The Daily Princetonian: February 18, 2020

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Tuesday February 18, 2020 vol. CXLIV no. 12

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ON CAMPUS

Forbes College to absorb Pink House

By Taylor Sharbel staff writer

JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Forbes Residential College.

BEYOND THE BUBBLE

Beginning with the 2020–21 academic year room draw, the sustainable living community Pink House, located adjacent to Forbes College, will no longer exist in its current form. In its place, the University plans to expand housing options for upperclass students in Forbes.

In mid-December 2019, the 10 students who live at 99 Alexander Street, also known as Pink House, received an email from Forbes College, stating that the residential college was considering other uses for the house the following school year. Last week, Forbesians received an email that explained that for the upcoming room draw, Forbes juniors and seniors will have the opportunity to draw specifically for rooms in Pink House.

“The Pink House affords residents the opportunity to capitalize on the building’s kitchen and lounge, proximity to the Forbes garden, Head of College Residence, and facilities within Forbes College to promote a vibrant sense of residential community among Forbes juniors and seniors,” wrote Dean of Forbes College Patrick Caddeau.

See PINK page 2

ON CAMPUS

Jeff Bezos ’86 pledges $10 billion donation to combat climate change worldwide assistant news editor

Jeff Bezos ’86 has pledged $10 billion — 7.5 percent of his current net worth — to combat global climate change.

The money will be funneled through the Bezos Earth Fund, in what will be the second largest charitable contribution of all time.

“This global initiative will fund scientists, activists, NGOs — any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world,”

Bezos wrote in an Instagram post Monday afternoon.

The title for the largest philanthropic gift of the 21st century is still held by Warren Buffett, who pledged in 2006 to give $43 billion of his wealth to the Gates Foundation.

The announcement comes after critics have attacked the Amazon billionaire for an alleged lack of charitable giving. With a net worth of $129.9 billion, Bezos is currently the richest person in the world but has not yet signed the Giving Pledge, the promise made by See BEZOS page 3

U . A F FA I R S

Transit reform effort seeks to rethink bus routes, increase general mobility on campus

By Shamma Fox staff writer

TigerTransit is moving in a new direction. An open house in Dillon Gymnasium on Feb. 14 presented early reports on the future of campus mobility for comments by students, faculty, and staff members.

A team comprised of students, faculty, and administrators on the Transportation Advisory Council (TAC) and from the Transportation and Parking Office (TPS) began studying Princeton’s transit network in September 2019 to “explore ideas that can make walking and biking ‘irresistible,’” according to the TPS website.

Kim Jackson, the director

of TigerCard and Transportation & Parking Services, recounted the development of Princeton’s transportation network as reactive to “a whole bunch of asks,” which is why, over time, bus routes came to be designed without a cohesive statistical basis.

“It’s time to relook at TigerTransit and all mobility on campus,” Jackson said.

Michelle Poyourow, Senior Associate at Jarrett Walker and Associates, agreed with Jackson that the existing bus routes need to be re-examined.

“These routes have been running with just tweaks over time and do things… because [they] always have,” Poyourow said.

See TRANSIT page 2

PHOTO COURTESY OF ANDREW XU

Dinosaur bones, primarily in long-term storage.

Hundreds of fossils lay forgotten in Guyot Hall. One sophomore is working to fix that.

By Kris Hristov Senior Writer

Tucked beneath Guyot Hall is a collection of oddities dating from the Cambrian period to the Holocene. It includes hundreds of fossils, minerals, and even entire preserved pieces of coral. The collection’s history is almost as interesting as the items it contains.

The collection of fossils and skeletons comes from four major expeditions. In the first, which provided the basis for the museum’s collection, Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, Francis Speir, Jr., and William Berryman Scott, all members of the Class of 1877, ventured to Wyoming the same year they graduated. Through trade deals and additional expeditions to Patagonia and Montana, the University accumulated a diverse collection of thousands of specimens from many different archaeological time periods. To display and cat-

alog this growing archive, the University established a museum inside Guyot Hall in 1908.

Since then, the collection has grown, with the University becoming a major repository for many unique fossils. It remained publicly displayed in Guyot Hall until the mid-1990s, when the hall was converted to office space. The museum was taken apart and its components moved. The (mostly) authentic saber tooth tiger skeleton, for example, was placed in Frist Campus Center.

While much of the collection was donated or traded — Yale’s Peabody Museum alone has 15,000 vertebrate skeletons from the University’s former collection — the 5–10 percent of the University collection that remained was simply left in storage in Guyot Hall or elsewhere off campus.

The collection was all but forgotten until Andrew Xu ’22 found out about the

In Opinion

Today on Campus

Senior columnist Julia Chaffers argues that presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg’s self-funded campaign highlights the structural issues within American politics that limit fair competition in the Democratic primary. PAGE 4

1:30 p.m.: Select and Analyze Geographic Features and Data with ArcGIS Pro. Lewis Library / 225

collection while preparing for a high school Science Olympiad fossils competition. Xu now maintains the collection with the help of the Geosciences department.

“The specimens were uncataloged, misplaced, or unidentified. I asked if I could curate them and preserve them for however long they are useful,” said Xu on the subject of maintenance. “My current project is to catalog this information and digitize it for future research,” he said.

Xu spent his summer before sophomore year working to catalog the collection. Initially, the collection had a master catalog, which has since been lost.

Thus, many objects remain unclassified, and of limited scientific value.

Xu has worked to remake old labels and re-catalog some items, as well as organize them into more useful categories.

See FOSSILS page 2

WEATHER

By Evelyn Doskoch

HIGH

55˚

LOW

37˚

Showers chance of rain:

50 percent

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Tuesday February 18, 2020

Jackson: It’s time to relook at U. will use Pink House to upperclass housing TigerTransit and campus mobility expand PINK TRANSIT

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She recommended that, once a generation, any transit system “take a big picture look” and reassess the logic of its design.

At the open house, the consultant teams presented their reassessment of TigerTransit’s shuttle system.

Charts, maps, and tables reported the popularity of bus routes, their operating costs per passenger, and theoretical redesigns.

Changes to TigerTransit may prioritize the number of routes, at the expense of frequency, or vice versa.

Sources from the Transportation Advisory Council allege that contemporary plans for route changes, while not yet public or decided, will achieve a 15 percent budget cut.

The open house hosted representatives from related groups on campus that are also developing projects which will impact campus mobility. For example, the Office of the University Architect presented plans for the construction of the Lake Campus next to Lake Carnegie. Wayfinding, a consultancy, worked on how people find their way around campus. They studied the legibility of campus signage, the possibility of redesigning Elm Drive to prioritize

SHAMMA PEPPER FOX / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

The plans for transit reform on display in Dillon Gym.

pedestrian traffic, and the designation of bike lanes.

Other stakeholders in student transportation tabled at Dillon, including the Office of Disability Services, the Office of Sustainability, the student-run Cyclab, and the Enterprise car-share service.

The open house is the culmination of Transportation & Parking Services’ “Campus Mobility Framework.”

The framework, according to Jackson, fosters collaboration between concurrent projects, like the construction of Lake Campus, Perelman Residential College, the redesign of TigerTransit, and the regulation of electric scooters.

Jackson is confident that this “synergy” between different projects will allow people to more easily navigate University.

“We hope the sense of community and engagement with all of Forbes will grow by making these minor changes to the draw process for the coming year,” he added.

Since 2016, 10 students have lived together in Pink House, where they have focused on sustainable living and eating as a means of building community.

Pink House members participate in environmental activism at the University and surrounding communities, aiming to make sustainable living practices more accessible.

Residents of Pink House have also participated in a foodshare program since 2017, in which they share the responsibilities of cooking and maintaining the house’s kitchen. Pink House, however, is not a recognized co-op.

“We’re a group of friends sharing food,” said Jonathan Haynes ’20.

The University only acknowledges four co-op programs on campus: 2 Dickinson St. Co-­op, International Food Co-op, Brown Food Co-op, and Scully Co-op.

Meanwhile, the co-op model is in high demand on campus. This past year, 2D received 80 applications for only six spots.

Current Forbes students who are eligible for upperclass housing will have the opportunity to draw into Pink House as individuals or groups during a special room draw, prior to the regular room draw process in mid-March.

Current junior members of the Pink House will be able to participate in this draw, but as of now, they will not be guaranteed a space in the house.

In the past, current Pink House members have selected new residents, and the house has been open to members of all residential colleges. Going forward, Pink House will now only be open to members of Forbes.

Residents knew that the current arrangement was never permanent, as they had to renew the contract each year. According to Kate Schassler ’21, however, the members originally reacted to the news with disbelief.

“It seemed to be more up in the air than it ended up being,” she said.

The members of Pink House believe that this new plan threatens the food share and the community they value.

“There’s a certain joy that comes with working alongside people to create something,” said Schassler. The members emphasized that Pink House had allowed them to know where their food came from and to learn from one another.

“Pink House has been a unique oasis of community,” said Jack Aiello ’21.

Members believe that the University could jeopardize the communities that exist in spaces such as Pink House when the house becomes further incorporated within Forbes.

“Forbes would build a better community if they draw on the community that we have here,” said Aiello.

Xu plans to continue FOSSILS

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“Many things found here simply don’t exist online.

What’s in here could reaffirm current studies on plants and corals. Paleontology is a dated field — a lot of information is not digitized or put into computers,” he explained.

A major issue with the current storage solution is the basement itself, where items are stored in stacked open wooden containers on metal rafters. Each time a wooden container is removed, f lakes of wood scrape off and come into contact with samples. This can damage particularly delicate examples.

Geosciences professor Thomas S. Duffy stated that the University plans to maintain the collection for the time being.

“Our current mineral and fossil exhibits in Guyot Hall attract wide interest. While plans for the new building are still under development, we fully intend to maintain the collection in our new location,” Duffy said.

“We are working with the project team on how to best incorporate significant display space for the department’s valued collections,” added University spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss.

Xu plans to continue working with the collection throughout his remaining time at the University.

PHOTO COURTESY OF ANDREW XU

Fossils out for cataloging in Guyot Hall.

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Donation is second largest of 21st century behind a Buffet gift in 2006 BEZOS

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over 200 of the world’s richest people to donate over 50 percent of their wealth in their lifetimes or in their wills.

In 2018, Bezos unveiled the Day One Families Fund, a $2 billion commitment to funding early childhood education in low-income communities and supporting nonprofits that help homeless families. Still, he has faced criticism for failing to compete with other prominent billionaires’ patterns of philanthropy.

Bezos has also been criticized by its own employees for Amazon’s contributions to the climate crisis, as a major corporation with a large carbon footprint. Amazon also became the first signatory of the “Climate Pledge,” which aims to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Accords by committing the company to reach net zero emis-

sions by 2030.

“Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet,” Bezos wrote. “I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share.”

Now, the move to fight climate change in such magnitude has been seen by some as a direct response to this criticism.

“We applaud Jeff Bezos’ philanthropy, but one hand cannot give what the other is taking away,” wrote the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice group in a statement on Monday.

No information is yet available on exactly how the gift will be allotted, and what specific initiatives it will fund.⁣ Bezos stated that he will begin issuing grants in summer 2020.

“Earth is the one thing we all have in common — let’s protect it, together,” he wrote.

SENIOR MASTER SGT. ADRIAN CADIZ / DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Jeff Bezos, Founder, Chairman & CEO of Amazon.com.

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The Bloomberg problem Julia Chaffers

Senior Columnist

I

f you had asked someone in winter 2018 what the Democratic field of candidates would look like now, I doubt many would be able to predict the reality we are watching today. Even if you asked someone last summer, they likely would not have been able to guess.

Part of that has to do with the surprising rise of Pete Buttigieg, who’s jumped from mayor of South Bend, Ind. to a possible frontrunner. The surprising early drops of Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker would also have thrown off pundits a year ago. Ultimately, what started as the most diverse field in history is now dominated by white candidates.

At the end of November, yet another surprise wrinkled the race for the nomination when Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, declared his candidacy. Bloomberg’s subsequent rise, and the money that drives it, reveals the structural barriers that still shape our politics and the imbalances in the primary process.

Bloomberg announced his candidacy nearly a year after the first candidates entered the race. With a $60 billion fortune behind him, Bloomberg has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into advertising, incentives for his staff, and earned media coverage — all of this has combined to make him a looming threat to the leaders of the field as the primary season ramps up, while also allowing him to evade many of the mechanisms of accountability that other candidates must face.

It is not just his spending over the past few months that

has contributed to his ascent — over the past twenty years, Bloomberg has used his fortune to build a web of connections and influence nationwide. That network includes Princeton: Bloomberg Hall, which opened in 2004, is named for his daughter, Emma Bloomberg ’01.

A recent New York Times investigation revealed the vast extent of his reach. In just 2018, Bloomberg spent $2.3 billion across 103 cities on philanthropic and political causes; in 2019, he spent $3.3 billion.

The investigation also revealed multiple instances — involving the Center for American Progress, EMILY’s List, and Everytown for Gun Safety — in which organizations that rely on Bloomberg for funding felt pressured to moderate their stances or temper their criticism of him.

The politicians whose campaigns he has contributed to, combined with the people he can tap to work for his campaign, give Bloomberg a base of support unparalleled by his competitors, who simply can’t access the same resources he can.

As his stature has risen, so have a host of concerning aspects of his record. Most alarming to me is his record on race in his time as mayor, particularly his policy of stop-and-frisk.

For years, Bloomberg has defended stop-and-frisk, a policy which disproportionately targeted young Black and Latino men – these demographic groups consistently comprised 80 percent of those stopped by police. Around 90 percent of those stopped were innocent.

Finally, in November (just before he announced his candidacy), Bloomberg apologized for the policy. But in a recently unsurfaced video from 2015, Bloomberg said, “95 percent of your murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male,

minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city… We put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. Yes. That’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is … the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the walls and frisk them.”

Bloomberg also defended stop-and-frisk in 2018, denying that it violated civil rights.

By 2015, a federal judge had already called stop-and-frisk an instance of racial profiling and an unconstitutional violation of civil rights. Apologizing for the video, Bloomberg glossed over his role in expanding the policy, blaming it instead on his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani.

At its peak in 2011, nine years into Bloomberg’s time as mayor, over 685,000 people were stopped.

These past statements reveal a disregard for the very real effects of stop-and-frisk on communities of color. Bloomberg’s 2015 remarks reinforce the stereotyping of young men of color as uniformly criminal, literally saying they are identical copies of one another. He used this supposed criminality to justify harsh and violent tactics against millions of people, very few of whom actually fit that characterization.

And even after losing in the courts and losing the political battle, years down the line, Bloomberg is still unable to fully acknowledge his complicity in a law enforcement regime that abused the rights of people of color on a large scale, with effects that continue to ripple across communities nationwide. And he doesn’t have to — without the reliance on campaign donations or the need to compete in the first few states, he can’t feel the impact of decreased public support caused by these, or any other, statements.

This is the problem with a billionaire who enjoys deep con-

nections around the country, self-funding his campaign for the Democratic nomination. It is difficult to hold someone accountable who is not beholden to anyone for funding. It is challenging to campaign against someone who can drown you out with an unending stream of advertising and the media coverage that accompanies it.

Already Bloomberg is circumventing the rules other candidates must follow. He skipped the early primary states and the narrowing of the field that comes with them, focusing his attention on the high-delegate states that vote in March. While candidates such as Andrew Yang had to drop out without the support or resources to push on, Bloomberg still has a chance to compete.

After the DNC rejected Julián Castro and Cory Booker’s requests to alter the debate qualification rules to allow for a more diverse lineup, the DNC hypocritically lowered its standards, by removing the donor threshold, to allow candidates such as Bloomberg to compete.

Bloomberg’s surge should concern those of us who hope for an open competition for our votes, or for a primary season in which candidates have to respond to our desires rather than the other way around.

A better system would allow anyone to compete regardless of personal wealth, where candidates would compete on the merits of their messages, rather than the depth of their pockets.

Maybe the country does decide that Bloomberg is the answer to Trump, maybe people do forgive him for his previous policies and statements — but that choice should be made on an even playing field. Bloomberg should have to fight with everyone for our vote, and we should want him to have to.

Julia Chaffers is a sophomore from Wellesley, Mass. She can be reached at chaffers@princeton. edu.

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Abolish the caucus Kaveh Badrei

Senior columnist

C

ontradicting election results have become a common trend in recent American politics. The Iowa Caucus for the Democratic primary on Feb. 3 was the latest inconsistent election: Bernie Sanders won the popular vote by almost 6,000 individual votes in the state of Iowa, while Pete Buttigieg was declared the winner of the caucus because of his lead over Sanders in State Delegate Equivalents by just two delegates. The fundamental principle that the individual with the most votes should be crowned the victor has not reigned true in the United States, and particularly chaotic electoral disasters have reignited this central tension. The United States should fulfill the basic promise of its democracy and hold elections that actually represent the will of the people.

The Iowa Caucus for the Democratic primary faced horrendous mismanagement and dreadful reporting methods through a newly developed app. Technological and administrative errors aside, the discrepancy between Sanders’ popular vote victory and Buttigieg’s delegate count victory point to the fundamental problem of the Iowa Caucuses and others like it.

These political fossils — much like the electoral college itself — are antithetical to the American project of democracy and should be abandoned in favor of electoral mechanisms of direct democracy.

Besides Iowa, six other U.S. states and territories use caucuses to cast their votes in the presidential nominating process: Nevada, North Dakota, Wyoming, American Samoa, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.

After the 2016 presidential election, 10 states which had previously held caucuses to vote in the presidential nominating process opted to instead employ primaries for the 2020 election cycle. Caucuses represent an outdated, undemocratic system — one whose end in American politics should be welcomed.

Caucuses exclude participation at a greater degree than primaries do. The commitment to participate in a caucus is much higher than that of a primary. Individuals must spend several hours attending the often day-long affairs. During those hours, participants must abide by caucus rules in order to adhere to the procedures for assembling into first-round groups and subsequent second-round groups based on viability rankings.

The process is not a simple, individual vote as is the case with presidential primaries.

Consequently, this system places a high bar for participation in the caucus and significantly disadvantages voters who are not able to make the serious time com-

mitment because of work, family affairs, or other time constraints. Those privileged enough to have the free time to participate in the caucus are therefore strongly advantaged in caucuses over the general public.

Especially in the United States, where voter turnout is consistently low, it makes little sense to raise the bar for participation to such unnecessary and demanding standards. So much of our current political moment concerns the mobilization of the full American electorate. Vote100 represents Princeton’s campaign to ensure full voter turnout among its student population given the historically low percentage of voter turnout among college students across America. In the 2014 midterm elections, only 18 percent of college students voted. In short, the American electorate must be expanded, and individuals must be consistently inspired and energized to vote and become a part of the political process rather than forfeit their vital civic duty.

When so many Americans do not even have the time to vote in presidential elections or other electoral contests because of working hours and the lack of election day as a holiday, requiring even more of a time commitment for caucuses further prevents participation in our democracy.

But caucuses also involve highly public interactions and procedures in which voters must make their political decisions known to all. According

to most caucus procedures, voters must choose which groups to join and which candidate to support in full view of all others at the caucus site.

If a candidate does not become viable in that they don’t amass enough group members in the first-round stage, voters must also decide which group to move to in public.

While this is theoretically a mainstay of our political system — the exchange of ideas and the value of meaningful debate for political progress — what tends to occur in presidential caucuses is a form of peer pressure. Voters might feel pressured or unusually nudged to make certain decisions and support certain candidates because of the public element of the decision-making process.

The secret ballot and the privacy afforded to voters to make their own authentic choice has been a hallmark of American elections for over a century. By infusing this extremely public aspect of caucus-going, these mechanisms of the presidential nominating process unnecessarily complicate the vote and allow for the negative influence of social forces in what should be a solemn, individual casting of the vote.

Caucuses also have the possibility of subverting the will of the people. Because they are not counted through a means of direct democracy as primaries are, caucuses present possibilities for discrepancies between the popular vote and caucus vote. Just like what happened in the most recent

Iowa Caucuses, the caucus as a mechanism of the presidential nominating process can make for serious errors.

Free and fair elections should be a hallmark of American democracy, but outdated institutions like the electoral college and caucuses serve as a hindrance towards fulfilling this ideal. This Saturday, the Nevada Caucuses will be the third major Democratic contest in the primary. With the abysmal situation in Iowa, all eyes will be on Nevada to ensure that no such chaos ensues again. But, beyond the shortterm guarantee of a contest where the results are produced in a clear and accurate fashion, our current political moment is presenting us with the opportunity to reassess our democratic institutions. The caucus has outlived its time as a mainstay of the American political system — it is time to abolish the caucus as a step in the selection of the highest office in the land.

By failing to ensure direct democracy thrives in our elections, the United States is turning away from the promise of free and fair elections. Certain voters are undemocratically provided more weight in the process, and the fundamental principle of a popular democracy is neglected in some instances when the popular vote is denied victory.

Kaveh Badrei is a senior Woodrow Wilson School concentrator from Houston, Texas. He can be reached at kbadrei@princeton. edu.

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Tuesday February 18, 2020

Sports

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{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Women’s basketball leads Ivy League at midway point of conference play

By Alissa Selover Head Sports Editor

No. 25 Princeton women’s basketball team is officially halfway done with Ivy League play and plowing through every opponent that they meet.

Currently undefeated in the Ivy League and on a 15-game winning streak, the Tigers breezed through the halfway mark against Yale and Brown this weekend.

Against Yale, junior guard Carlie Littlefield rallied off 20 points as the leading scorer for Princeton in the 55–39 victory. Of Littlefield’s 20 points, 14 of them came in the second half of the game. While the Bulldogs took a quick 12–0 lead in the first quarter, the Tigers rallied back to finish the quarter with a six point run to trail by only four. Yale continued to battle in the second quarter to extend their lead to 18–10.

Princeton, with the current No. 1 scoring defense in the country, didn’t give up the battle. They shut the Bulldogs down, only allowing them to score one more basket the remainder of the second quarter.

The first half ended with a

quick 11–2 run by the Tigers to push their lead to 29–21.

The third quarter was a tough fought battle between both teams. While Princeton took a big lead with only six minutes left in the quarter, Yale didn’t allow the Tigers to pull away as they cut Princeton’s lead to only five points.

Princeton started the fourth quarter with seven of the first nine points, pushing their lead to 12 points. After that, Littlefield added six consecutive points to the board and secured the victory for Princeton.

The Tigers traveled to Providence, R.I. the next day to take on the Brown Bears. To start the 85–48 victory, Princeton came out strong in the first half of the game. In the first 20 minutes of play time between the two teams, the Tigers only allowed six baskets from the Bears.

With a 20 point lead in the first quarter, the Tigers didn’t let up. They led Brown 46–16 at the end of the first half.

Halftime gave Brown a chance to recuperate and prepare for the next half. The Bears outscored Princeton 23–15 in the third quarter to put the score at 61–39. During

the next quarter, the Tigers only allowed nine more points for Brown in a great defensive game.

Littlefield added 19 points this game, putting her at 39 for the weekend. Senior captain Bella Alarie added 16 points this game. Both Littlefield and Alarie had nine re-

bounds and five assists.

Whether it is being nationally ranked or taking the Ivy League by storm, the Tigers are nothing short of accomplishments this season. Assistant Coach Lauren Battista was named the D2East Hoops East Division Player of the Decade from her time at Bentley Uni-

versity, and Alarie was named to the Citizen Naismith Trophy’s Midseason Team, along with being named Katrina McClain Award Finalist.

The second half of conference play begins against Harvard on Friday. This will be the first of five home games for the Tigers.

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Princeton women’s basketball players in a huddle during the game against Yale.

MEN’S TENNIS

Men’s tennis finishes third at ECACs

By Tom Salotti Head Sports Editor

At the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Indoor Championship this weekend, men’s tennis defeated the Penn Quakers 4–3 before falling to the Harvard Crimson 4–2 in the semifinals. The Tigers faced off against Dartmouth in the third place game, a repeat of last year, and emerged victorious with a final score of 4–1.

Princeton “escaped” with their 4–3 win against Penn, according to head coach Billy Pate. The Quakers won last year’s tournament and proved their difficulty as opponents against the Tigers. Senior Payton Holden and junior Ryan Seggerman, ranked No. 8 nationally as a doubles pair, defeated Penn’s Kevin Zhu and Dmitry Shatalin in the Tigers’ only doubles win. Penn took the other two doubles sets 7–6 and 6–3, earning the doubles point for the match. No. 5 sophomore Will Peters won his sets 6–4 and 6–3, putting the Tigers up 2–1 after Seggerman fell at No. 2. No. 1 sophomore Karl Poling and No. 3 sophomore Justin Barki pushed out victories after three sets each, bringing the overall score to 3–3. All eyes were on senior Davey Roberts at the No. 6 match. Roberts bounced back after losing his first set 6–1 and won the next two 7–6 and 6–4, sending Princeton to the semifinals.

The Tigers won the first two doubles matches of the next round against Harvard and were on track to win the third — Barki and junior Damian Rodriguez were up 5–4

— before the match ended because Princeton earned the doubles point in the majority of matches. Unfortunately, the team’s luck ended there. The only singles win for the team came from Roberts’ 7–6, 7–5 match against the Crimson’s Steven Sun at No. 6. Harvard won 4–2 and advanced to the final against the Cornell Big Red while Princeton headed to the third place match against Dartmouth.

The Big Green and the Tigers also faced off in the third place match of this tournament exactly one year ago, where Dartmouth stomped Princeton 4–0.

This year, things were a little different. After doubles sets wins by Holden and Seggerman, as well as Poling with sophomore Bill Duo, Princeton earned the doubles point (Barki and Rodriguez once again didn’t finish).

The first singles match-up was Princeton’s only loss to the Big Green this year. Duo fell 6–1, 6–1 to Dartmouth’s Dominik Pauli. Peters earned his win 6–2, 6–3 while Seggerman and Poling won in three sets each.

“It was a valuable weekend for us to play three highly competitive matches and finding ourselves in a battle in each of them,” Pate told Princeton Athletics. “We were able to grow as a team and improve for the next slate of matches at the Blue Gray.”

After traveling to Alabama for next weekend’s Blue Gray National Tennis Classic, the team has eight more matches before Ivy League play begins.

Tweet of the Day “After breaking a 29-year old record in the indoor mile Saturday, Sam Ellis of @PrincetonTrack is this week’s GPT Athlete of the Week, presented by Coach USA!” @PUTigers

PHOTO COURTESY OF PRINCETON ATHLETICS

Senior Davey Roberts won a critical match against Penn, sending the Tigers to the semifinals against Harvard.

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15 Princeton Tigers men’s water polo players earned Association of Collegiate Water Polo Coaches (ACWPC) All-Academic recognition.