Princeton's campus is ghoulishly calm at 3:00 a.m. on a weeknight. It is a dreary and silent world for those ragged souls still awake and stuck with pages to read or write, where it is all too easy to feel lost amid blue computer light and dense text.
Friends keep asking me what I've been up to lately. When I explain my busy schedule they turn skeptical and question, "If you have been doing so much as president, how come I haven't heard of any news or changes on campus?"I think this pretty well defines the image of USG most people have.The past week included numerous individual meetings with administrators, committee meetings and panel discussions.
Princeton is awash in dialogue. On countless announcements, course descriptions, and personal statements, "Dialogue" has become a magic word.
Regarding "CPUC looks at student well being" (Feb. 10)Your article suggested that the Task Force on Health and Well Being is a bit further along than it actually is.
Combine a freezing cold day with a serious jones for a cold slushie, and a conflict arises. After paying a visit to the Bev Lab the other day, I figured that rather than brave the gusts I'd stay in Frist.
Regarding "Forty more join clubs this year" (Feb. 9):Campus Club's first full Bicker was a great success with a group of sophomores who are very enthusiastic and had an excellent and positive Bicker experience.
While many like to say that opting out of the eating club scene deprives you of a full Princeton experience, this somewhat condescending generalization fails to acknowledge the diversity of students' ideas on what makes a college experience good.
The opinions in this box do not appear magically. For the last week, the editorial page editor has been responsible for wielding the pen on behalf of the The Daily Princetonian.
Remember second grade? How there was always that guy mixing his ketchup and mashed potatoes and orange juice into one revolting glob of vomit-colored mush?
Nearly half a century ago a famous essay by the scientist-novelist C.P. Snow, "Two Cultures," diagnosed a growing communications gap between scientists and humanists.
During Exams Period, I ran into one of my classmates from a small computer science seminar I had taken last semester.
Eating cereal in my kitchen one morning, over a year after my Princeton graduation, I had a sudden flashback to dining hall breakfasts freshman year ? a cornucopia of brand name cereals that seems lavish in retrospect, plus frozen yogurt to put on top of them and an endless supply of Diet Coke to finally eliminate all nutritional benefit of the day's first meal.
What if you turned on your television next year and came across a show called "My Best Friend is a Big, Fat Slut?" You would conclude one of two things: Either someone ordered a little bit more than basic cable, or Linda Tripp was being interviewed on "60 Minutes." You would probably not guess that you were watching the Oxygen Network, programming for today's woman.
Wide-eyed, we arrived as fresh-faced teenagers (except for the hockey team). Wowed by the gothic architecture of the catalogs, subdued by the bland escape of the lower campus, we ? former high-schoolers ? had finally come into our own.
What is President Tilghman's vision? Connecting the individual dots of her presidency ? the athletics moratorium, skepticism about Greek life, a desire to revamp freshman orientation and so on ? I think it's a good one.
Tomorrow, members of Princeton's Bicker clubs will parade around campus, banging pots, chanting and dousing new members in champagne.
While most of their classmates were on vacation or studying in Firestone, a few University students traveled to a freezing New Hampshire last week to support candidates in the Democratic presidential primary.
I'm excited about the start of my second semester at Princeton for many reasons. One of these is my freshman seminar on Dante's "Divine Comedy." Though it's a requisite for every student of Italian, I didn't read the "Comedy" during my exchange year because of the challenge 13th century Florentine poses to a nonnative speaker.
Ah, February, that magical time of year when sophomores' apprehensions about leaving their residential colleges develop into outright worries over how they will find nourishment next year.
