weeks ago, at least 10 people were blown up in the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Karachi. Six Turkish soldiers and one civilian died in a bomb blast last week. On Sept. 22, a 29-year-old Irish woman disappeared after walking home from a night out in Melbourne, Australia. Five days later, a woman’s body was found in a shallow grave at the side of a dirt road, 31 miles north of the city. At the time of writing, over 3000 coalition troops have died since fighting began in Afghanistan in 2001. The list goes on. We hear about it, but the numbers are too big, the incidents too numerous. The world spins, the bad stuff persists and only sometimes do we really think about it.

Cartoon: Inverse relationships

Slinging mulch

It is the year 2000 in Indianapolis, Ind., and my friend Ian and I are standing on the playground in the shadow of the monkey bars, yelling at the enemy camp set up behind the tetherball pole.

Note from the editor

Given the importance of the leadership of the new Princeton and the ease with which students can vote, we will begin opening our Opinion page to the debate about the mayoral race.

Napturally me

Aug. 10, 2010 was a momentous day — probably one of the most significant days of my youth. It was the last day I ever put a relaxer in my hair.

Those lazy, hazy, crazy days...

Cool air has arrived even in Princeton, so it must be true: My 37th summer between years of teaching is over. No part of academic life matters more, and none provokes more derogatory comments.

Editorial: Safety abroad

Our studies at Princeton often seek to address human struggle, be it through technology, medicine, policy or the arts. To do so, we must often stray from the ivory tower and go out into the world. The opportunity to study abroad is vital to the academic and professional success of many students. Unfortunately, the current study abroad program does not always allow for students to engage with the cultures and issues that they study.

Finding our voice

Half of American youth is not voting.

Cartoon: Majors by shoe

Same-sex parenting: A response

On Tuesday, Sept. 25, The Daily Princetonian published a guest column from Dr. Ana Samuel, a fellow at the Witherspoon Institute.

2013 shirt, explained

Small indignities, large empirical mistakes: Another view on so-called “research” into gay parenting

Ana Samuel’s Sept. 25 opinion piece in The Daily Princetonian, “Understanding gay parenting: research or romanticism,” contains an awful lot of politics and very little empiricism. There are literally dozens of published critiques of the Regnerus study, from those that suggest he didn’t really capture gay parents at all to others that argue he was motivated by purely political, rather than intellectual, goals.

How to pick a president

Princeton last searched for a new president more than a decade ago when the University looked to replace Harold Shapiro GS ?64.

A Democratic voice

Last month, a firestorm erupted when Todd Akin, a Republican Congressman and Senatorial hopeful from Missouri, made his now-infamous comments about “legitimate rape.” The reaction from the Republican establishment, seeking to quash any renewed talk of a “Republican war on women,” was rapid: Mitt Romney and others urged Akin to remove himself from the race — a suggestion that he refused — and sought to clarify that Akin’s beliefs about rape were not those of the Republican Party. To be fair, we should not conflate Akin’s ideas with the GOP platform (although Newt Gingrich was back on the campaign trail for Akin on Monday, and Rick Santorum offered his endorsement yesterday).

Cartoon: No free lunch disproved

In my opinion

Opinions are delicate creatures. Frequently asked for, seldom remembered, the opinion lives on its candor or provocativeness. Opinions lose themselves somewhere in the purgatory between conviction and statement and have the ability to create a martyr or destroy a statesmen.

A Republican voice

Undecided voters could be forgiven for believing that the fundamental issue of the 2012 race is whether or not the government will stand between women and the pill. At the Democratic National Convention, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards warned of a Republican Party “committed to ending insurance coverage of birth control.”  President Obama’s campaign website warns that Mitt Romney will “give employers the authority to limit women’s access to common forms of birth control.”

The "undeserving"

Whether we state it out loud or just think it to ourselves, there is a notion that minority students and athletes are somehow less deserving of an Ivy League education than their peers. Proponents point to laxer SAT and GPA standards for blacks and Latinos, claiming these students are chosen over more deserving applicants. There is a fundamental flaw in this way of thinking, a way of thinking that is not only insulting and demeaning to many students at Princeton but also one that perpetuates racial and social misunderstanding and mistrust between student groups.