Thirty years since the NJ Supreme Court ruled against Princeton’s last all-male eating clubs, The Daily Princetonian takes a look back at the decade-long fight for equality on the Street.
The Daily Princetonian spoke to members of Congress who are University alums, and asked them how they believe they work “in the Nation’s Service.”
They woke up as first-years and seniors, history majors and engineers, Oklahomans and Connecticut natives. They pulled on standard-issue shirts, shorts, socks, strapped on their running watches. Some of them double-checked to make sure their shaves were clean. And somewhere in the walk from each of their dorms to Jadwin Gym, that group of individual students became something else entirely: a platoon of Army cadets.
Three days a week, Cadet Gabriel Peña ’23 wakes up at 5:30 a.m. and makes the mile trip to Jadwin Gymnasium for physical training (PT). By 8:00, he’s in the dining hall for breakfast and then on his way to a 9:00 a.m. class. Peña’s schedule is roughly similar to that of the 47 other cadets in Princeton’s Army ROTC.
Ret. Captain John Hurley graduated from the University in 1986 as an ROTC Cadet, Chairman of The Daily Princetonian, and with a degree in history. He went on to serve as an artillery officer in South Korea and fought in the first Gulf War. After his army service, Hurley went to Stanford Business School. Today, Hurley runs Cavalry Asset Management, an investment firm based in San Francisco and Hong Kong. His son, Cadet Sergeant George Hurley, is a sophomore at the University. Also enrolled in the ROTC program, George intends to follow his father in pursuing a degree in history.
The Vietnam War brought unprecedented activism at the University in forms ranging from peaceful pickets and fasting to sieges on buildings and firebombing. It divided the campus deeply between radicals and conservatives, youths and adults, and draft refusers and ROTC cadets.
An analysis of alumni career data, available in the TigerNet Alumni Directory, shows that while the WWS sends more students into government jobs per capita than any other major, a WWS graduate student is nearly seven times more likely than an undergraduate to go into government.
Cadet Sergeant Jack Bound ’22 is a sophomore and prospective history major enrolled in the Army ROTC program. His younger brother, Alex Bound ’23, is a Midshipman Fourth Ensign enrolled in the BSE program and the Navy ROTC program.
The Daily Princetonian sat down with three brothers: Atlanta-born Second Lieutenant Paul Spiegl ’19, and twins cadet Sterling Spiegl ’21 and cadet Staff Sergeant Jarrett Spiegl ’21, who are both members of the University’s ROTC program.
According to a report by the Davis Center, 12.4 percent of all undergraduates in the previous academic year and 25.3 percent of all University students were international students. The Daily Princetonian spoke with four international student veterans from South Korea and Israel about their experiences in service and transitions to the University.
Clariza Macaspac ’23, age 30 and a first-year student of Butler College, is one of 13 admitted transfer students this year. She is also the University’s first enrolled female student veteran in the past decade.
Public service calls us to do something less soaring than Rumsfeld’s station, but all the more meaningful for its humility. Serving the nation means harnessing the privilege of our Princeton education — not for power or profit, but to the benefit of our fellow Americans.
We take eight ROTC classes over the course of our time here at Princeton, and we do not get a single credit for them.
Fifty years ago, the Association of Black Collegians occupied New South to protest the University’s investments in apartheid South Africa. Those students examined South African history and contemporary affairs beyond the constraints of traditional Western scholarship. They pursued an expansive, provocative understanding of the human experience, one that transcended geographic and racial boundaries. We should heed their example.
Beyond FitzRandolph Gate, the hustle and bustle of Nassau Street — full of trendy restaurants, University apparel shops, and retail chains — serve as the facade of the town, the first image that tourists, visitors, and University students encounter upon leaving campus grounds. But unbeknownst to many non-residents, past Nassau lies a history of segregation and an ongoing struggle to preserve the culture of the town’s historically African-American Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood, whose first inhabitants settled in the 1680s.
At the forefront of calls for a name change to the Wilson School was the Black Justice League (BJL), a student activist organization that coordinated one of the biggest protests in Princeton history — a demonstration on the steps of Nassau Hall in 2015 followed by a 33-hour sit-in.
With its first cohort of concentrators graduating in June 2018, the African American Studies (AAS) Department is looking to continue its work in education and research. In the past seven years, the department has hired a large number of faculty, growing rapidly to the six fully-appointed and eight jointly-appointed faculty members they have today. The new hires shaped the team, adding their own unique insights, backgrounds, and visions. Currently, the AAS department is focused on its academic offerings, developing its curricula and opening courses to a broader swath of the University community. Upcoming classes will continue to cut across traditional disciplines, attracting students in many departments.
At 7 a.m. on March 11, 1969, four students lurked in the weeds in front of the New South Building. Shortly afterwards, over 40 black students from the Association of Black Collegians (ABC) rushed the building, according to a log from the Department of Public Information. The students then chained the north doors of the building shut and secured the east doors with a mop.
Several Black Student Union (BSU) members discuss their experiences with the organization. The group organizes multiple events each year, but BSU leaders hope to increase funding in order to give back to black communities near Princeton, bring more speakers and alumni to campus, and build up a BSU alumni network, among other initiatives.
Across the country, 48 U.S. universities have either partially or fully divested from fossil fuels. So, why does Princeton consistently avoid shifting its investments?
